.

Air pressure and buoyancy is a near perfect analogy. Imagine space is less dense near objects and more dense further away.

 

This analogy will accurately depict everything from the bending of light waves through the "medium" to the idea of electromagnetic phenomena being sped up (such as clocks)

 

The only problem with it is that relativity prohibits light speed from changing so even though it seems that with this analogy light speed should be faster in space it actually is not according to special relativity. But with time running faster in space it's almost like it is....

 

If you imagine matter as bubbles in spacetime then gravity behaves like buoyancy. They are drawn together by the space-time pressure gradient.

Creation time: Dec 06, 2013 08:02 AM PST

 

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As others have expressed, that equation is simply associated with the theory which limits the speed of all things at light speed. However, this speed limit is far more "counter-intuitive" than it seems.

 

"...the velocity of light in our theory plays the part, physically, of an infinitely great velocity" - Einstein OEMB 1905

 

 

Let's first start with precisely why there is this limit.

 

It's because mathematically when you plug that number into Special Relativity's equations you either end up dividing by zero or relationships become infinite.

 

Why is this mathematically true? Because the Lorentz factor (the central crux of special relativity) is an equation specifically designed to describe the Michelson Morley experiment in an aether environment. It is an experiment where light travels back and forth between mirrors which are themselves travelling. IE the light has to "catch-up" to the leading mirror as it is running away. If the leading mirror is moving at the speed of light then light can never ever catch it to bounce back! Therefore the time of the experiment and any relationships mathematically described become infinite.

 

 

The Details

More specifically, the experiment not only has light bouncing back and forth directly into a headwind but also across it. The experiment compares these two strange circumstances. They are basically two different ways in which the period of time it takes for the experiment to complete would grow. Two differing growth rates. The Lorentz factor is the ratio between these growth rates and therefore the exact amount of change required to make them equal in size again at any given speed. (I'm willing to give more detail upon request)

 

 

The Nonsense

You'll find however that this "galactic speed limit" is limited to relationships between two bodies which you are one of. A third party perspective ends up giving wildly different results. (the theory can't really think in third person)This results in the fact that we record numerous quasars as travelling many times the speed of light but in the same breath say they are .99999blahblah of the speed of light. And this makes perfect sense in relativity-think. See: Superluminal motion

 

For instance, lets say I design a bunch of space ships like nesting dolls 10 deep of spaceships inside larger space ships. Then I launch the largest and get it up to .9C compared to the earth then launch the next and get it up to .9C compared to the first. I do this for all ten ships. Already you are thinking that it's impossible but according to relativity-think it's not. The trick they throw in is this: Even though each ship will believe it is travelling .9 faster than the last, none of them will look at any other and see a speed greater than .99999blahblah of C

 

IE: The earth will see the tenth ship still only travelling less than light speed away even though it knows that from a third party perspective it should be travelling many times the speed of light.

 

But I wouldn't want you to doubt irrational nonsense. Just swallow the dogma because you are just not mathy (computer-like) enough to "get" it. Here let me give you some light cones and other nifty geometric figures. Buying it yet? No? Don't you like Kool-aid?

Creation time: Dec 31, 2013 04:56 AM PST

 

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The experiment it was based upon was not only non-null it showed a dual sine wave shape to the readings which is impossible for random noise. That experiment was replicated tens of thousands of times by Dayton Miller et al with the same reliable results that actually varied according to the earth's position w.r.t the sun. These experiments however, supposedly replicated, were never actually replicated because they now use laser light instead of white light and cause lock-in which automatically nullifies it.

The central calculation created by Lorentz was a mathematical description of an illusion and was based upon the effects of a moving medium upon light's propagation. IE Light constancy was an illusion with a true mechanical explanation that was rational with no paradox's until Einstein made the perspective illusion into a reality with no mechanism through a stupid assumption.

All effects and experiments taught to students as proof of Special Relativity (SR) were actually created to disprove it and did so successfully. Everything from the sagnac effect to the aberration of starlight disprove the theory.

When asked for explanations the proponents always reduce the problem to classical and controvert their own claims with rational explanations that they never realize contradict their claims of "constancy", which is a term that means the exact opposite of what it normally means.

Not only do experiments disprove the theory, any rational mind that doesn't buy into the religious conversion strategy of "You're just not smart enough to understand this magic written in this holy text" can see it for the magical self-contradictory nonsense it is.

Keeping it hyper brief... so moving on to GR from SR

The gravitational effects of GR were not new, just double what was predicted by Newton. GPS satellites constantly have their clocks updated so it's impossible to know if the effect is actually precisely that predicted by GR or by Newton.

They looked into the universe and found unequivocal proof that GR was wrong in it's prediction of the rotation of galaxies and instead of admitting it was wrong they invented magical fairy dust in the quantity required to shore up the failed theory and sold it all to us with no proof for 70 years. Dark matter is utter crap far better explained by aether theory.

The list goes on and on and on when you dig, but the faithful acolytes will never see anything other than their expectations and their love of magical irrational explanations of reality.

"No one has attempted to refute my arguments, but I was warned that if I persisted I was likely to spoil my career prospects. …the continued acceptance and teaching of relativity hinders the development of a rational extension of electromagnetic theory." ... "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.’" - Louis Essen

“Scientists have now become a church and I do not regard it as an honor to be part of this or of any church.” Ernst Mach

“The 'principle' of the constancy of the velocity of light is not merely 'ununderstandable', it is not supported by 'objective matters of fact'; it is untenable, and, as we shall see, unnecessary. . . . Also of philosophical import is that with the abandonment of the 'principle' of the constancy of the velocity of light, the geometries which have been based on it, with their fusion of space and time, must be denied their claim to be a true description of the physical world." - Herbert E. Ives

"Oh, that stuff! We never bother with that in our work" -Ernest Rutherford

Wilhelm Wein: "No Anglo-Saxon can understand relativity!"

Ernest Rutherford: "No! they've got too much sense!"

Today's scientists have substituted mathematics for experiments, and they wander off through equation after equation, and eventually build a structure which has no relation to reality. The scientists from Franklin to Morse were clear thinkers and did not produce erroneous theories. The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane. - Nikola Tesla

 

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Specifically because he proposed ideas which seemed irrational. To say that light actually travels a speed relative to every moving observer simultaneously (and they are all correct) is absurd to classical sensibilities. Additionally suggesting a wave can travel without a medium was also seemingly asinine to the contemporary scientists.

 

You must understand that this is at the very same time that Lorentz's theory which was fully relativistic, had time dilation, length contraction and the illusion of light speed constancy was considered completely rational if a bit ad hoc whereas the particular changes I mentioned above (light speed constancy) were seen as complete nonsense.

 

Those changes mentioned in the first paragraph were enough to draw ridicule and scorn whereas ideas we still find difficult such as time dilation and length contraction were interesting and strange to contemporary scientist but not considered impossible like the concepts Einstein introduced.

 

You must understand that Lorentz considered light speed constancy a perspective illusion caused by aether. (a simple math trick) Einstein eliminated the aether entirely and insisted light speed constancy was no illusion. These changes led to the new concept of the relativity of simultaneity.

 

In LET there is no twins paradox though there is still a difference in the twins age.

 

My Quora blog explains in far greater detail but still laymen's terms: Relativity Demystified

Creation time: Mar 31, 2014 12:15 AM PDT

 

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I can give you the classical perspective from a modern viewpoint. It, of course, requires a luminiferous aether.

 

It would basically be the same thing that happens at the speed of sound with sound waves. The light waves would stack up and create Cherenkov radiation because there would be the equivalent of a sonic boom but with light. The amplitude of the light given off in a forward direction would become effectively infinite dependent only upon the length of time energy was put into the medium without being able to escape. So, all the light coming from in front of you would be converted to gamma and higher... (outgoing and incoming) and everything would be utterly black behind you.

 

The result of this stacking of waves and overstressing the medium is chaotic cavitation. There would be these strange cavitations of the medium that carried light so just like the white cones (jumping off the sides of jets) that blink in and out of existence during the transition point of a sonic boom (chaotic cavitations of the air because of the amplitude of the sound exceeding the elasticity of the medium), there would be these black cones seemingly ripping existence. It would look cool.

 

Matter would likely never be able to withstand these sort of stresses unfortunately... especially if you extend ether theory (as Maxwell et al saw it) to the atomic level at which matter is just little vortices in the first place. IE Matter is already just cavitations caused by a vortex; expose that to another cavitation and you just rip the vortex structure apart. (Matter/antimatter interaction)

 

This could be avoided through an intervening vortex field you might call warp bubble but then like a vortex ring launcher, the vortex is "gearing" against the surrounding medium and there is very little disturbance of the medium itself.

 

Then you would still have an issue from any light you are running into from the forward direction; even ultra low frequencies would be so blue shifted that it would all be transmitted into your little warp bubble as gamma and beyond so anything in the warp bubble would be getting cooked quite well...

 

...but I digress.

 

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tl;dr No it is not proven, it is in-fact, disproved in a wide variety of ways. Fiber optic gyroscopes and Ring-laser gyroscopes in particular work on principles that utterly defy light speed constancy. The explanation given is the correct one: classical. But the "relativistic" explanation contradicts relativity.

 

The single most important thing to mention at this point is that there is a difference between light "being" the same for all observers and "appearing" the same. Lorentz developed the transform as an illusion and Einstein made us believe an optical illusion was the reality of the situation.

 

It appearing the same is at least possible; it being the same is irrational.

 

 

(years of built up rage below this point)

 

I'm completely out of patience today. I've been fighting these mentally handicapped computer-brained simpletons for far too long. All of the people on the relativity train are just religious thinkers. They believe that their magic must be true because they've been taught so. They regurgitate the same old belief systems without looking into them they neither understand their own theory nor those they disregard.

 

All they have is memorization and regurgitation. It's just like how primitive AI chatter programs can seem to understand and respond in complex ways. The intellect is an illusion.

 

Every single proof against relativity is touted as proof FOR it. It's maddening stupidity. Every time they are asked to explain their idiotic self-contradicting ideas they give you a rational explanation that fits with a classical system and contradicts the theory they supposedly espouse.

 

Stellar Aberration, Arago, Doppler, Sagnac, Michelson Morley.... They use the exact same strategy of Christianity, adopt rituals, rites and beliefs of a competing belief system as your own and proclaim them as proof of your primacy.

 

Each of the below supposedly disproves aether but actually provides proof FOR it.

 

Stellar aberration: First large indication that there was an aether. All relativistic explanations infer a speed differential between light and the earth. Stellar aberration by itself is proof against light speed constancy. Even the ancient idea that it disproves entrainment is pure stupidity. Having a bubble of aether which propagates with the earth would still allow for aberration. Blows me away that these simpletons can't get that. For god's sake think it out. Mechanism people, mechanism. What is it? Focus.

 

Arago: It disproved old Newtonian ideas that light propagates at different speeds. This simply shows that light is a wave which requires a medium. A freaking wave is a compression and rarefaction. It's an event not an object you morons.

 

Doppler effect: How the **** does the light become higher or lower frequency?? Hmm? Oh that's right, magic again. Idiots.(difference in speed between light propagation and observer or emitter and medium can't exist in relativity)

 

Sagnac Effect: Direct obvious unequivocal proof against light speed constancy. Oh because it goes in a circle suddenly it behaves like a normal wave in a medium? My god I want to murder you brain dead excuses for rational beings. Even when OEMB says constancy is true in a circle... Oh then you're going to give me an explanation that is utterly classical and say THAT's the explanation? Yeah nice trick except I actually understand relativity and constancy and your explanation only tricks idiots who can't keep their eye on the ball. I can't believe you get away with using the correct explanation instead of the one that matches the theory... What morons are buying this tripe???

 

Oh and lets go on to the Michelson-Morely which detected a 8-12 km/sec wind. Not only did it do this but it detected it in a fashion which eliminates any possibility of random noise because the readings themselves vary in a specific pattern that can only arise from a change in light along a specific path. It's a dual sine wave of readings. These results which were miles from "null" were repeated tens of thousands of times by Dayton Miller et al. Double-blinded readings in differing locations, different elevations, different devices by different people. He won a prize from the AAAS for it. And since Michelson and Miller, not one time has their experiments been duplicated with white light!!

 

 

... And now lets deal with the sacred concept of symmetry. RELATIVITY IS ASYMMETRICAL. If my units get smaller, yours get larger, if my time gets slower, yours gets faster. Exactly the opposite in relativity but because of the relativity of simultaneity and the use of only one frame at a time they push the error around from place to place without ever dealing with it and never being able to see it. The theory is the mathematical equivalent of solipsism and epitomizes the difference between an autistic's ability to model another human's ability and the actual ability to empathize. You can't just inject your viewpoint into another frame and believe it correct. There is an interplay of the two. They must be considered simultaneously. Not sequentially.

 

I don't even believe in Lorentz Ether Theory which is fully relativistic but all the idiots in this field think the theory is practically the same because it's "mathematically indistinguishable". They don't understand how meta data and the combination of frames affects the outcome of using the same math.

 

That's right, the freaking morons don't think there's a significant difference when there is in fact an enormous difference. LET is non magical while SR is pure fantastical magical BS. Same maths, different outcomes.(even numerically)

 

Once again... LET=Rational; SR=Irrational ...Same math

The "metaphysics" or "ontology" that they dismiss impacts the method of application of the maths.

Creation time: Feb 25, 2014 07:22 AM PST

 

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Content: The constancy of light is a property, not a value. The word "constant" is used in much more broad sense in the context of relativity.

 

For instance, the speed of sound in air of a specific temperature and pressure could be thought of as a constant when attempting to calculate the combination of sound signals and moving objects (ignoring turbulence effects) but this is a wildly different usage of the word than when it is used in the context of special relativity.

 

In relativity, the word almost means its precise opposite. No matter how much you are moving, the speed of light is relative to you. Therefore from a third party perspective it is almost like light is travelling every speed simultaneously and light is, in fact, often considered to be infinite.

 

 

By "deduced from the principle of relativity" this means that when the Michelson Morley experiment showed a null even though they knew light was a wave and that the planet was moving, this meant one of two things:

 

Either

 

1) The earth was the center of the universe and light always moves according to us.

 

OR

 

2) Somehow moving has no impact on our (an observer's) perception of light's speed.

 

 

Because light was a wave, they assumed there was a medium it moved relative to but since we disregard choice 1 above, light must somehow either seem to move relative to a moving observer or actually (irrational in their opinion) move relative to a moving observer.

 

Lorentz Ether Theory (LET) produced the math for this relativity principle under the idea that light simply "seems" to move relative to a moving observer (while really moving relative to aether and creating an illusion) and Einstein decided that it really does move relative to a moving observer in SR and then just removed the aether while still using the same calculations from LET.

Creation time: Feb 27, 2014 01:04 PM PST

 

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The experiment it was based upon was not only non-null it showed a dual sine wave shape to the readings which is impossible for random noise. That experiment was replicated tens of thousands of times by Dayton Miller et al with the same reliable results that actually varied according to the earth's position w.r.t the sun. These experiments however, supposedly replicated, were never actually replicated because they now use laser light instead of white light and cause lock-in which automatically nullifies it.

The central calculation created by Lorentz was a mathematical description of an illusion and was based upon the effects of a moving medium upon light's propagation. IE Light constancy was an illusion with a true mechanical explanation that was rational with no paradox's until Einstein made the perspective illusion into a reality with no mechanism through a stupid assumption.

All effects and experiments taught to students as proof of Special Relativity (SR) were actually created to disprove it and did so successfully. Everything from the sagnac effect to the aberration of starlight disprove the theory.

When asked for explanations the proponents always reduce the problem to classical and controvert their own claims with rational explanations that they never realize contradict their claims of "constancy", which is a term that means the exact opposite of what it normally means.

Not only do experiments disprove the theory, any rational mind that doesn't buy into the religious conversion strategy of "You're just not smart enough to understand this magic written in this holy text" can see it for the magical self-contradictory nonsense it is.

Keeping it hyper brief... so moving on to GR from SR

The gravitational effects of GR were not new, just double what was predicted by Newton. GPS satellites constantly have their clocks updated so it's impossible to know if the effect is actually precisely that predicted by GR or by Newton.

They looked into the universe and found unequivocal proof that GR was wrong in it's prediction of the rotation of galaxies and instead of admitting it was wrong they invented magical fairy dust in the quantity required to shore up the failed theory and sold it all to us with no proof for 70 years. Dark matter is utter crap far better explained by aether theory.

The list goes on and on and on when you dig, but the faithful acolytes will never see anything other than their expectations and their love of magical irrational explanations of reality.

"No one has attempted to refute my arguments, but I was warned that if I persisted I was likely to spoil my career prospects. …the continued acceptance and teaching of relativity hinders the development of a rational extension of electromagnetic theory." ... "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.’" - Louis Essen

“Scientists have now become a church and I do not regard it as an honor to be part of this or of any church.” Ernst Mach

“The 'principle' of the constancy of the velocity of light is not merely 'ununderstandable', it is not supported by 'objective matters of fact'; it is untenable, and, as we shall see, unnecessary. . . . Also of philosophical import is that with the abandonment of the 'principle' of the constancy of the velocity of light, the geometries which have been based on it, with their fusion of space and time, must be denied their claim to be a true description of the physical world." - Herbert E. Ives

"Oh, that stuff! We never bother with that in our work" -Ernest Rutherford

Wilhelm Wein: "No Anglo-Saxon can understand relativity!"

Ernest Rutherford: "No! they've got too much sense!"

Today's scientists have substituted mathematics for experiments, and they wander off through equation after equation, and eventually build a structure which has no relation to reality. The scientists from Franklin to Morse were clear thinkers and did not produce erroneous theories. The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane. - Nikola Tesla

Creation time: Mar 22, 2014 10:28 AM PDT

 

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First we rule out debate that is religious in nature because it's unworthy of mention here, and that also gets rid of most of the old scientific debate as well and brings us to modern times.

 

When it comes to length of time debated and total words said in debate, nothing beats Special Relativity. When it comes to credible sources debating it, nothing beats it either. Unfortunately most people don't understand that it is very small subtleties in question not the entirety. "Baby and bathwater" is always a problem for laymen.

 

Second place is Quantum mechanics and the same is true in all categories listed above. Baby and bathwater...

 

It is important to note the sociology of scientific belief because it is stock and trade to attempt to defeat dissent by scoffing, humiliating and denigrating. The second trick is to take dissenting information which disproves a theory and hold it up as the best proof for the theory. This happens in every system of knowledge whether historical, scientific or religious.

 

"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it" -Max Planck

 

 

[I'll start with relativity and add drawings and then finally quantum mechanics later]

 

1) Relativity: Why would anyone argue? The issue is difficult, subtle and complex.

 

Most try to boil it down to saying it's simply counter-intuitive. That's an an over-simplification in the extreme. Most people have problems with it from the outset and a few complaints truly are just unfamiliarity. The idea of time passing differently for another person is difficult for a few but this effect can be boiled down to even a classical effect.

 

So only idiots were arguing and that was long ago right?

 

No! A great number of scientific giants, inventors and Nobel prize winners were arguing up until the late 70s! For example, Louis Essen is the man responsible for our precise measurement of light speed and was the inventor of the atomic clock; a true scientific giant in the field of electromagnetism. He fought so long and hard against relativity that he had this to say.

 

"No one has attempted to refute my arguments, but I was warned that if I persisted I was likely to spoil my career prospects. …the continued acceptance and teaching of relativity hinders the development of a rational extension of electromagnetic theory." - Louis Essen F.R.S., "Relativity and time signals", Wireless World, oct78, p44. ‘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.’

 

 

You have to understand, however, that the problem is usually too subtle for the laymen. Lorentz, the man who is responsible for the core calculations of SR, (it used to be called Lorentz-Einstein relativity) surmised that time was just our measure of change, but they already knew that the universe was electromagnetic. This means that all he had to consider was the fact that every intermolecular force, and therefore every interaction, was light. (electromagnetic) So if something was moving as its molecules were trying to interact, those forces would have to travel the additional space that the object moved. It would take longer! Therefore if time is just changes to the universe... and everything is electromagnetic... and it took longer for things to interact... Time itself would be slowed!

 

Lorentz even thought that the motion might cause things to shorten up as a result of those forces somehow being strengthened by the motion so even the shortening of objects could be seen in a totally classical context. Lorentz even had a theory that was "relativistic" while still remaining classical. The viewpoint of moving observers was always skewed so that everything was "relative" to them.

 

"Uhhhhh.... then where is the problem?"

 

A million little arguments spring from a particular core that is difficult to verbalize. That core can only be understood extremely well once someone understands the classical predecessor of Special Relativity called "Lorentz Ether Theory"(LET) and can differentiate between the two theories.

 

Both have contraction, time dilation and the appearance of light speed constancy yet in SR light speed constancy is often taught as a real effect but in LET it was just a perspective illusion hidden mathematically; it wasn't real. However, the two theories are mathematically indistinguishable at their root.

 

Another way this problem is viewed is in the question of "light speed anisotropy". LET specifies that light will not actually be the same speed in all directions, whereas SR intimates that is is the same without directly saying so. SR simply provides a system of synchronization that will work whether or not light speed is isotropic. It specifies that the "universal frame" of LET should be thrown away unless proven. We have never proven the one-way speed of light however.

 

"Dude, you've said almost nothing to clear things up..."

 

These subtle differences add up to a wide variety of arguments that make SR look as though it is non-reciprocal and paradoxical. The twins paradox is a prime example but only one of many. The solution to the twins paradox simply reduces SR to LET by adding a preferred frame.

 

What is meant by this is that when you choose the “moving” twin to be actually be the one that is truly moving and therefore slowed (and younger) you automatically intimate that when he looked back at the earth anchored twin, he was also sped up and therefore older.

 

The other idea most often brought up is the train experiment. When you are on a train travelling the speed of a bullet as you pass a gun being fired, you simply see the bullet riding alongside you. When you are on a train travelling near the speed of light and pass a laser being fired, you don't see the front of the beam riding beside you, you see it passing at the speed of light! According to Lorentz this is just because your time is so slow that it simply looks that fast and if you were actually travelling light speed then your molecules could never interact back and forth so time would stop for you anyway. This is subtly different from SR.

 

What? How??!

 

It comes down to the relativity of simultaneity.

 

In SR, we can only do tests with light that involve it going forward and back. It's a two-way test. The same is assumed true in LET as well.

 

The trick is in the math. Think of a swimmer trying to swim upstream and then back downstream; it happens really slow up and really fast back even if his speed he’s swimming in the water never changed. Intuitively you might have guessed that the trips would automatically even out so that would be the same as a simmer going round trip in a stationary pool the same length. That intuition is completely false. (it takes a bit longer)

 

The trick Lorentz created is to make it so that a river swimmer's round trip perfectly evens out to match a swimmer in a stationary pool but here's the kicker: the speed upstream is still much slower than down stream. (and the swimmer is light itself of course)

 

Ohh... that light speed isotropy/anisotropy thing? Yeah... but what's this got to do with simultaneity???

 

Well, here it gets so complex that if you thought the other parts were hard to follow, you're not going to like a short answer much. The issue is that when we’re moving clocks around here and there (large distances), the motion itself adds extra distance for light to travel so the synchronizations of anything that isn't in exactly the same place becomes all screwy.

 

There's at least three layers of complexity going on here though I could count it as four or more. Let's try to stay concise though.The first layer is the change to clocks when they are moved around; the second and closely related fact is that the rate at which they tick is also changed; the third is that we've eliminated any way to detect whether or not swimmer is in a river or a pool! (we did this because the Michelson-Morley experiment seemed to indicate this)

 

The issue is that, in the strictest scientific terms, you cannot say whether or not it is truly the same moment at the same time somewhere else (your commonsense idea of simultaneous) because currently we've never made a one-way speed of light test. Therefore you have no proof and presumption without proof doesn't belong in scientific theories.

 

In terms of either LET or SR this means that because you are not literally at a distant location, there are only a few rational ways to synchronize clocks. To continue to theorize you must assume light is isotropic at a specific speed based upon your experimental observations. (Even if you believe that idea is false because you believe the swimmer is in a river) This will result not only in the time being different in a different place but the place itself being different in a certain way.

 

"HunhWhat?"

 

This is where light cones etc are needed to explain the need for a fourth dimension in SR. Suffice it to say that in SR that two events simultaneous to one observer are not necessarily simultaneous to another observer. But this simply isn't true in LET.

 

If you still hold on to the unproven belief that the swimmer is in a river (that light has to travel upstream and downstream if you're moving) as is done in the classical theory of Lorentz, then you know that any experiment you do while moving will give false results that will cause you to misjudge what is happening at other locations and precisely where those locations are. (same math, different applications of it)

 

That is to say that in LET, if you performed a one-way speed of light test you would be able to detect your motion because light speed would not be the same in every direction. If you then knew you were in motion you would know there is an effect that is an illusion tricking your estimations of distant events.

 

"What the heck does all that mean?"

 

It means that based upon a currently unprovable belief, Lorentz's theory intimates that events only appear to be non-simultaneous according to two differently moving observers because of a math trick. It intimates that event's that are either simultaneous or they are not because there is only one truth about the universe. It intimates that there are not two literally different distances for objects as there are in SR, (light cones and 4th dimension) there is only the illusion of different distances. (only three dimensions)

 

According to relativity, you don't have the right to assume any of that until you've proven it scientifically with experimental evidence. Therefore, until a one-way speed of light test is performed all we can base our beliefs upon is our experiments, regardless if we think the universe might be creating an illusion that distorts our perception.

 

LET is fully relativistic but also posits a unified universe of three dimensions with an illusion of light constancy and an illusion of broken simultaneity. The fourth dimension is just a handy mathematical notation which is simply an additional subscript on an array. It has no physical existence and therefore space and time are not truly unified. This is why it is classical

 

SR adds another dimension both literally (the fourth) and figuratively in that even those things which might be simultaneous from one perspective are literally not simultaneous from another. (even considering the expected lag of light signals) The distances themselves change in a relative fashion. This is an additional layer of relativity. LET is reciprocal with only three dimensions while SR is only reciprocal in the context of a fourth dimension. This grants a quasi-physical existence to time itself and unifies space and time. This relative simultaneity grants unlimited possible "universes" because of unlimited number of perspectives and simultaneities.

 

In a way this leads to quantum mechanics and the "many-worlds" interpretation which we will move on to next...

Creation time: Jul 07, 2014 03:57 AM PDT

 

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The best way to compare is to contrast and the best method is analogy. Then you need to isolate the key difference between the two. So ask:

 

What separates classical physics from the modern age of relativistic physics?

 

That difference is light speed constancy, which in turn leads to the velocity addition law, which is what is "special" about the way things are "relative".

 

Galilean relativity was originally explained as events in a hull of a moving ship but perhaps we should update the analogy to passengers within a train. As in Galileo's example, the passengers in a train can toss a ball back and forth without having to worry about their speed with respect to the ground.

 

So where is the difference? It's light's unique "behavior".

 

The difference lies in experience between the ground and the train. Galileo's relativity would expect that if a train travelling the speed of a bullet passes a fellow on the ground who fires a gun in the same direction, a passenger in the train would see the bullet riding alongside him when he looks out the window.

 

However, contrary to classical expectations, if the train were travelling the speed of light (or just under since that's impossible) and it were passing a fellow with a laser gun who fires in the same direction as they pass they will not see the first wavefront riding beside them or slowly passing. It will be passing them at exactly the regular speed of light.

 

Wait, what does this have to do with Galilean versus Special??

 

Without delving too greatly into the details, this means that objects speeds are only relative to each other and light itself because light is always travelling the same speed with respect to you, no matter how fast you are travelling with respect to someone else. ...and the fact that it's true for both of you is completely counter to classical expectations.

 

This further means when you both compare your measurements of light's speed with consideration of the whole, it seems as though you could come up with two different answers about what occurred. This leads to some of the other interesting aspects of special relativity which relate to time.

 

But you said at the start it was about the Velocity-addition formula...

 

And so it is. What is "special" about special relativity is that high velocities are not added together in the same way as classical because of the aforementioned difference in the way light behaves. Additionally what is "special" is that times are different from place to place as well which is why space and time are unified into space-time, but that is just another aspect of the same mechanic.

 

To sum it up, this means that if we make some spaceships like Russian nesting dolls and the largest one leaves Earth to accelerate to 99% of the speed of light and then launches the spaceship it is carrying, that smaller craft can then accelerate to 99% of the speed of light from the mother ship with no problem. That child craft can then launch its own child to accelerate to 99% of the speed of light as well and so on!

 

Wait, WHAT? That can't be right!

 

The reason this is possible is because each ship's speed is only 99% of the speed of light with respect to the mother ship and you do not just directly add the previous ships speed directly on. Each ship's speed is relative in a special way that is not Galilean. You must use the velocity addition formula.

 

This means that, even though we seemed to have launched three ships with each accelerating to 99% of the speed of light, the speed between the third ship and Earth is not 297% of the speed of light. According to special relativity, the speed is 99.[a bunch of numbers]% of the speed of light.

 

This is because relative speeds of objects are not measured according to some universal absolute between them all but in a special way which can only really relate two objects at once. And this is because the word "speed" is a concept that relates to time and time is not the same in each of the frames of motion nor even the same with respect to their location in space.

 

In special relativity, it is necessary to relate objects in a number of ways beyond speed which also considers location and time.

Creation time: Mar 23, 2015 08:20 PM PDT

 

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Absolutely Not!

 

Anyone who says otherwise either has a very deep and fundamental misunderstanding of relativity or is utterly misrepresenting the truth in attempting to say "everything is relativistic."

 

When they say that they are, it is the same as saying any set of calculations that describes how waves travel in a fluid is also relativistic. Mechanical wave motion in a medium is utterly contrary to constancy!

 

(he even described his system as wheels and pulleys)

 

Maxwell's equations were a special case of fluid dynamics in which he described the way in which a wave would travel from a source. Because of the enormous speeds of light, he did not continue to describe that wave's evolution in a fashion in which an observer is in motion with respect to the wave. It would be a waste of time in absurd unnecessary precision.

 

This does not even hint at relativity.

 

Saying it hints at is is the same as saying that a fellow hints at "sound speed constancy" if he creates an equation to describe the motion of sound waves but simply omits the extra work of mathematically describing all the nifty egg shapes you get when you move with respect to the emitter or the emitter with respect to the medium.

 

It's rampant fanboi nonsense. Don't buy it.

 

EDIT: Though I've been squelched, I'll provide some references while they'll provide nothing but opinion.

 

This paper likely sheds the most light on the subject I've seen yetsofar:

On Hertz's Invariant form of Maxwell's Equations

Page on angelfire.com

 

Title:

On Hertz's Invariant form of Maxwell's Equations

Authors: Phipps, Thomas E.

Publication: Physics Essays, vol. 6, issue 2, p. 249

Publication Date: 00/1993

Creation time: Mar 26, 2015 09:24 PM PDT

 

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This is basically a question about classical physics versus modern relativistic physics and most of the people posting here are not qualified to answer because it requires an in-depth understanding of deprecated theories from 19th century. Deprecated theories are simply not taught in-depth and even historians are not often interested in the details.

 

Thankfully I actually am qualified to answer because my specialty is the history of relativistic theory.

 

Follow the link below for an explanation of Special Relativity in context of the historical theories which preceded it:

 

Relativity Demystified

 

 

First lets start with making your question more specific and address some of the other answers.

 

Tesla's contention:

 

"Supposing that the bodies act upon the surrounding space causing curving of the same, it appears to my simple mind that the curved spaces must react on the bodies, and producing the opposite effects, straightening out the curves. Since action and reaction are coexistent, it follows that the supposed curvature of space is entirely impossible - But even if it existed it would not explain the motions of the bodies, as observed. - "Prepared Statement of Tesla". July 10, 1937.

 

"Today's scientists have substituted mathematics for experiments, and they wander off through equation after equation, and eventually build a structure which has no relation to reality. The scientists from Franklin to Morse were clear thinkers and did not produce erroneous theories. The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane." - from 'Radio Power Will Revolutionize the World' by Nikola Tesla in Modern Mechanics and Inventions. July, 1934.

 

1) The first well known statement addresses General relativity (which deals with gravity) directly but is specifically questioning the reasoning not the effects of gravity including things such as gravitational lensing.

 

General relativity simply doubled the expectation of curvature of light which was actually expected under Newton's physics.

 

His other statements call into question Special Relativity (which eliminated the aether) because Tesla's technology and the very reasoning for his designs actually dealt with resonating the aether directly and manipulating this substance in other ways. The rotating magnetic field made absolutely no sense to Tesla without something to rotate.

 

The AC power system comes from the concept that the aether, like any fluid, can be resonated and this was the basis for his design which allows us to send power vast distances compared to DC power.

 

2) Modern theorists will make false statements about "classical" ideas because they do not know the neo-classical (but deprecated) aether theories at all.

 

For instance, in Lorentz Ether Theory (LET), time effects are present for moving objects. ("Aether is spelled differently in modern times to differentiate it from the gas "Ether")

 

Time differences occur in aether theories because time is governed by light speed which is not a universal constant. Motion through the aether causes violations of Lorentz invariance and aether properties were postulated to vary from one place to another which also changes time.

 

IE: Things such as the GPS system and muon decay do not differ between neo classical aether theories and General Relativity.

 

While Lorentz is neo-classical, time dilation from motion is readily deducible from classical mechanics with a different simplified number of [math]\gamma^2[/math] because the motion with respect to the aether will necessarily retard the 2-way electromagnetic communication between particles because of the requirement of additional real space to traverse.

 

 

What could Change?

 

• Firstly, if aether theory were correct, some of our estimations of cosmological distances might change a bit.

• More importantly, if there is a real substance that is pervasive in space, then the unification of all phenomena would become much easier and we would likely find ways to manipulate this substance directly.

• This would allow real "bending of space" but we'd call it "changing aether density" and therefore things such as force fields etc might become a reality. Warp travel via moving a fluid around the warp bubble makes more sense than "bending" the nothing of space.

• Additionally small manipulated fields might be used to artificially slow or speed localized time inside a bubble.

• Presuming gravity is simply a function of local aether rigidity/density then anti-gravity becomes possible.

• Knowing this substance exists opens the possibility of harnessing energy from its natural motions like we would from moving wind or water.

• Perfection of particle physics would lead to perfection of the manipulation of quantum effects and possibly phenomena such as directed efficient transmutation of elements.

• If the mass energy equivalence is because matter is nothing more than complex knots of aether motion, this means that we would be able to create matter directly from energy.

 

...and a great deal of other unknowable possibilities but basically the total revolution of the modern world. It would be an inconceivably massive change to technology, energy manipulation, and space travel.

Creation time: Mar 29, 2015 10:17 PM PDT

 

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Understanding relativity is far easier when you understand the theory just prior to it that shares the same mathematics: Lorentz Ether Theory (LET) explained time dilation and length contraction from the viewpoint of the aether.

 

A slightly more extensive laymen's explanation can be found here: 1) Derivation of Lorentz from Classical by Shiva Meucci on Relativity Demystified

 

But, specifically, you just need to know that the original idea was that the forces that make all particles interact would have to propagate between them at the speed of light. This, in turn, means that even the movement of a steel bar has to propagate that movement in a wave from one particle to the next from the beginning to the end.

 

This allows us to understand that everything from the ticking of a clock to the biological working of the human brain are governed by the speed of light because that's the way the interaction of the forces between particles are mediated. Any change in a particle's position only affects the next particle only once that force travels from one to the other at the speed of light.

 

In Lorentz's concept, when you moved through the aether, the light had to "swim upstream" and back down it and this meant that the total time required for two particles to interact took longer overall.

 

Viola! Time dilation...

 

The reasoning some give for Special Relativity isn't the same, but Einstein never gave a reasoning other than to uphold light speed constancy. However, it's basically a different aspect of the same theory and special relativity used to be called "Lorentz-Einstein Relativity", so it could be argued that light speed constancy (which exists in LET) is just another way of explaining Lorentz's aether theory. (which is commonly known to be mathematically equivalent)

Creation time: Jun 24, 2015 04:42 AM PDT

 

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It would not be a popular answer, per se, because it would be a slightly novel interpretation but...

 

"...we shall, however, find in what follows, that the velocity of light in our theory plays the part, physically, of an infinitely great velocity." - Albert Einstein OEMB (section 4)

 

 

To say light traversed space over time when these concepts are entirely existent in comparison to light, is a bit of an absurdity. Or perhaps we could say it is an oversimplified convention meant to ease the angst of not understanding 4-dimensionality.

 

So technically, because we can view the same particle from so many different frames, a particle that travels the speed of light exists everywhere along its path during the whole portion of "time" it takes to travel... (another way of saying all of the spacetime in which it exists)

 

 

So, according to SR, from the particle's perspective, the moment of entanglement and the moment of collapse are the same moment. Therefore there is no transmission of the signal but instead an existence which is larger than our experience. The signal to collapse need not travel at all.

 

Another way to say this is that the particle is like a long solid beam which cuts through spacetime and gives us the impression of travelling because we are the ones traversing time and only able to see three of the four dimensions in which the beam exists.

 

 

Please bear in mind that while this is a rational extension of the theory, I don't personally find the theory rationally compelling (though emotionally entertaining) in the first place and subscribe to a different and less popular interpretation of modern physics.

 

I see you've joined quora specifically to ask this question so I hope the answer is what you were looking for.

Creation time: Jul 30, 2015 11:34 PM PDT

 

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I'm the only one here who thinks you're on the right track, but let me point out couple things.

 

First, when talking about the Michelson Morley, when you mention the "almost", people are going to jump you so you need to learn about the details of the experiment and the fact that it did, indeed detect an aether wind of ~8-12 km/sec which is roughly a third of the expectation and the readings were non random but consistently showed the pattern expected of the wind. (dual sine wave) I'd be glad to give you more exhaustive information on this.

 

 

You're very close on some concepts but you're not combining them quite right. You're seeing the cancellation that's supposed to be happening but there is a mixture of effects that is eluding you. There's a sort of "two steps forward, one step back" thing happening.

 

So, yes, there is an illusion, but that illusion will indeed show up on physical clocks as well but the problem is that it will do so only in one "pseudo universal" frame. (I say pseudo-universal because a mobile fluid makes a poor basis for coordinate system)

 

What I mean by this is that, in Lorentz's theory there is not just time dilation, but also time contraction. (which was unnecessary to mention from a scientific stand-point) So, if by some strange miracle, the twin which moved away from earth stayed stationary within the actual aether frame, then an earthbound observer would have to think of the moving twin as time contracted and length dilated, in which case the earthbound twin would actually age less than the traveler instead of the other way around. (and also would appear lengthened instead of shortened)

 

The time on a clock in Lorentz aether theory (the progenitor of SR) will indeed show a different time if it is physically altered to be smaller. Time dilation is a physical and mechanical process in LET. Once you understand the reasoning Lorentz used, the theory makes sense as an illusion but you still must have a preferred frame.

 

If you read my blog posts on the topic I think it will clear up your current thoughts.

 

IE You'll still see time dilation as an illusion overall but also a real physical effect. (It is constancy that is the actual pure fiction)

 

Relativity Demystified

 

And this answer may also help:

Shiva Meucci's answer to If I travel to a planet 10 light years away from earth at 90% of the speed of light, why will it take me less than 10 years according to the time dilation equation?

Creation time: Sep 12, 2015 01:33 AM PDT

 

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If you're looking for an underlying mechanism, you'll be disappointed

 

In standard modern relativity theory, there is no mechanism for this action. It is taken as a basic fact of reality. That is not saying that there are not expositions and discussions surrounding the idea, but none of them actually provide a rational mechanistic cause or answer to the "why" question without leaving a tremendous amount dangling.

 

One of the most entertaining "explanations" is that time and physical motion are "orthogonal" but this isn't an explanation as much as a creative additional picture with zero explanatory power. It is simply states and provides analogy for the idea that one moves either through time or through space. It does literally nothing to connect this idea to reality in any way.

 

 

This is better answered via history

 

If we look to the theory just prior to (and the direct predecessor of) Relativity called "Lorentz Ether Theory" (LET), the contraction had a very specific reasoning and mechanism. It was an alteration of electromagnetic forces between molecules caused by the aether wind passing across them.

 

Specifically, it was Hendrik Lorentz (at the suggestion of George FitzGerald) that came up with the whole idea of length contraction, the illusion of light speed constancy and subsequently time dilation and even the illusion of broken (relative) simultaneity found in relativity.

 

You have to understand that the reason these ideas were even created was to explain a null result on the Michelson Morley experiment in an aether environment.

 

The change factor (still used in relativity) is specifically a mathematical model of an illusion. It is a model of specifically how the movement of a medium that light waves have to travel through would geometrically alter the paths that light would have to take to create the weird illusion of a null on the Michelson experiment even if we are actually moving through an aether; the medium light propagates in. (It's what is waving)

 

It is a model of aether's effect on light which was directly ported into relativity even though relativity eliminates the aether (and any mechanical reasoning with it)

 

In Lorentz's theory, contraction and an altered perception of time are real effects while light constancy is an illusion. In relativity the illusion is taken as a reality. This difference between the two directly accounts for the strangeness of relativity.

 

In LET, the reason "Why" there was contraction at high speeds is because it's the only way a geometrical solution to an optical illusion could cause two light beams traveling "upstream" of a wind and "across" the stream of a wind to ever meet back in precisely the same (moving) place at the same moment.

 

A much more detailed explanation with diagrams can be found here:

 

Relativity Demystified

Creation time: Oct 02, 2015 12:16 AM PDT

 

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Description is not Explanation:

 

For describing constancy, the normal way to differentiate relative constancy from any intuitive language bias one might have about the word itself, is by describing a train. ("constancy" is poor nomenclature)

 

Example:

 

Place an observer on a train travelling just infinitesimally slower than the speed of a bullet and have them look out the window as they pass a man on the ground who shoots a gun in the same direction they are travelling. What will they see? A bullet starting to inch past them very slowly as it drops to the ground.

 

Place an observer on a train travelling just infinitesimally slower than the speed of light and have them look out the window as they pass a man on the ground who shoots a laser gun in the same direction they are travelling. What will they see? Not the first wave front of a beam of light slowly passing them like the bullet experiment, but instead they see a beam of light passing by them at precisely the speed of light.

 

The man on the ground and the man in the train see the same light pass by them at the same rate even though they are travelling at different speeds.

 

 

 

For understanding constancy there is only references to prior historical conceptions which only apply to aether theory and preferred frame mechanics. They do not explain relativity because they rely upon a mechanism not present in relativity. These concepts are, however, the reasoning that give birth to the theory.

 

EG:

 

Use an "alien time manipulator" on a person to slow only their time and nothing around them and how will they perceive the world? They will perceive everything around them to be happening very quickly. Voices will sound like chipmunks as everyone races around and they will age more slowly than those around them.

 

Let's presume in the earlier experiment that when a train travelling nearly the speed of a bullet passes a man that fires a bullet in the same direction, that this bullet is able to creep all the way from the back to the front of the window before it falls to the ground.

 

If I slow time, not just for an individual, but everything on the inside of a train, then an observer inside the train might not realize his time is slowed until he looks out a window. If a long smooth surface is placed alongside the train so that it is all he sees, then he will have no way to know his time is slowed.

 

If this time-field-slowed train, which is traveling just below the speed of a bullet passes by a man who fires a bullet in the same direction, what will he see? He will see a bullet pass by the window much more quickly than if his time was not slowed. (things outside a slowed time perception appear faster)

 

Is it possible to create an illusion whereby we slow his time just the right amount so that when he looks out the window at the slowly passing bullet, it will seem to go by so quickly that any measurement of it by instruments he brings along on the train (time slowed too) will measure the speed that the bullet passes as the normal speed of a bullet?

 

The answer is yes! This particular illusion is possible!

 

 

Discussion:

 

The exact math of this above illusion is what Hendrik Lorentz was trying to model when he invented time dilation and length contraction. It was the illusion of constancy.

 

Think about for a while and you'll recognize that it won't work if the bullet goes the opposite direction. Conveniently for Lorentz, the "bullet" he was modeling was specifically light that always had to go up and back downstream on a Michelson interferometer (both really slow and really fast but slow on average round trip) so he could just use the average effect of the two trips.

 

This is why, upon delving into physics you hear things about the "One-way speed of light" because we can't conduct first order experiments so the question still remains if it is a one-way constancy illusion or a two-way truth. Lorentz presumed it to be a one-way constancy illusion; that it won't work if we only look at one-way effects. Einstein, however, presumed it to be a two-way truth; that light is just simply constant in all directions even if you measure it one way at a time.

 

This difference between the one-way and two-way speed of light is even sometimes (quite confusingly) referred to as "Lorentz invariant" when it should not be. It is important to note that most effects will still be "Lorentz invariant" (Meaning specifically that experiments will not change) even if the one-way speed of light in not actually the same in all directions because those experiments are always two-way in nature and therefore, his mechanics of "averaging" will maintain the illusion and hide the discrepancy in the one-directional speeds.

 

Lorentz designed his mathematical illusion to be un-pierceable with two-way experiments. This differentiation between illusion and reality is often unknown to even professionals because it relates to the historical background of the theory instead of its extension.

 

The mathematics also take into account other geometric difficulties light would have "swimming upstream" and specificlaly the additional space light would have to traverse when moving perpendicular to the train. (What looks like straight out and back on the train is actually an angle according to the ground)

 

None of these ideas and mechanisms make any sense whatsoever in light of Minkowski space-time and are utterly incompatible with the idea of light speed constancy being real and being actually the same in all directions instead of simply being an illusion caused by the limitation of our experimental methods.

 

If we could create one-way speed of light tests, we could differentiate the theories but currently we cannot.

 

 

If you would like to explore these ideas further, the following gives further reading on the topic in laymen's terms and with diagrams.

 

Relativity Demystified

Creation time: Oct 02, 2015 04:10 AM PDT

 

 

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It seems you're asking a very broad question focused upon a very specific subject matter.

In the modern age with computers that can store vast amounts of data, reproduce it perfectly, all while crunching enormous amounts of math, the question of "What does it mean to understand" has become very sharp indeed. There are few people who would argue that a computer understands what it is doing. In the realm of AI development and machine learning, this question is quite pressing.

Therefore, perhaps we should first outline what is "not" understanding.

These skills can be generally assumed to be independent of what we commonly refer to as "understanding"

1. Precision and speed in executing mathematical functions

2. Volume of information storage and faithful retrieval of that information

In both of these skill sets computers far outshine their human counterparts. Therefore memorization and regurgitation of facts provided in school are independent of understanding them. Proficiency and reliability of mathematical skills are independent of understanding what those operations mean. (Even when applied appropriately just as a computer does)

These truths of the modern age run extremely counter to the previous century in which they were hailed as the primary markers of intelligence itself. In the modern age however, now that we have machines and tools capable of these processes, market forces should begin to show these skills as easily replaced, common and less valuable than that one thing that is more rare and distinguishes human intellect from machine intellect: Understanding.

I will also add the personal conjecture that true creativity and real understanding are inextricably linked. They are two aspects of the same ability.

It is only a very short matter of time before employers, universities and other economically driven systems recognize this superior value and begin to select more strongly for it. The only thing that is lacking is the development of systems which can accurately detect this resource so it can be differentiated and sought out.

 

Let us consider a new definition of understanding.

Most definitions of "understanding" are arguably circular in nature. Let us propose instead that understanding is the appropriate connection of information such that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Specifically, this means that the information, arranged in a particular way, can do something more than the separate pieces of information can do on their own, even when we consider the productive capacity of each separate entity and pool that production together.

For example: Each part of a car engine can serve an individual purpose but if those parts and their purposes are assembled in just the right way, something more is accomplished than each of them working on their own. (in a jumbled pile for instance)

More concisely put, understanding is a synergy of bare knowledge.

The production of understanding is creativity. Specifically, creativity allows one to use the arrangement of knowledge to predict possible new unknown truths. Just as the structure of a crystal can alter the shape of light shone through it, so too does any arrangement of knowledge create a pattern outside its specified boundaries.

While this is often labeled intuition, it is factually just an examination of the known which is akin to shining a light through a complex crystal from a given angle. The purpose of understanding is to limit the field of future inquiry from infinite down to those many possibilities which can project from the known. While these may be great in number, they are less than infinite.

 

Answering your question from this perspective on "understanding."

When most people say they understand a complex theory, they typically mean that they are extremely familiar with its rules or that they know all its details with some great proficiency. Often they will assume that if they readily quickly and accurately perform all the mathematical functions of that theory, they understand the theory. We have established above that none of these things is actually understanding as most modern, computer era people intuit the word to mean.

When I personally say that I understand the theory of relativity, I specifically mean that I know exactly how where and why one would come to the same conclusions and develop the maths. I mean that I would come to those conclusions independently. I mean that I can find a different way to accomplish the same purpose. I mean that I can use all that it proposes -in concert- to project novel usages of the theory. I mean that I can know all that it purports, the way it works in various situations, and still disagree with the axioms. I can entertain the idea without accepting it.

When I say I understand relativity, I mean that I can trace through all the parts and the way they are arranged to troubleshoot any situation in which that machine would fail to perform in the manner it should. I mean that as my mind flows through the construct like the energy through a running engine, the whole engine works in concert.

I mean that I have proven my understanding time and again by showing completely novel perceptions about, and explanations of, the theory.

 

"I understand relativity"

When I say I understand relativity, I mean it like this:

"If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough" - Albert Einstein

So the next time someone attempts to "explain" something with abstruse maths, you can know it's like a computer exposing some machine code as it crunches numbers. They are simply exposing their lack of understanding instead of any actual understanding. Like a computer, they are doing the only thing they can do with knowledge they do not understand: Regurgitate lower levels of the knowledge as it is working.

Understanding is about arrangement and structure of knowledge, not the knowledge itself, and the best way to convey those structures is through the use of analogy. Analogy helps identify transition points and relationships of information. It allows the bigger picture to be conveyed instead of the minutia of the details.

If I wanted to help you decipher the ones and zeroes flowing through your computer right now, I wouldn't simply give you the data, I'd start by telling you what programs were running.

One Caveat.

In a complicated enough process, understanding relies upon both top down and bottom up. The larger context of the programs would be necessary to identify what a given section of ones and zeros executing currently are, but you would also need a good grounding of how the electronics use and process those signals.

The context of the larger arrangement of current programs running would narrow your search of possibilities for the current set of information being processed but then precise running of the code through those mechanics would be needed for confirmation.

This top-down and bottom-up cycle is one of the challenges in the creation of AI.

While I have praised one sort of intellect and seemingly denigrated another, it is only for the purpose of highlighting an unrecognized value in this field. The computer sort of intellect was highly prized and valued by humanity and especially science because it is absolutely crucial as well.

One cannot structure knowledge if there is no knowledge to structure and the structure of knowledge is irrelevant if the knowledge itself is corrupt.

 

The development of AI and the advancement of human knowledge share the same problem.

It is the interrelationship between inductive and deductive reasoning with each relying upon the former in an oscillating loop for the purpose of discovery. This is also the interrelation of metaphysics with physics. Because of the loss of discussion of the "hows and whys" in physics we've lost understanding and restricted our intellect to the domain of cold and dead tools.

We fail with perfect precision. We collect knowledge to toss into a useless pile of parts. Just like a failed AI that has no understanding.

Please enjoy my proof that I understand relativity:

Relativity Demystified

Creation time: Apr 28, 2016 01:33 AM PDT

 

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Yes, but strangely that’s not actually true of General Relativity because GR has a gravitationally defined preferred frame.

All arguments to the contrary about specifically Special Relativity, however, are demonstrably false. SR is broken by rotating frames.

Let us examine a very similar and related effect which has been long been considered with respect to its implications for SR, the Sagnac effect. Georges Sagnac performed the original experiment to prove SR was false (that aether did indeed exist) and it went exactly as he expected. [1][2] According to aether theory, one could induce a rotating aether wind if one simply rotated the experiment and the expected optical effect is exactly what Sagnac received. (and we still do) Instead of heralding the falsification, fans of special relativity cast it as an expectation of relativity. It is simply not.

The basis of the idea for Sacnac’s experiment came from the suggestion of Albert Michelson,[3] who at the time believed that the null of his experiment may have been caused by entrainment of aether centered upon the earth. However, if the entrainment was only partial, then an experiment which circled the whole earth should be able to detect a difference. (but a smaller experiment might do so as well)

The experiment behaves exactly the same as older mechanical wave theories if the frame centered on the earth is the dominant universal(or aether) frame. Large ring laser gyroscopes based on the sagnac effect are used in modern times to detect the rotation of the planet very precisely.

It clearly violates SR but misinformed sources give a classical explanation of it and pretend that the explanation somehow works within the system defined by SR. Einstein, however, clearly communicates a circular path in OEMB should still conform to constancy and the lack of preferred frame it implies. He writes:

It is at once apparent that this result still holds good if the clock moves from A to B in any polygonal line, and also when the points A and B coincide.

If we assume that the result proved for a polygonal line is also valid for a continuously curved line, we arrive at this result: 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 which has remained at rest the travelled clock on its arrival at A will be

second slow. Thence we conclude that a balance-clock at the equator must go more slowly, by a very small amount, than a precisely similar clock situated at one of the poles under otherwise identical conditions.

Therefore if clocks moving in a circle are equivalent to clocks moving in a straight line then a co-rotating clock is the same as a co-moving clock and should expect results consisting with an inertial frame. (IE no difference in arrival times in the Sagnac effect) The only possible argument is to tacitly assume an external frame, prefer it, and then refer to the relativity of simultaneity. This is numerous layers of ad hoc reasoning deep but can still be addressed.

Acceleration can’t be blamed.

For example:

Imagine a sagnac experiment set up billions of years ago by a hyper-advanced alien race which is still in place today. It is an installation of mirrors that circle our entire galaxy along with the emitter/detector ship which is in co-rotation. The light beams have traversed the entire circle of the experiment and are now being received at the emitter ship which just happens to be passing by the earth. So, we can hop and and examine the results.

First of all, the angles of the incoming and outgoing beam is so nearly perfectly straight and aligned in both direction out of the front and rear of the ship that our modern technology might be incapable of detecting it.

Most importantly, however, because of the fact that the effect is not directly related to the radians per second, but instead by the speed of the motion around the circumference, one can expect that the difference in arrival times of the beams shows a constant lag (and doppler shift) which is proportional to its apparent “straight line” speed and not it’s progress around the circle.

Therefore, this lagging situation can be considered to exist within the frame of the nearly perfect straight motion of the ship and within the lab frame inside the ship. Thus the speed of light is not constant within the ship but will show a direction based difference in speed. (based upon the classical-like explanation usually given in which the mirrors are described as “running away from or toward” the light)

Furthermore, and most crucially, this difference can be increased or decreased linearly with the speed of the ship along its apparently/nearly straight line even though the negligible angle of deviation from straight has not changed.

Consequentially, the effect is not linearly tied to the infinitesimal acceleration of the lab frame but is second or third order. (walking around in the cabin would be greater)

IE: The angle of deviation from straight is irrelevant to the effect.

This is where the other older explanation of this effect is usually invoked.

If one unwrapped and straightened out the experiment to think of it in terms of special relativity, it follows that the relativity of simultaneity would place the forward position in a different time coordinate from the rear. This infers a preference for a frame outside the lab frame in an extremely ad hoc attempt to apply SR where it fails. However, in doing so, it still immediately occurs that one must define that preferred frame in which the experiment is definitely moving or the twins paradox appears. (Between two counter rotating observers experiencing the same acceleration, who is moving left or right?) Therefore the center of rotation provides this absolutely necessary preferred frame.

This rotationally defined preferred frame will allow us to describe a clockwise rotating experiment in straightened-out terms (with infinitessimal curvature) as moving from left to right with the preferred frame “to the right” of the direction of motion.

While, as discussed earlier, in our alien experiment, there is no reasonable excuse to invoke an ad hoc frame outside the lab frame other than the undetectably slight deviation from a straight line. Since it is not linearly related to acceleration, the last vestige of hope for attempting to insist SR is compatible with Sagnac is to simply insist that another frame be considered because of the center of rotation, irrespective of the acceleration.

Even acceleration-independent rotation can’t do it.

This final attempt, however, was proven false by Ruyong Wang’s fiber-optic conveyor experiments. [4] The explanation that is usually proffered is that the center of rotation defines a non-universal but preferred frame of calculation. (to counteract the “twins paradox” assertion that direction and therefore “Ahead” time coordinate cannot be established)

In these experiments, the Sagnac experiment is carried out such that the path the light takes is a figure eight which causes two half centers of rotation to cancel each other. [5] Unfortunately because few people understand the preferred frame proposed by Einstein, and the faulty (incomplete) nature of SR even when he explained the requirement of a preferred “ether” frame in 1920, [6] Wang was not allowed to publish his second paper in more reputable journals.

Considering the alien experiment described above, the space ship could easily deviate from its path around the galaxy to match a ring outside the galaxy which is counter-propagating without quickly losing the incoming beam because the deviation is so small. (by simply turning a little right if it normally turns a little left)

There’s a very good reason that Albert Michelson, the man responsible for the Michelson Morley experiment and the first American Nobel prize winner, even after conducting a huge experiment that could directly detect the earth’s rotation, went to his grave claiming SR was wrong. He understood the requirement of a preferred frame.

Without the preferred frame defined by Mach and General Relativity, SR is an overly idealized system which cannot work in the real world. Thus, more educated proponents of SR will not argue it is capable of explaining the sagnac effect but will acknowledge that the special theory was only applicable to “special” idealized cases and was therefore incomplete.

Only a gravitationally defined preferred frame can work.

Therefore, within the context of relativity, only the “Mach’s Principle” explanation of the universe in which the collective combined gravitational fields define a preferred frame, can be used as an adequate explanation.

Indeed, the effect behaves exactly equivalent to what would be expected of a semi-classical aether such as described by Lorentz. Additionally there have been numerous indications of Einstein and Mach’s preferred frame such as the Cosmic Microwave Background and even some interesting findings of light propagating at speeds which differ dependent upon direction.[7]

Ergo special relativity is defined as a deprecated theory only applicable to overly idealized “special” circumstances and would be falsified by the Coriolis effect if it stood alone without the further development provided by general relativity.

[1] Sagnac, Georges (1913). "The demonstration of the luminiferous aether by an interferometer in uniform rotation". Comptes Rendus. 157: 708–710.

[2] Sagnac, Georges (1913). "On the proof of the reality of the luminiferous aether by the experiment with a rotating interferometer". Comptes Rendus. 157: 1410–1413

[3] A. A. Michelson, Phil. Mag. (6) 8, 716, 1904

[4] Ruyong Wang, Yi Zheng, and Aiping Yao, “Generalized Sagnac Effect”, Phys. Rev. Lett. 93, 143901 – Published 27 September 2004

[5] Ruyong Wang, First-Order Fiber-Interferometric Experiments for Crucial Test of Light-Speed Constancy, Galilean Electrodynamics, March/April 2005

[6] Albert Einstein, Address to university of Leiden 1920, “Ether and the Theory of relativity” transcript provided by Einstein to Methuen & Co. Ltd, London, published in 1922

[7] B. Pelle, H. Bitard, G. Bailly and C. Robilliard, “Magnetoelectric directional nonreciprocity in molecular nitrogen gas.” Physical Review Letters, 11 May 2011. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.106.193003

Creation time: Mar 21, 2017 01:53 AM PDT

 

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Yes, but two answers:

1. Within modern consensus:

 

In the conventional view of Special Relativity, the effect is always that other subjects not in the frame with the observer have their time slowed from motion. To avoid confusion of terminology, it’s like saying, “Hey, his clock is running slower over there as he moves toward me!”

Unfortunately while it seems to any rational mind that the other subject should look back and say the opposite, this is not true of Einstein’s version/interpretation of relativity. No matter who starts the motion or whatever, they both see the same effect and then we have the twins paradox. Let’s ignore that a moment.

In General Relativity, however, frames are now distinguishable and we know that a clock in space definitely runs faster than the ones on the ground. Therefore someone experiencing more gravity (closer to a massive object) will see other subjects as “sped up.” IE: “That satellite’s clock is running faster!”

Therefore the more gravity you experience, the slower you actually are and therefore everything else looks faster. In this case, unlike special relativity, it can obviously be reversed.

2. Outside modern consensus:

There is another, mostly unknown, interpretation of relativity that will have no twins paradox and will allow each observer to see each other in the rational commutable way we see in general relativity above. IE: Each guy in motion looks over at the other and one says “Hey, your clock is slow!” and the other looks back and says, “No, your clock is fast!”

The problem is that this infers some universal-like frame. That’s because it’s an aether theory. While old theories used to think of aether as a weird immovable grid, newer versions aren’t even called aether and presuppose currents etc like the ocean, so it’s not really universal either.

A quick note. Relativity was developed by Lorentz and Poincare before Einstein and the difference is predominantly interpretational like the difference between ”Pilot Wave”, “Many Worlds”, and “Copenhagen” in quantum physics. While most people in the physics community will disagree and possibly openly attack and ridicule anyone for daring to think outside their box, there is a great deal of modern evidence that is pointing to Lorentz’s interpretation being superior. (and pilot-wave in QM comes along for the ride too) Numerous reputable physicists at top institutions like MIT and Cambridge are looking seriously at this but won’t be risking their careers any time soon with a hard push. The environment simply will not allow dissenters to survive/publish.

Those people who attack these alternatives simply lack a huge amount of information that is outside their area of study and don’t even know it exists. Secondly we’ve all seen cranks. Hopefully by now we’ve also had the humbling experience of recognizing that time we thought someone was “out-there” until we became less ignorant.

But if you’re interested it’s a fun little rabbit hole.

Creation time: Mar 22, 2017 05:12 AM PDT

 

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Rodney Brooks did a good job of calling out a particular issue he described as “top-down” and while I haven’t read his work, it seems to lead towards my own but I take it further than I’m sure he is willing.

It is and has been the consensus viewpoint that Lorentz’s formulation and Einstein’s are equivalent, but I have proven this to be false under certain particular applications.

The singular thing which defines the fine line between Lorentz’s work and Einstein’s, “the principle of constancy” is the crucial point of failure.

The statement above is easily misunderstood because the number of people who understand the difference between the two theories could probably be counted with your fingers and toes.

Specifically the difference is a subtlety most would consider “metaphysical” but I’ve shown it expressed as mathematical. That difference is still tested for today in the search for a “one-way speed of light test,” which has never yet been successfully accomplished in science.

More specifically, while Lorentz’s version of the theory has length contraction, time dilation and the appearance of light speed constancy, the fact that there is a preferred frame means that light speed constancy and relative simultaneity are illusions.

Furthermore this approach has underlying mechanics which can be applied to discover additional information not available through special relativity.

Two descriptions of an illusionist’s effect

One can accurately describe all the events, distances, trajectories, speeds etc of an illusionist impaling himself upon a spike and build a mathematical model of what is observable. If you are never behind stage, it is technically “metaphysical” for you to include in your description of that event the various gadgets and physics which make it possible for it only to appear that the spear has pierced the illusionists chest because it is not observable.

This very principle, very important to science, is also something that breaks rational processes. To describe what you have not observed is non-scientific, yet is it scientific to describe this illusionists effect without requiring further mechanism beyond what is observed?

This very directly reflects the difference between Einstein and Lorentz’s theories.

Two descriptions of the same events but one insists there is additional mechanism: Lorentz’s. Specifically his theory asserts that the effect is impossible without preferred frame mechanics and only occurs because of the preferred frame.

Why is one superior to the other if they describe the same thing?

This additional mechanism, which is Lorentz’s description of events, though complicating the theory, also provides tools and further applications/extensions not available in Einstein’s theory.

It reveals additional information which is not otherwise part of our model for testing the universe. These additional mechanics can lead to different mathematical outcomes when applied in particular ways.

I’ve laid this all out as succinctly as possible here on quora: Relativity Demystified

In Lorentz’s theory there is absolutely no appearance of the twins paradox or any other logical paradox or fallacy. This occurs because there is literally double the amount of information available/revealed via preferred frame mechanics.

To recapitulate, my criticism of Einstein’s theory is that it provides half as much information (or less) as its superior predecessor, Lorentz’s theory.

He cut too deeply with occam’s razor and in so doing, eventually required more and more supporting ideas (extra-dimensions) than was removed in the “simplification” process. (the aether)

Creation time: Aug 12, 2016 06:59 AM PDT

 

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Length contraction, time dilation and the relativity of simultaneity are all secondary geometric requirements of the “constancy of light’s speed” found the the special theory of relativity. They are all various viewpoints or aspects of one single system of effects.

First we must separate two easily confused aspects.

Time dilation and relative simultaneity, are inextricably related because all of the above effects are consequences of light’s constancy, but they are two very different components.

Both of them occur because of motion between two observers, but time dilation occurs at a specific rate that is proportional to the speed and regardless of distance. Relative simultaneity, however, occurs proportional to speed but dependent upon distance.

EG: Two observer’s may experience only billionths of a second difference in the ticking rate of their clocks, but if they are across the universe from each other, their simultaneous moments may be off by hundreds of years!

Light’s “constancy” is a misnomer to our intuitive ideas. Let’s recap.

Though sound will always travel the same speed in uniform air or other mediums, it is not “constant” in a way that is anything like light, according to relativity.

We can think of the speed of the waves on top your coffee in your car and though they will typically travel from one side of the cup to the other at the same pace regardless of how fast you go in your car, a person on the ground measuring how fast a single wave approaching him is traveling towards him will add the speed of the car coming towards him and the wave together to get the speed of the wave. Therefore the two of you will disagree on the wave speed. This is not true of light! (and it’s what makes relativity so counter-intuitive)

When you measure the speed of a single wave of light traveling across the space of your coffee mug in your space ship you will get a certain number and our intuition about physical reality then suggests that the guy on the ground measuring the same wave would, (just like the coffee waves) measure a speed that adds the speed of the space ship to the wave. That is not correct however.

The speed of the wave moving from one side of the coffee mug to the other according to the guy on the space ship happens at X meters per second. That same wave we would expect to travel a much greater distance in the same time (like the coffee wave) does not do so according to relativity. That wave doesn’t fully traverse the whole coffee cup during that same period of time according to the guy on the ground.

“Hold on. What? That’s nonsense.”

No, that’s relativity and to make it work mathematically a whole lot of other stuff about reality has to be different than you expect.

To state it another way. When on a train traveling just below the speed of a bullet, one passes by a person who fires a gun in the same direction, one will see the bullet outside the window barely creep past the window.

When on a train travelling just below the speed of light, one passes by a person who fires a laser in the same direction, one will not see the first wave front creep past the window. It will zoom by the window at the same speed the guy on the ground believes it moves.

Therefore the constancy of light can be seen as a universal “constant” from a solipsistic perspective, or when taking every perspective in consideration at the same time, it’s universally different. Light is the same to everyone even when two people should obviously disagree.

There is a second misunderstanding about relative simultaneity.

Because time is a dimension in relativity, a different place can also be in a different time. When two observers are in motion with respect to each other, the simultaneous moments of the universe are very different to them. This is not just a perspective illusion, it is a differing placement within the dimension of time.

First, the intuitive perspective illusion.

For instance, if two supernovas explode at the same time at two ends of the galaxy, one would have to be in the exact center between them to see them occur at what appears the same time. There is a long travel time lag for the light so if one is closer to one side than the other, then it takes light longer to reach them from the event that is further away. The events appear non-simultaneous.

Obviously the same thing is true if one happens to be in the exact center at the “simultaneous” moment both of them explode but you are traveling towards one of them and away from the other. By the time the light reaches you, the events will not appear simultaneous because you will be further to one side

This is only a perspective illusion. It is seems very similar to relative simultaneity and often gets confused with it.

Relative simultaneity is a different placement in the dimension of time.

Just as one can be placed differently on the X, Y, or Z coordinate in space, one can be in a different T coordinate. An object can be literally placed differently in time.

…a quick regression to lay the groundwork to explain that

Just like two sheets of transparent graph paper can be overlayed on top each other askew, and therefore measure the same space differently, the same sort of “rotation” can occur in three dimensions and it can also occur in four.

When one travels along the X axis on one sheet of transparent graph paper, one is traversing both X and Y on the other sheet.

When two objects are traveling with respect to each other in relativity, their “sheets” get rotated with respect to each other so not only do they travel through space in a skewed manner, they travel through time in a skewed manner as well. Their idea of the future is also, therefore, different.

If I take my two sheets of graph paper (2D) and run a certain distance along the X coordinate of each, the two end points will be in completely different places from each other even if I started in the same place. If I project along the T ( time) dimension in the same way for two 4D “graphs” that are askew (rotated) then the endpoints of each will be in totally different places. (and so will all the X, Y, and Z projections too!)

When two observers are in relativistic motion (going fast with respect to each other) their coordinate systems and the way they experience reality are rotated like the two sheets of graph paper.

It should now feel more intuitive that one can take weird shortcuts through time when one moves a given way through space. In relativity, space and time are one thing and you can cause your direction through time to change with respect to someone else.

I still haven’t put a finger directly on relative simultaneity, so now I will.

Remember the two supernovas above?

Let’s consider two observers. One is stationary at exactly the middle between the two supernovas when they explode and the other happens to be passing by that observer at the that moment. The center stationary observer will eventually receive both signals at exactly the same time. He knows the speed of the observer that passed him heading away from one towards the other and knows that observer will receive the signals at different times and create a perspective illusion.

Here’s the kicker.

If he uses his classical intuitive reasoning to remove the illusion, that adjustment wont be correct for what the traveling observer experiences. For that traveling observer, the events are not simultaneous in his version of the universe. This is true even accounting for the apparent time signal lag. The events that are simultaneous to one observer are literally not simultaneous to another and it is not an illusion caused by the signal delay “lag” time.

It is a consequence of the future and past of each observer being different and, geometrically speaking, at an angle to one another.

Below is a video that explains it well visually.

In the video, the direction one travels through time is perpendicular to the simultaneous “slice” one cuts through the “loaf.” (The quickest place to start is at 19:30)

https://youtu.be/9Qu9XaF2K10?t=1...

Creation time: Apr 30, 2017 04:30 PM PDT

 

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Simple terms just wont cut it! But I’m always game to give it a go…

Lets just assume you mean special relativity because it’s the origin of all the weirdness and confusion.

The word special in the moniker refers to a “special” or limited case. In this case it’s inertial frames. IE It’s a description of all cases where the subjects are in uniform motion without any acceleration. (change in speed)

What is relative is the very idea of motion.

If you’re in a plane you can toss a ball across the isle without accounting for your motion with respect to the ground. That’s “Galilean Relativity” at work. Galileo referred to the situation down in the hull of a boat and not being able to know if you were in motion.

The difference between Galilean Relativity and “Special” relativity is some very peculiar assertions.

So, if I were to cut the front and back out of that plane, suddenly, just tossing the ball across the isle becomes a whole new situation. What is even more interesting is that the speed of sound now becomes a consideration.

When we talked to each other inside the closed plane, the air traveled along with us so the sound waves traveled along with us just like the ball, but the waves have to travel through the medium of the air so now, with air flowing through the cabin, sound has to play catch-up when trying to travel through all the wind to a forward location in the plane. Galilean relativity no longer applies.

“So what does sound have to do with relativity? I thought it was all about light.”

It is all about light, but to understand the weirdness of relativity you have to understand the difference relativity claims between sound and light. You must understand waves.

Light is a wave. Sound is a wave. A wave is just a description of an event occurring to a medium. Most of us have seen a wave travel down a tight string or across a slinky and certainly in the ocean. A wave is what occurs when the amount of compression in one area of a substance is greater than another area. The compression naturally travels to the area of least resistance. The back and forth is just over-correction as it tries to find equilibrium.

Here’s the big difference. Though the situation changes in the plane when I remove the ends and let the air go through, this does not occur with light according to relativity. In one ultra-weird way, light is unlike any other wave, even though it is just like other waves in every other conceivable way.

“What?! You lost me. Sounds like gibberish…”

This is where you must understand a little history. Relativity is the direct result of a particular experiment. The Michelson-Morley experiment. Albert A Michelson was the first american Nobel Laureate. He understood that if light was a wave then there must be something waving.

A wave is like “rep” when lifting weights, or a “jog” when one likes to exercise. If you remove the weights or the person there cannot be a “rep” or a “jog” …and when you remove the ocean, (the medium) there cannot be a wave. A wave without medium is an absurdity no scientific mind would entertain. (in the previous century)

Therefore, just like the open plane, he figured there must be a wind from the motion of -not just the earth around the sun- but the whole solar system through the galaxy.

This would mean that light must have to play catch-up as it travels through the moving medium. His experiment, however, seemed to detect no such thing!

Light, though it behaved just like every other wave in every other way, was suddenly behaving in one really weird way that made no sense at all. (or we had to believe the earth was the center of the universe and everything revolved around us)

“Enter Einstein?” Nope! Enter Lorentz… the base idea and math were his baby.

Though Einstein later took Lorentz’s base mathematical principle and applied it a little better to electromagnetism than the other fellow working the problem, Poincare, the basic idea wasn’t his at all and he wasn’t afraid to say as much.

"The influence of the crucial Michelson-Morley experiment on my own efforts has been rather indirect. I learned of it through H.A. Lorentz's decisive investigations of the electrodynamics of moving bodies (1895) with which I was acquainted before developing the special theory of relativity. Lorentz's basic assumption of an aether at rest seemed to me not convincing in itself and also for the reason that it was leading to an interpretation of the Michelson-Morley experiment which seemed to me artifical" - Albert Einstein 1952, in a letter to Robert Shankland

Lorentz still believed there had to be an aether (the medium) so when a friend of his suggested that light could be playing a trick on us, Lorentz decided to see if he could make it work mathematically.

George Fitzgerald suggested that the reason why we couldn’t detect that light had to play catch-up was that when the aether wind went across matter, it would shrink up in the direction of the wind so that the light, while still having to go further because of the wind, would have the difference made up by not having as big a distance between points on a physical object.

IE: Rulers shorten up just the right amount so that when the wave would normally have to go through more medium to catch up, the distance “in the cabin” becomes shorter by just the right amount.

“Wait, WTF? What is all this weird optical illusion stuff?”

It’s why relativity is hard to understand from any angle. Without the history it makes no sense for length to contract or time to dilate or any of the strange things that happen in relativity. The problem is that modern scholars teach that Einstein removed the aether when later in life he understood there is a necessity for a preferred frame and some sort of “aether” but people had already adopted the math in a superstitious manner without understanding it and began paying little attention to him about the interpretation of its meaning.

"According to the general theory of relativity, space without aether is unthinkable; for in such space there not only would be no propagation of light, but also no possibility of existence for standards of space and time (measuring-rods and clocks), nor therefore any space-time intervals in the physical sense." -Albert Einstein 1920, University of Leiden

“I’m lost again. Stop bunny-trailing. Can you just summarize something? Anything?!”

Relativity, as it is now understood and taught, asserts there is no aether and light waves can have a behavior without substance. Light travels the same speed according to you, no matter how fast you go and therefore common sense tells us that people should disagree about the speed of light but somehow, according to the theory, they don’t. When you simply assert that light has this weird behavior is pure indisputable truth, you can warp reality around that assumption and describe it with math, that’s relativity. Lorentz’s Illusion became Einstein’s reality.

...but please just give me a moment. You’re almost there.

While Lorentz originally modeled an illusion that made up the difference by shortening objects, it also required that the whole experiment take a little longer in truth even though people on the inside wouldn’t be able to tell.

Explaining a swimmer (light) going upstream and back on a flowing river versus one going across the stream and making their equal swim speeds end up being equal swim times is some complex mental gymnastics, but that’s the formula Lorentz gave us.

The issue is that even though you can shorten things up for the swimmer going upstream so that he arrives a the same time (thus making light seem to always travel the same speed in all directions) the total time for both is greater if the river is flowing.

Why does this matter? The final piece, time dilation, makes perfect sense. If every single particle is not really touching but is held in place by the electromagnetic forces between it and it’s neighbor, then everything from the moving of gears in a clock to the electron transport chain that governs the reactions in your brain would take longer if there is a wind for the electromagnetism to traverse. Even though the speed difference is hidden, there’s still actually more distance for light to traverse.

Time for a moving observer is therefore slowed.

“My brain hurts. Why are you hurting me? I didn’t ask for this…”

What Relativity “IS” is a system of maths and explanations for certain strange effects we observe in experiments with light. It changed our entire way of seeing the universe.

In the initial interpretation we assumed there was just a strange illusion that made us think light traveled the same speed no matter how fast you were going.

In the second interpretation we decided that light’s strange ability to travel in a nonsensical way that matches a magic trick or illusion… was real.

This second interpretation requires that we presume a great deal of other weirdness about reality such as the physical existence of additional dimensions beyond three and there being no one real version of the idea of “simultaneous” in the universe when objects are apart from each other.

These are mathematical requirements of a world in which light travels relative to you no matter who you are and what you are doing …and the apparent conflicts of this absurdity can be handled via additional versions of reality.

“I hate you and I’m sorry I asked. But thanks, I guess…”

Creation time: May 16, 2017 10:31 PM PDT

 

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There’s two versions of relativity. (Einstein’s that is) The first is Special Relativity which only applies to special cases that are a little too rare to be useful. (and overly perfect and simple version of reality) Then there’s the expansion of that theory to a more generalized and broad set of circumstances called General Relativity.

In Special Relativity we are concerned with the behavior of electromagnetic phenomena. (light) So, just like any time we want to deal with complex phenomena, we limit the circumstances down to a smaller bite-size situation. This is true of special relativity in what is called an “inertial frame.” (it basically just means stuff moving along together)

Specifically, we discovered that there was an experiment that made it seem as though light behaves in a somewhat unexpected fashion called the “Michelson-Morley experiment” and I’ll explain that in a little later.

What’s important here is what is meant by “relativity”

Now, while we all know that we don’t have to think about our ground speed in a moving bus to throw a ball across the aisle, a moment’s consideration gives us the idea that the ball seems to travel a different speed according to someone on the ground watching the bus pass than someone in the buss with it.

The fact that we don’t have to think about the outside world when tossing the ball is called “Galilean Relativity” and in Galileo’s example he spoke about experiments in the hull of a ship smooth sailing on calm waters being the same as in a stationary building.

Those experiments are “relative” to the “frame” they are moving in.

So what was special about special relativity?

First, it’s the fact that it’s limited to inertial frames. This means moving along without turning and without gravity or acceleration of any kind. It’s a theory specialized to handling a limited set of circumstances.

Secondly, however, the part that separates it from Galilean Relativity is saying that light too, is just like all the other experiments one might perform in a moving bus or the hull of a ship.

This might seem like a weird unnecessary distinction until you recognize that the reason for all the experiments to occur the way they do is based on inertia.

Furthermore, if one opens up the hull of the ship or the front and back of the buss to let the wind through, suddenly the situation changes. This is where it gets weird and why it was a big deal.

Light was known to be a wave and a mechanical wave isn’t subject to inertia, only the matter it’s travelling in is.

This is where it starts to get more complex. A wave, up until special relativity, was known only as a behavior of a substance. It’s a kind of motion and no matter how much you want to think of an ocean wave as a single real thing, if you remove the water, it doesn’t exist. It’s just particles bunching up when they crowded together and moving towards areas where it’s less crowded. Even the cars in traffic move in waves.

So Galileo’s version of relativity would only work for waves if you’re bringing the medium (water, air, or even cars) along with you. The waves in the ocean wouldn’t travel the same speed compared to a swimming pool on the boat. The waves on the boat could pass right by the waves in the water.

So the question is, what about the medium for light? It used to be called “ether.” (but is now spelled “aether” in more recent years) Einstein insisted there no need to even think about where it is or how it’s moving like we’d have to for sound or any other wave.

Light is special, according to special relativity.

It behaves in a way that Einstein described as “constancy.” While we’d have to consider where the motion of air is and whether or not it’s travelling along with an experiment, the aether, according to Einstein, just didn’t matter.

We could treat this one particular wave phenomena just like we would the ball tossing inside the bus, or any other experiment… but here’s the super weird part:

Everything else does that “Galilean relativity” trick because it’s ballistic. This means that it’s subject to inertia and what’s already moving tends to keep moving.

Light, on the other hand, is not subject to inertia but still somehow does the relativity trick… with some extra details no other phenomena in the universe has. “Constancy” in this context is a special term that means far Far more than it would normally.

How does this play out in the theory? (because this is the heart of the matter)

Galilean relativity works within a single frame, but special relativity applies across frames simultaneously. Let me explain:

In Galilean relativity, the people on a bus all agree about the speed of a ball moving across the aisle or standing still. According to a person on the ground, however, the ball which everyone on the bus agrees is still, is definitely in motion according to someone on the ground. The two frames disagree about the ball’s speed.

In special relativity, light has the special property that people on the ground and the people on the bus completely agree about the speed of light. While this still might seem to feel intuitive, the true nature of how completely different this situation is from everything else in reality can only really be exposed in the following scenario:

If we have a train travelling just barely under the speed of a bullet that passes by a gunman on the ground who fires his gun in the same direction as the train as we pass by. We simply look out our window from the train and see the bullet riding alongside the train but slowly passing us because it’s a little faster.

(But this is the weird part!)

If we’re in a train travelling nearly the speed of light and a man with a laser gun fires his laser in the same direction as the train as we pass by, by classical standards you should expect to look out the window and see the first wavefront of the light just slowly creeping by the widow just barely outrunning the train.

Instead, however, it passes by the window at the full speed of light.

According to Einstein’s relativity, the speed of light is relative to whatever frame you’re looking at it from.

If this is your first encounter with the subject, your head should be reeling and you should be assuming either you’ve misunderstood or I’ve misspoken.

At the very least you should be asking “where the devil” such an odd idea came from. The answer is the “Michelson-Morley experiment.”

To explain it very simply, Albert Michelson was aware that the earth was, at the very least, travelling rapidly around the sun and determined to try to find where the stationary aether was and how fast we were going through it. (he assumed the galactic center)

He set up the ingenious experiment to make two beams of light race the same distance up and “downstream” of our motion through the aether. (think of it like waves in a river) And compare it to waves going back and forth.

He expected that it would be just like sound. Sound going into a headwind will take longer to reach a listener 100 yards away than it will take for it to travel to a listener 100 yards away in a crosswind. (Having to go into a wind is like trying to swim upstream.)

So he expected to see a difference but instead detected none.

But this is where history split.

Hendrik Lorentz figured it was some sort of odd optical illusion caused by objects scrunching up so he worked out the math for that weird scenario. He called it Lorentz Ether Theory (LET) and he worked with Henri Poincare to work out the finer details of electromagnetism.

Einstein liked Lorentz’s math and decided to use it, but also decided that the illusion Lorentz modeled with that math was no illusion but a new property of reality. He removed the aether and added a 4th dimension to explain the experiment. He decided that reality itself is tied up in the propagation of light instead of it behaving like a normal wave.

If you’d like to know more check out these three articles which explain the whole process in laymen’s terms and much greater detail:

Relativity Demystified

The second “updated” version of relativity (General Relativity) uses the axioms and math found in the special theory, then expands and expounds upon those ideas to deal with gravity, rotation, and acceleration. That however, gets much more complicated, while still relying upon these basic axioms and ideas to differ from classical physics.

Creation time: Dec 01, 2017 05:20 AM PST

 

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The one thing that really separates Special Relativity from all its precursors and rivals is “Constancy” and it is the most widely misunderstood property.

Constancy of light’s speed is nothing at all like it sounds to the laymen. In fact it’s quite the opposite and responsible for every counter-intuitive aspect and apparent paradox of the theory.

“…we shall, however, find in what follows, that the velocity of light in our theory plays the part, physically, of an infinitely great velocity. “- Albert Einstein OEMB Section 4

(On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies is the original paper of Special Relativity)

Constancy, from a certain perspective, can sort of look like giving light every possible speed at the same time, thus being the exact opposite of the commonplace idea of “constant.”

Calling light a universal “constant” is a use of that term in a context it had never been used before meaning something very different (something much more) than how it had ever been used before.

Allow me to explain constancy before we continue…

Imagine you are on a train traveling nearly the speed of a bullet. You look out the window and a fellow on the ground fires a bullet in the same direction you are going at the moment you pass, what do you see? Obvious to most people, you see a bullet sort of riding along beside you but kinda slowly creeping past you.

Now imagine you are on a train traveling nearly the speed of light and you look out the window. Some fellow on the ground fires a laser in the same direction you are traveling just as you pass and what do you see? Constancy says that you do not see the first wave-front of the beam slowly creeping past like you expect. Instead the beam passes you at the normal speed of light.

This should make absolutely no sense to your rational mind at first. If you’ve never encountered this explanation before, then you’d be “well within your rights” to strongly doubt me. Before you go get lost in a search rabbit hole, let me explain further why this is true and you probably won’t need to look it up.

Now we come the the crucial differentiation between Lorentz’s previous theory and Einstein’s version…

To avoid getting too much into the mechanical reasoning (and there is good intuitive reasoning) lets take some shortcuts to stay on course. Imagine there’s such a thing as a time slowing ray-gun. If you’re in a train with all the windows covered and I shoot the train with the time gun on “slow” what would you experience? The answer is nothing at all. Your mind is governed by time as well so everything would be running as usual to you even though you are moving in slow motion according to everyone outside the train. Balls would bounce and glasses would spill etc and it would all be perfectly normal to you… until you uncovered a window.

When you looked out the window, however, everyone and everything would be running around in super speed. If you could hear their voices from outside, it would sound like chipmunks.

Now think back to the experiment with the bullet. If the bullet was slowly creeping by before we slowed your time, then now it will be going by more quickly.

Now imagine if I tuned the the “time-gun” to slow your time just the right amount. Couldn’t I make it so that I slowed your time so much that the bullet slowly creeping past appeared to fly past at exactly the same speed as a normal bullet? (That’s a little like what Larmor did, historically and metaphorically speaking)

Since I can do that, I could make a time-slowing machine attached to the train that judged the speed of the train and slows time just the right amount to always make bullets appear the same speed outside your window no matter what speed the train was moving. The same will, of course, work for the near-light-speed train and the laser. (and that’s a bit like what Lorentz added to Larmor’s work, metaphorically)

…but there’s a catch! (This is one point at which Einstein diverges from Lorentz’s prior art)

My little trick only works for bullets or light traveling in the same direction as the train! Think about it and you’ll recognize that even without any time effects, the bullet appears to slowly pass in one direction but a bullet from the other direction would pass your window far faster than normal. The train’s speed is added to it. (In discussions of relativity we call that v+c)

The problem is that I haven’t gone as far as Larmor or Lorentz in constructing an illusion. To do that, I’d have to require that you wear a blindfold and use a device that measures the average speed of bullets traveling both directions. Then I could just tune it to that average. (but we’re only talking about x axis and I’d have to shorten the train too if I wanted everything to work along both an x and y axis… trust me you don’t want to get into it)

Incidentally, never in history have we ever performed a successful one-way speed of light test. We are always talking about an average of two directions. One-way speed of light - Wikipedia

In discussions of relativity we could say that I’m describing light’s one-way speed as anisotropic and it’s two-way speed as isotropic. (just meaning “not the same in all directions” and “the same”) Light’s speed, however, is a property of space, so it’s more accurate to say I’m describing space in that fashion

Einstein’s “constancy,” however, describes both light’s one-way and two-way speed speed as isotropic.

Take a breath and ask yourself what that means in context of the train and the bullet. If we were to say bullet speed was a “constant” then we don’t have to average the speed of the bullet in each direction because my little time trick is unnecessary. There’s nothing to fix. The bullet automatically travels the right speed in each direction.

My whole explanation above for how Lorentz designed a neat illusion is completely moot. The fact that I was able to make the weirdness “click” for you is completely lost. Everything is broken again because there’s no longer a mechanism. Now it’s back to faith alone.

Even though Einstein used Lorentz’s math that described an illusion, he removed the mechanics that the math described and insisted the illusion that math described is the reality.

When Einstein says light behaves as a constant, you must believe that first absurdity explained above which brought us down this path of explanation and then throw away all the logic in favor of faith alone.

If you try to add reasoning it will be circular. If the fourth dimension and relative simultaneity was added to explain constancy then you cannot explain that constancy is created because there is a fourth dimension and time is relative.

There is no first-principles mechanical reasoning for constancy and there is no reason why time is different or length shortens in SR. Furthermore, the removal of aether removes any reasoning for anthing to wave and that removes any reason for the doppler effect to occur.

The consequences of Special Relativity is this.

A moving observer theoretically experiences time dilation, length contraction, relative simultaneity and light speed constancy.

(According to Lorentz the length shortening and time effect are quite real but the constancy and relative simultaneity are just an illusion)

With the exact same math and a luminiferous aether, via Lorentz for kinematics and Poincare for electromagnetism, there is a mechanical reason for all the effects we see in relativity. There’s an interesting effect in the universe that creates a bit of a compensatory illusion. Nature is an illusionist according to Lorentz and Poincare and the one-way speed of light is not the same in each direction for a moving observer. Every single appearance of apparent paradoxes found in relativity evaporate and never need to be brought up.

If we remove the aether and believe constancy is a new principle of nature we must add another dimension (infinite possible additional 3D realities that should have been removed via Occam’s razor) and insist that what happens here and over there can’t really be considered “at the same time.” We lose all mechanism for waves and therefore also the doppler effect. We cannot determine which twin is aged more unless we pick a preferred frame and fool ourselves into a pseudo-Lorentzian view. Light behaves as an infinite speed in consideration of all frames, but a finite speed that looks the same in every frame but is actually different to accommodate each possible frame of which there are infinite copies.

And the one-way speed of light is isotropic in each direction for any observer.

Let’s recap…

According to special relativity:

If you are in a train traveling nearly the speed of light and look out the window as a man on the ground fires a laser in the same direction, you will observe the first wavefront of the light speed past you at the speed of light. The man on the ground will see it slowly eeking past your window because it’s traveling light speed according to him as well.

Furthermore, a fellow on the ground in the distance has fired his laser in the opposite direction and that laser also passes your window at the exact speed of light as well. According to the guys on the ground however, you should see it pass your window quite close to double the speed of light because that’s what they experience.

Your time is also slowed and your rulers are shortened but it would only account for part of the speed in one direction and part of it in the other. The numbers would come out for an average but not for each single directional speed if you try to use it as the reason why the weird effects occur.

So there’s no mechanic or reason for this to occur and you must just take Einstein and Minkowski’s word for it that this is a new truth about reality that warps reality around this idea.

The idea was not Einstein’s idea however; it was Larmor and then Lorent’s idea and Einstein got it directly from Lorentz. (Einstein just added the electromagnetic calculations) So we must accept Einstein’s word that this is a new behavior of reality without reasoning that he describes using math from someone else’s reasoning… without reason.

"The influence of the crucial Michelson-Morley experiment on my own efforts has been rather indirect. I learned of it through H.A. Lorentz's decisive investigations of the electrodynamics of moving bodies (1895) with which I was acquainted before developing the special theory of relativity. Lorentz's basic assumption of an aether at rest seemed to me not convincing in itself and also for the reason that it was leading to an interpretation of the Michelson-Morley experiment which seemed to me artifical" - Albert Einstein 1952, in a letter to Robert Shankland

If you’d like to understand this more intimately using diagrams etc. then read these three posts:

Relativity Demystified

If you’d like to know the history of modern physics and all the tools involved and how aether physics is woven deeply and inextricably into the fabric of modern physics then read here:

[1804.01846] History of the NeoClassical Interpretation of Quantum and Relativistic Physics

Creation time: May 11, 2018 01:37 PM PDT

 

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Yes and No. The conceptual lineage of relativity is bifurcated.

The point of deviation is upon the ontological question of “constancy” as a real effect or an illusion and the actors involved on the other side (the illusion camp) are somewhat lost to history. Let’s first deal with the well known path:

On July 4th 1912, Einstein attempted to explain that one must consider the limits of the two major principles, equivalence and of the constancy of light. Further explaining that the constancy of light can only be maintained in spatio-temporal regions of constant gravitational potential. He continues:

"This is, in my opinion, not the limit of validity of the principle of relativity, but is that of the constancy of the velocity of light, and thus of our current theory of relativity." Albert Einstein, "Relativität und Gravitation. Erwiderung auf eine Bemerkung von M. Abraham", Annalen der Physik 38, 1912, pp. 1059-1064 (CPAE, Vol. 4, Doc 8), pp. 1061-1062.

Thus Einstein clearly outlined that constancy, as it exists in special relativity, is quite different from its expression in a more generalized form within general relativity, therefore we can see that conjoining space and time (the necessity of constancy) may not play any influential role whatsoever in the development of general relativity.

The crucial actors involved in this conceptual lineage begin with Maxwell, then FitzGerald, Kelvin and Larmor, then Lorentz, Einstein and Minkowski.

Einstein and Minkowski, however, represent the point at which extremely similar ideas with nearly identical maths diverge. It’s the ideas and the interpretation that diverges but the math remains unchanged. However, it must be noted that Minkowski codifies a ontological interpretation into a mathematical convention. It is the Minkowski convention, specifically, that excludes a preferred frame.

Now let’s trace the alternative but simultaneous path:

Most of the scientists along this path are some of the same actors or close associates. The beginning is MacCullagh before Maxwell, then FitzGerald (because of MacCullagh) Kelvin and Larmor. (Larmor was the first to mathematically explore the Lorentz transform in a less general form) Then Lorentz and Poincare (creating the Kinematics and the Electromagnetism respectively) and then Gustav Mie (Drawing from MacCullagh) and finally David Hilbert for general relativity.

This path remains within preferred frame mechanics. (EG: Aether)

There is still length contraction, time dilation, and the illusion of light speed constancy. Lorentz’s kinematics were directly imported into special relativity unchanged and Poincare would have been given primacy for the electromagnetism if not for some small publishing irregularities. The combination of Poincare and Lorentz are indistinguishable from special relativity mathematically but are still considerate of an aether. (IE: interpretation differences)

Gustav Mie’s 4-dimensional continuum is a generalization of MacCullagh’s aether and David Hilbert’s work on general relativity which is an absolutely clear and unquestionable contribution to Einstein’s publications, is based upon Mie’s.

Hence an inviscid fluid dynamics version of electromagnetism and gravity, expressed via a 4-dimensional representation is not incompatible with general relativity which is a form of preferred frame mechanics. IE Aether theory is another interpretation of both special and general relativity with additional information.

This is a quote from Einstein after 15 long years of considering the meaning of relativity:

“According to the general theory of relativity space without ether is unthinkable; for in such space there not only would be no propagation of light, but also no possibility of existence for standards of space and time (measuring-rods and clocks), nor therefore any space-time intervals in the physical sense.” - Albert Einstein 1920, University of Leiden

How much information is too much?

The Minkowski convention cuts in half the available information from having 4 views of events down to two. (One real and one illusory or “virtual” perspective on both sides reduced to one on each) This additional information is part of what is said to have been eliminated “Occam’s Razor.”

But the question that must be asked is this: When one reifies the fourth dimension, this means each single moment is 4 dimensional. A true fourth dimension is equivalent to adding infinite possible additional 3D realities. In Lorentz’s convention the 4th dimension was just a handy notation. It was a reference kind of like a pointer not a statement about a new property of reality like Einstein and Minkowski. Is removing the aether and adding infinite additional possible 3D realities, really using Occam’s razor?

Further, has there ever been an experimental basis to prefer one interpretation over the other? The answer to this is no.

To differentiate between Lorentz’s interpretation and Einstien/Minkowski’s you must successfully perform a one-way speed of light test. Theoretically this has never been done. I would argue that it has been done via the Sagnac effect and Miller’s significant results and the preference should have been for Lorentz-Poincare many many years ago.

Each and every apparent paradox in relativity disappears when you add back a preferred frame. Adding back the preferred frame by selecting it, is what we currently do to solve the twins paradox which was meant to point out the absurdity of removing the preferred frame! We just blithely ignore the introduction of length dilation and time contraction that must occur. (IE eliminating one of the perspectives that represents crucial missing information)

You’ll find the fuller historical underpinning and references in my paper below:

[1804.01846] History of the NeoClassical Interpretation of Quantum and Relativistic Physics

A great set of posts (in need of small historical corrections) with pictures and laymen explanations can be found here:

Relativity Demystified

Creation time: May 22, 2018 06:46 PM PDT

 

 

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It altered and loosened the constraints of theory formation. It relaxed the “no magic” rule in science. Mechanics no longer needs reason. Metaphysics became a pejorative instead of a discussion of reasoning.

These days, the idea of a requirement of aether is seen as some sort of backwards idealism. I just read an article earlier today that called it an adherence to an “aesthetic.”

Often, in modern times, any sort of argument against consensus that includes something that is similar to a statement like “that makes no sense” is immediately cast in the light of some sort of mental disability on the part of the speaker. Their inability to grasp that “nature doesn’t conform to intuition” is quite obviously a defect of a more primitive mind in these discussions.

This is, however, a shared and traditional type of deception that perfectly matches the deception found in religion. When examined without the weight of “the smart guys believe” it’s also just special pleading. In religion, “what the smart guys think” is also enforced, and the holes in their rationality are also plastered over with the “relativistic fourth dimensional physics is beyond human intuition” sort of statement analog which is commonly stated as “god works in mysterious ways” and “god doesn’t conform to human logic.”

“God is counter-intuitive and beyond your small mind!” has simply become “Your outdated adherence to asthetics and intuition leaves modern concepts beyond you.”

Lack of mechanical reasoning is magical thinking.

Any requirement that a mechanical underpinning be responsible for an effect (which used to be called “reason”) is no longer required. The requirement of mechanical reason could also simply be called a “no-magic rule” for science and it’s no longer a constraint as of 1905.

Early in the age of science we had ideas like spontaneous generation in which we simply accepted that worms grew from meat. If the reason remained “as yet unknown” that would be fine but instead it was believed to be a magical effect at the bottom layer of reality. It had no reason and didn’t need one. (implying “god did it,” or the atheistic “it just is”)

Measuring and knowing the amount of worms produced over a period of time and ratios of meat to worms could be predictive, precise and formulaic and this could be seen as “sciencey” but would not reduce the fact that it was based on magical belief at its core. If you made the formulas and explanations of flies and worms complex enough you could even lead people around in a circular explanation of how meat produced worms because worms grow from meat.

Non-mechanical reasoning is magical thinking.

The age of reason ended with special relativity.

It’s the difference between having a mechanical reasoning for effects or believing they “just do.” It’s about using math gained from reasoning (by Lorentz) to describe an effect without reason. (constancy)

This negative effect has nothing at all to do with length contraction, time dilation or the appearance of light speed constancy. That exists in Lorentz and Poincare’s relativistic aether which is purely mechanical and still retains reason. It’s mathematically equivalent to special relativity, but instead of removing mechanical reasoning for light and adding another dimension (basically adding infinite 3D realities) it simply maintains the idea of an unknown preferred frame.

Obviously this would make Occam’s razor cut relativity away in favor of the simpler aether theory but we are led down the primrose path to believe the opposite is somehow -inanely- true. Just like religion, every evidence against becomes proof for the irrational thought. This can be traced down the history of relativity starting with stellar aberration.

The lack of mechanism for light’s waving and effects like doppler transitioned smoothly into the magical ideas surrounding QM.

All the pure randomness and other magical ideas of what occurs with QM is utterly explicable with deterministic fluid dynamical interpretations of the evidence. It was Madelung who first showed the interchangeable nature of QM with hydrodynamics, yet the magical ideas held more appeal in light of the “revolution in thought” that became the essence of fame in science via special relativity. Thus the copenhagen interpretation was preferred over de Broglie-Bohm and Schroedinger’s ridicule of this nonsensical and magical thinking (the cat) became a standard of teaching to uphold the idea. Thus the pattern of religious inversion of ideas and evidence continued forward into the 20th century.

I’ve written too many times on how irrational it is to believe a “jog” can exist without a jogger and that a wave can exist without something waving but there is a basic “from childhood” training about waves that is now very difficult to overcome. Such as here:

Shiva Meucci's answer to What are ether winds in relation to the speed of light?

Unfortunately, people simply do not question their earliest understandings of reality or the basis of their beliefs. This is especially true if they’ve never had to escape religion. They have not been inoculated against the virulent tricks of pernicious belief systems and the subsystems that uphold them are not as easily recognized.

There is an unraveling of many hundreds of misinterpreted points that seems impossible to a mind that has never experienced the loss of religion.

This is not a claim that special relativity nor general relativity is wrong!!! This is not a claim that QM is wrong!!!

There is a wide gap between interpretation, evidence and the mathematical model. The mathematics of Relativity and QM can be almost entirely correct while the interpretation of the meaning of what those maths describe can be utterly disconnected and wrong. This is about metaphysics.

Why should we care about metaphysics? …because only a child doesn’t understand that reasoning is what connects math to its use. Ask any Jr High mathematics teacher and they have encountered some argumentative pedantic kid who, upon being given a word problem, set up some math equations and solved those equations correctly but cannot grasp that it is the wrong math to use and cannot grasp the “meta-mathematics” being explained to them. It’s very simple in their simple mind. If the math is right, there’s nothing else to discuss. They don’t understand the interceding layer between a modeling tool and what it models is more interpretive.

You’ll often hear it heralded that “the universe is math” by grown up versions of these kids who cannot grasp something being consistent, structured and wrong. they lack a fundamental capacity with analogy and white-space pattern recognition.

…it is more important to have beauty in one's equations that to have them fit experiment. -Paul Dirac

We use math developed by Lorentz to describe the impact of aether on light, to describe a reality without the aether. Mathematical tools and tradition can be copied and used accurately via tradition while losing the interpretive understanding that allowed those tools to be innovated.

Iterative development can occur with zero understanding. This is how biology has created the most successful and complex systems in the universe, without any conscious understanding. Ergo scientific advancement can progress without understanding the actual meaning of the advancement; it simply needs to produce results, just like a new mutation. This is what Kuhn called “normal science.”

Therefore one can actually progress blindly in a shut-up-and-calculate world, but large leaps or debugging of the theory are not possible any more than a burst of radiation will make you a super-hero.

Understanding requires a larger set of aggregated relational data that is not easily captured by linear calculations. (something AI researchers are becoming keenly aware of) Understanding requires the appropriate meta-data connections and is the only way revolutionary ideas occur.

It’s only because of misunderstanding and conflation of separate components to the theory, that Einstein’s relativity is regarded as revolutionary when light’s apparent constancy, time-dilation and length contraction are all 100% from Larmor and Lorentz, not Einstein. Einstein (and his wife) did a hard job with the electrodynamical part, but it wasn’t the revolutionary part.

A revolution is actually occurring right now in the background, and it’s one of interpretation and metaphysics. A revolution of understanding can occur without massive shifts in the maths.

The math plays the role of a crystal and interpretation is the angle of incidence of the light. A new image and area for future inquiry is revealed and a new future for development emerges with that new angle of incidence provided by a different interpretation.

It’s called the neoclassical interpretation and, sorry but all the irrational magic goes away. The only way to understand it and the current reputable scientists at places like Cambridge and MIT developing it, is by knowing the history of current theory:

[1804.01846] History of the NeoClassical Interpretation of Quantum and Relativistic Physics

But undestanding the finer points of the difference between Lorentz’s kinematics and Einsteins will take you miles in seeing the fine dividing line between irrationality and rationality found with zero change in the math.

The difference is if you believe there must be a mechanic underneath the illusion Lorentz modeled or you believe that the illusion is the new magical truth of our reality:

Relativity Demystified

Creation time: Jun 10, 2018 10:05 AM PDT

 

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The “error” of relativity theory is more human error than any error of the “theory” per se. The problem is interpretation, not the consistency or applicability of the math.

People think of a theory in their own terms and divide it along lines they think are immutable but interpretation is inseparable from the applied mathematical process so the line is much fuzzier than most believe.

There’s even interpretation in 2 +2=4. We have to all decide what those symbols mean and be sure that someone we are speaking to has the same interpretation of those symbols when we communicate. While this isn’t really a problem in something so simple as 2+2 it IS a problem in more complex situations.

When we apply math we have to make decisions like how big a “droplet” is when we want to count 2 droplets or 1+1=1 and this rabbit hole goes very very deep.

Unfortunately, more pedantic minds are faster at processing linear situations because they are hyper presumptuous and don’t do regression analysis checking for as many weird problems. It’s a balance of efficiency to just believe a chair will hold you up and simply sit on it instead of checking each new chair you encounter for structural integrity.

So you can overbalance towards analysis paralysis or hyper-presumption narrow-mindedness and over-simplicity. (basically the hyper liberal vs hyper conservative mindset) You can really handle every exception well and get bogged down in complexity which reduces forward progress or get on an efficient rocket sled of progress towards destruction and bypassing every exceptional circumstance.

Therefore many mathematically specialized people place hard borders where the truth is more subjective and this means they’ll confuse interpretation with the math itself and be very insistent about the “theory” when they mean the math and don’t really understand what is going on when you question the impetus behind why the how the math is applied.

Some of them scoff at “metaphysics” in a sort-of mentally handicapped fashion. (we all have these sorts of blind spot weaknesses that are like “conjugate variables” to our strengths)

“Wait, what ‘interpretation’ are you talking about?”

I’m talking about the fact that relativity can be currently interpreted within the framework of aether theory. There is no experimental basis to prefer spacetime over relativistic aether. (One-way speed of light)

This means the same math and experimental outcomes can mean two very different things.

“According to the general theory of relativity space without ether is unthinkable; for in such space there not only would be no propagation of light, but also no possibility of existence for standards of space and time (measuring-rods and clocks), nor therefore any space-time intervals in the physical sense.” -Albert Einstein, 1920

Preferred frame mechanics are utterly compatible with relativity even though most people don’t understand how they work because they are slightly more complex than relativity.

Lorentz’s relativistic aether is what generated the entire idea of length contraction, time dilation, and the illusion of light speed constancy. Those ideas were Lorentz’s not Einstein’s. Einstein just figured out the electromagnetism in that context. He was competing with Poincare on that and Poincare would have been credit if it hadn’t been for some publishing irregularities.

This is the Neoclassical Revolution and it IS occurring right now behind the scenes and if you’d like to understand all the aspects of how preferred frame mechanics work, then this paper shows the crossover of fluid dynamics and other interdisciplinary approaches with our current approaches:

[1804.01846] History of the NeoClassical Interpretation of Quantum and Relativistic Physics

So yes, a revolution in understanding will reveal how and why weird things can occur in special relativity that do not happen in Lorentz’s preferred frame mechanics even though they have been known to be “mathematically indistinguishable” for roughly a century.

…and a laymen’s terms explanation of the difference can be found below with lots of diagrams and simple terms:

Relativity Demystified

Creation time: Jun 30, 2018 08:34 AM PDT

 

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Because it’s interpretation and questionable.

One of the things you’ll find is that physicists like the simple answers… just the data. “Data is not questionable.” The experiment did it or it did not do it. It’s binary. It’s the interpretation that starts to become a messy difficult tangle. Unfortunately data without interpretation is nothing.

Determining meaning is metaphysics. Metaphysics is how we attach meaning to what would otherwise be a mess of symbols. Metaphysics is how we decide what math to use where to model something and it’s what determines how we interpret our experiments. This inseparability is often invisible to people deeply ensconced in the 20th century culture of physics. The meta portion is what turns a bunch of dots or smears of graphite into useful information. Data and information are two-sided but simpler minds can’t really handle that level of doubt. (simple can often be more powerful than complex!)

They often believe their own metaphysical positions are just pure logic and math (ignoring the inductive logic required to define axioms of deductive logic) while other metaphysical positions are absurd hand-waving.

Religion is not the only place where people assume their unexamined beliefs are unquestionable self-evident truths.

There’s a huge problem of non-falsifiability that makes this idea currently outside of science. Until someone comes up with a way to falsify it, it’s not really even a good hypothesis.

There’s good reason to stay away from interpretation and there’s good reason to go after it. Block universe is problematic like any interpretation and if anyone tells you there’s an official consensus, don’t believe them.

Block universe also leads to various other problems beyond just being interpretation and the social stigma around speculative pursuits: Logic problems.

Once you place events on a block universe, they are no longer purely relative. You’ve actually inferred a direction for time that is universal. (special relativity allows one to traverse spacetime at an angle) I would argue that this universal time frame is absolutely necessary for the logic of relativity to work in one way, but I also understand it breaks the “relative” part of relativity as well. This conflict is part of why I dislike common interpretations of relativity and constantly try to teach people about preferred frame mechanics.

So, if we wish to have a truly relative simultaneity, we must add another dimension. Reality has to be promoted to (at least) 5D or relative simultaneity is bunk.

I have to refer to some diagrams so in the video below there is an alien on a bicycle and a man on bench. Once we place them on the “loaf,” we’ve defined their relative simultaneity in a special way which gives a universal arrow of time. There must be additional “loafs” where the two subjects are in different starting position.

https://youtu.be/vrqmMoI0wks?t=5...

So, two different logical inferences are in opposition to each other. …but that’s interpretation.

Creation time: Jul 06, 2018 07:24 AM PDT

 

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Yes and No. Dogmatic pseudo-understanding does not eliminate the capture and creation of useful systems!

General relativity can be tracked back to aether theory via Hilbert and Mie so there’s rational reasons why it has some uses. (though don’t buy the GPS crap, it’s BS. Complex and accidental BS but BS nonetheless)

You have to understand that animals pick up useful behaviors without any conscious understanding of what they are doing. They capture patterns of success and get rewarded for repetition based on probabilistic capture of past value and reward.

Various religions throughout time have found very useful systems of cleanliness before germs were known. Abrahamic religions eliminated the dangers of “falling down eaten by worms” that occurs from eating pork (trichinosis) while having nothing but superstitious understanding of the events.

There is a grey area between pure trial-and-error and real understanding.

Evolution does create hyper-complex useful systems via pure dumb trial and error. (and so do humans) There is, however, white space created by partial understandings though. It’s like looking at a partially filled in puzzle and seeing red and yellow separated by a space and attempting to fit orange into it. You don’t know the picture you’re creating, but knowing a little about it can lead to some success.

This is why we can continue to build useful things with idiotic and magical ideas underpinning those inventions. If pulsing an electromagnet here makes electricity over there, you can believe elves are in the middle and still make machines that make use of the “elves.”

Something real is happening and you can rely on it even when you don’t get it at all. This is how animals work machines etc.

This is the usefulness of religious behavior and magical thinking. We can capture and use half-formed information because the analogy we construct to fill in the spaces is good enough for limited use.

…and that’s why superstitious thinkers in physics don’t want to hear “metaphysics” (rational thought and reasoning) because all they know is the reward for their pseudo-understanding conflicts with the “false” signal they get from rational thought. (and people always pick good feelings and reward when they have a choice)

Is there dogma? Yes, but for a good reason.

I would argue that dogmatic behavior is how primates conserve useful information and make sure it does not mutate and get lost over time. The 100th monkey effect is how primates save cultural information.

The more dogmatic and perfectionist you are about particular behaviors, the more precisely you will pass on superstitiously captured useful information.

If we do not have some level of holding the line, the millions of weird ideas people have will begin to undermine the most valuable ideas and by sheer bulk they will look equally valuable. There has to be a way to value one idea over another even when one has not personally tested such idea.

Thus science is done by those who can learn without the need for personal experience. Otherwise every single experiment ever performed would have to be performed by each scientist and nobody would ever reach maturity.

Faith is a necessity and dogma insures data integrity over time!

Is it stopping us from understanding gravity better?

Well, yes, if we pick short time scales but we’re still progressing via trial and error so the answer is also no when we look at longer time scales. We will get there if we waited longer.

The problem is that humanity is running out of runway to meet its need for a massive jump in energy manipulation.

Thankfully there is a revolution already under way.

It’s in the background and most people don’t know about it. It’s also constantly under attack by the priests of relativity like some of the authors in this thread, but you can help!

I’m not the one developing it. Minds at major universities like Cambridge and MIT are laying the groundwork. I’m just reporting it as it’s happening.

Learn about the Neoclassical revolution:

[1804.01846] History of the NeoClassical Interpretation of Quantum and Relativistic Physics

Understand how relativity can be partially right and wrong at the same time. Learn how the mathematically equivalent precursor to relativity works:

Relativity Demystified

It’s easy to understand and dogma always fails when enough eyes see through it with keen understanding.

Creation time: Jul 25, 2018 10:32 AM PDT

 

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That’s only one side of a multi-faced die. (coin doesn’t work here)

When you go to the store, is the car the most important part? Maybe it’s the seats, the road, the engine, traffic and street signs? Maybe it’s the store or the people going.

So what’s so important about space in relativity?

Relativity was first investigated and proposed because light (electromagnetic radiation) seemed to be doing something weird. It seemed to be traversing space at more than one speed simultaneously. (Michelson–Morley experiment - Wikipedia)

So people who thought space was made of stuff, (called “ether” at the time) created some math to describe how that stuff might create an illusion that would make it seem like light was doing weird things when in fact it was the stuff doing weird things to our perspective. (Fitzgerald, Larmor and Lorentz)

Einstein, however, decided that the math was good but something else was going on. He said space is not stuff at all! Instead he believed space and time were a single thing and reality had an additional dimension that allowed light to seem to shortcut through our faulty 3-dimensional idea of reality.

Lorentz’s math that had a 4th dimension as just a handy notation for keeping up with weird and faulty perspectives, but Einstein insisted these perspectives weren’t faulty at all. They were real and valid!

Space is important in relativity because now we believe it’s joined with time as a single thing like the car, the engine, the seats, and the people inside are all part of the process of the trip to the store.

In relativity, light is just like that larger process, with some less visible things going on under the hood.

Creation time: Aug 16, 2018 02:29 PM PDT

 

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Let me give you the historical viewpoint.

The electromagnetic field behaves as if it were a collection of wheels, pulleys and fluids. - James Clerk Maxwell

Neither special nor general relativity exploded out of some void without prior art. They are based on the tremendous advancements in mathematical physics that were based on the exploration of aether theory. The development of aether theory required the deep investigation of inviscid fluid dynamics.

Prior to Einstein, the prevailing theories of atoms were based upon vortical movements and J.J. Thompson (Ernest Rutherford’s mentor) successfully developed a ring vortex model that mechanically explained the cause of valence.

Basically science just prior to relativity was all about the vortex. Rotational motion was key to everything. Thus Kelvin developed models of rotational elasticity to explain how Maxwell’s equations worked from a fluid dynamical perspective.

Einstein in 1924 remarked in “On the 100th anniversary of Lord Kelvin’s birth” on Kelvin’s circulation theorem that this development was one of Kelvin’s most significant results that provided an early link between inviscid fluid mechanics and topology.

“What does all this have to do with geodesics??

A geodesic is just finding a straight line on a curved surface. Its kinda just part of topology which is all about curved surfaces. We needed to understand motion along curved surfaces to understand the vortices occurring in aether and the mechanical context of Maxwell’s equations. You have to be able to model and follow along complex curved motions. That’s why Kelvin’s work on vortices was what spawned topology.

Even though Einstein supposedly discarded the aether, all the math and physics he based everything on was deeply and fundamentally fluid based. His deep collaboration with Hilbert on GR is well known and Hilbert’s work was based on Mie’s which was fundamentally a model of rotationally elastic aether as was proposed by MacCullagh.

While Einstein certainly did not feel that the aether was specifically a normal fluid, he still knew intuitively that something was there that could be called aether.

“According to the general theory of relativity space without ether is unthinkable; for in such space there not only would be no propagation of light, but also no possibility of existence for standards of space and time (measuring-rods and clocks), nor therefore any space-time intervals in the physical sense.” - Albert Einstein, 1920

And regardless of what he felt the mathematics meant, what the mathematics were created to describe, and therefore do describe, are systems of rotation.

Which is why in modern times people publish papers like this one:

Gravitational Potential Effects on Shearing Geodesic Fluid Solutions of Einstein's Equations

…and if you’d like to know more about the fluid view of modern physics you can read this paper which is very friendly to laymen:

[1804.01846] History of the NeoClassical Interpretation of Quantum and Relativistic Physics

Creation time: Aug 24, 2018 03:29 PM PDT

 

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It cannot and does not. However…

The precursor theory - Lorentz’s aether theory - combined with Poincare’s electromagnetism, however, was build upon half a century of development in fluid mechanics by Kelvin and others. This was eventually a successful scheme for explaining atomic structure called “ring vortex atoms” and scientists such as Rutherford’s mentor JJ Thompson, used this model to give a mechanical basis for valence.

Unfortunately, while Larmor, the first to hit upon the “change factor” worked closely with Kelvin and used his models, the timing of the Michelson experiment and the additional difficulties it meant for fluid dynamical models of space overshadowed Kelvin’s 1889 finalization of rotational elasticity. This is even though that model extended from MacCullagh’s work is technically what saved Maxwell’s equations from appearing to be ad hoc… (Maxwell’s equations are just a special case of fluid dynamics as well)

So, the truth of the matter is that special relativity utterly eliminated every rational mechanic for the structure of elementary particles that had been developed.

That’s an interesting juxtaposition to the mathematically equivalent theory of Lorentz and Poincare that does provide crucial mechanics for the internal properties of atoms.

This subtle differentiation is not understood by most modern authors and academics because social factors made the precursor theory be forgotten and therefore it’s not widely taught and therefore almost never understood. The loss of this history has been a travesty that has only become widespread in the past 30-40 years. (so the vast majority of modern academics are completely ignorant of what was previously common knowledge)

Incidentally you should know that the “Bell tests” are held up as one of the primary reasons to accept the Copenhagen interpretation of QM.

So you should find it interesting that Bell himself, up learning more found that the Copenhagen interpretation and his “impossibility proofs” were nonsense. This too has been lost to academia somehow… (I personally blame a resurgence of “shut-up and calculate”)

These subjects are all intricately related and interestingly quotes from Bell tie them together:

Einstein starts from the hypothesis that the laws will look the same to all observers in uniform motion. This permits a very concise and elegant formulation of the theory, as often happens when one big assumption can be made to cover several less big ones... But in my opinion there is also something to be said for taking students along the road made by FitzGerald, Larmor, Lorentz and Poincaré. The longer road sometimes gives more familiarity with the country. — J. Bell

“But in 1952 I saw the impossible done. It was in papers by David Bohm. Bohm showed explicitly how parameters could indeed be introduced, into nonrelativistic wave mechanics, with the help of which the indeterministic description could be transformed into a deterministic one. More importantly, in my opinion, the subjectivity of the orthodox version, the necessary reference to the ‘observer,’ could be eliminated… But why then had Bohm not told me of this ‘pilot wave’?... Why did von Neumann not consider it? More extraordinarily, why did people go on producing “impossibility” proofs, after 1952, and as recently as 1978?... Why is the pilot wave picture ignored in textbooks? Should it not be taught, not as the only way, but as an antidote to the prevailing complacency? To show us that vagueness, subjectivity, and indeterminism, are not forced on us by experimental facts, but by deliberate theoretical choice?” J. S. Bell. (1987), p. 160.

(Emphasis mine)

If I were a conspiracy theorist I’d think it was on purpose, but then again I usually adhere to Hanlon’s razor: “Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained as incompetence.”

If you’d like to learn about the odd conjoined history of theoretical physics, and fluid dynamics and how a revolution is currently brewing in the background then check out this paper:

HISTORY OF THE NEOCLASSICAL INTERPRETATION OF QUANTUM AND RELATIVISTIC PHYSICS

Creation time: Sep 06, 2018 02:18 AM PDT

 

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Because it’s only proven right, not exclusively right.

So the question is really why do people make it seem like it’s exclusively right when things such as dark matter show something is missing from the overall theory?

Many people, for instance, don’t know that newtonian theory actually predicts lensing also but in exactly half the amount.

You’re right to point out the seeking of confirmation of bias the media engages us in.

News is sorta bad for science. The whole draw of news is for it to be dramatic circumstances. Nobody would watch the news if it reported on the number of cars that passed a given intersection. It specifically targets emotional engagement which is precisely the opposite intention of scientific methods in trying to find and eliminate bias.

Questions aren’t marketable. They are not sugary dopamine reassurance. Questions are uncomfortable so people feel avoidant of them. People will buy reassurance.

We need to be asking questions, not repeatedly mentally self-stimulating about our supposed answer.

How do we know if the lensing is the correct amount if most of our calculations of distance etc are fundamentally relativistic? Of course numbers altered by the theory in an earlier place will match it later on too.

So, it’s interesting that in experiments testing the first predictions of sunlight during an eclipse, the actual results were completely fudged and biased. You then hear it was corrected later but it’s still something I’m interested in taking a closer look at the supposed replications and if they have garbage-in-garbage-out biasing their results.

Experimental bias is the greatest enemy of science and if you care about science you need to be freaking out about this issue in science!

The most common way experiments mislead is that the end result is presumed true from the beginning and takes part in some fundamental axiom they haven’t noticed. Like, how do we measure particle speed in accelerators? Do we use calculations and equations that are altered by relativity at any earlier point in their development? Are there hidden dependencies?

The market forces push toward comfortable finalization and the feeling of stability that brings. That’s the emotion people value the highest and therefore the market feeds us ever more of that emotion.

We are endlessly, tempted, pushed, and punished towards confirmation bias!

We all need to understand that funding often points us in completely the wrong direction. There is a crisis all across science from the replication crisis in psychology, the MRI neurology debacle (not mentioning pharma influence) in biology, and numerous signs of model crisis across physics with the vacuum energy catastrophe and so much more.

Questions are where real value lies; bad simple comforting answers make lots of money though!

Creation time: Oct 28, 2018 07:40 AM PDT

 

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He proved light is not constant. (not that all of relativity itself is false)

I’m going to make this very concise. The primary claim that “relativity is still okay with that” is wrong on many levels. The defenders are defending something that isn’t part of relativity post 1912! But, let’s focus on their irrational arguments anyway:

Their defenses of the faulty concept are based on the claim that motion around a circle is fundamentally different from that in a straight line. Obviously an asinine claim, but when dealing with faith-based beliefs, hero worship and social phenomena like that, asinine claims are the standard.

First let’s go to the source: On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies.

It is at once apparent that this result still holds good if the clock moves from A to B in any polygonal line, and also when the points A and B coincide.

If we assume that the result proved for a polygonal line is also valid for a continuously curved line, we arrive at this result: 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 which has remained at rest the travelled clock on its arrival at A will be 1/2 tv^2/c^2 second slow. Thence we conclude that a balance-clock at the equator must go more slowly, by a very small amount, than a precisely similar clock situated at one of the poles under otherwise identical conditions. - Albert Einstein, OEMB, section 4

Of course, some imbecilic defense of the faith will be a claim that this is “different” because it’s speaking of time effects, but this is just a demonstration of an inability to understand the theory espoused. Time effects and the constancy of light are different aspects of the same phenomena and cannot be separated. (but there’s a caveat to that I’ll explain later)

Now let’s put aside the fact that the theory directly controverts the common claims of defense, for another demonstration of this ridiculous charade:

The Sagnac effect is not related to the radians per second, but instead is directly related to the edge speed. This is important for the following thought experiment:

If an ancient alien species set up an around-the-galaxy sagnac experiment, we could hop on the spaceship and be able to detect the exact speed at which the spaceship is circling the galaxy with respect to the core. (the well known and commonplace understanding of how the effect will play out)

This is despite the fact that the curvature the ship is following is so close to a straight line as to be indistinguishable from it.

QED… Rotation is irrelevant.

Now for a third crushing defeat for all these asinine arguments:

At some point some defender of the faith will come forward with, “AHA, it depends on the center of rotation!” because this is an old defense against Sagnac from late last century. Unfortunately for them, the careful experiments of Ruyang Wang called the “Fiber Optic Conveyor” experiments showed that one could arrange fibers in a figure 8 to have two half rotations in opposition and though, if rotation were responsible, the effect should change, the effect remains unchanged. (still acts completely neoclassical and aether-like) Additionally, by using long fiber optic lines with small rotation points at a distance from one another, an alteration based upon the total amount of rotation related to the long straight paths should be detectable. Of course, it was not, because Sagnac is a proof of preferred frame effects that controvert constancy.

And now, one more final stomp deep, deeeep into the ground for these ridiculous defenses of something that should not be defended.

Einstein very clearly pointed out that constancy is a faulty concept which does not apply to reality in which there are gravitational fields in a public fight between him and Max Abraham when Abraham “accused” him of abandoning constancy and concluding, incorrectly, that consequently the whole theory of relativity was false.

"This is, in my opinion, not the limit of validity of the principle of relativity, but is that of the constancy of the velocity of light, and thus of our current theory of relativity." - Einstein "Relativität und Gravitation. Erwiderung auf eine Bemerkung von M. Abraham", Annalen der Physik 38, 1912

Constancy can be separated from relativity, by one concept alone: Illusion.

The original intention of Lorentz was to mathematically model a perspective illusion of constancy. The math itself represents illusion, therefore if one takes the illusion to be reality, nothing but confusion can follow.

Einstein abandoned constancy before GR and denounced it numerous times afterwards, but popularization and hero worship created a monster that simply will not die.

"According to the general theory of relativity, space without aether is unthinkable; for in such space there not only would be no propagation of light, but also no possibility of existence for standards of space and time (measuring-rods and clocks), nor therefore any space-time intervals in the physical sense." -Albert Einstein, 1920, University of Leiden.

If you’d like to understand how what we have today is actually aether theory, muddled through the lens of bad interpretations, abstractions and magical beliefs, read below: (the magical thinking wends its way into QM as well, but the math is sound)

History of the NeoClassical Interpretation of Quantum and Relativistic Physics

If you’d like to understand how and why Lorentz came up with an illusion that accidentally ruined physics read the derivation of the Lorentz factor post in this blog:

Relativity Demystified

The math need not be altered and neither do experiments. Our understanding of what the math MEANS is the problem!

“There is a difference between a shaky or out-of-focus photograph and a snapshot of clouds and fog banks.” - Erwin Schroedinger

"Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth." - Albert Einstein

The problem in physics is deadly clear: Constancy is an illusion. All the other silly irrational problems in modern physics descend from that one sociologically upheld belief system.

It’s an artifact and an aberration. It’s a stand alone complex. Don’t attribute it to Einstein anymore; it’s not really even his fault at this point!

Creation time: Nov 04, 2018 05:38 PM PST

 

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What people don’t like is that our current theories REALLY DO support this magical irrational nonsense. (and a lot of other BS)

Hawking was right, IF we accept as truth the nonsensical ideas that make up current theory.

You should technically be able to kill your own grandfather and create a paradox if we accept the relativity of simultaneity as truth.

The relativity of simultaneity is an inescapable consequence of believing constancy is real aspect of light speed. This leads to believing reality is actually 4D instead of recognizing the mathematical tool of “dimensions” is just a useful tool. Therefore if you believe anything about light speed constancy you have to believe the magical conflicting nonsense Hawking and others tell you.

Einstein abandoned constancy by 1912 and embraced aether 15 years after special relativity.

“Space without aether is unthinkable.” - Albert Einstein, 1920

Light constancy is an illusion Lorentz created on purpose. Preferred frame physics eliminates all these irrational problems in physics!!!

No change to the math, just a change to our magical beliefs about what the math means!

History of the NeoClassical Interpretation of Quantum and Relativistic Physics

Creation time: Nov 05, 2018 10:16 PM PST

 

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The theory includes too much prior art and conforms to too much evidence to be entirely wrong, so we must limit ourselves to the “partially misconceived” subsections of the larger set of systems it includes.

When we do this, then we can effectively identify and criticize crucial points of failure.

The single most vulnerable point of failure is in the metaphysical understandings of special relativity handed down to us today. They don’t even match Einstein’s opinion after he considered the ideas for a time. What we have is a story passed from person to person as a cultural artifact and not a real understanding of the map between the mathematics and what those mathematics represent.

Imagine if every time I said the word “apple,” you thought of an orange.

For many uses such as general weight, size, classification, use etc, there wouldn’t really be a problem but there are certainly some differences that become important down the road when you start using my recipes.

This connection between the symbol and what is symbolized started to not just get muddled and destroyed in mathematical physics but actually criticized by mathematicians in the past century

What we have hit upon is that there is a wide difference between a superstitious numerologist and an effective mathematical physicist. It is the difference between a calculator and a human mind capable of problem solving.

“Shut-up-and-calculate” is the worst social trend in the history of science and its acceptance has begun to mentally disable those who work in the most crucial field of inquiry.

“Metaphysics” is not some curse word to be spat as though it is superstition, it’s completely the opposite! It’s about the actual connection between mathematical symbols and what they symbolize. It’s the difference between using apples and oranges in a recipe. It doesn’t matter how precisely you used the fruits, if you didn’t understand what fruits were being referred to in the recipe!

So the one place “relativity is wrong” is the place where we failed: in metaphysical connection. (so it’s not really even “relativity” that’s wrong per se; it’s our faulty story about it!)

Specifically this is in the concept of the constancy of light’s speed and the removal of the aether.

The two-way speed of light will always be measured the same but this is an illusion which can be pierced by a one-way test of light’s speed. Yet delusional faith in the consequences of constancy (relative simultaneity) has been used to ignore the may proofs of its falsehood.

Thousands of different experiments have proven light is anisotropic and that constancy is invalid but the belief in this word-of-mouth story have persisted for over a century. (it’s a superstition that has been elevated to the same cognitive level as religion)

It’s led to massive confusions including the reification of the 4th dimension.

Below is a collection of just a few the many times Einstein told us about this source problem, yet somehow we persist in our absurd beliefs contrary to the source. This is, perhaps the most religious part of relativity in that those who profess to be its believers know nothing of the source material and do precisely the opposite prescribed by its prophet.

Volume 4: The Swiss Years: Writings 1912-1914 (English translation supplement): “I arrived at the result that the velocity of light is not to be regarded as independent of the gravitational potential. Thus the principle of the constancy of the velocity of light is incompatible with the equivalence hypothesis”.

Volume 4: The Swiss Years: Writings 1912-1914 (English translation supplement): “the writer of these lines is of the opinion that the theory of relativity is still in need of generalization, in the sense that the principle of the constancy of the velocity of light is to be abandoned”.

Volume 6: The Berlin Years: Writings, 1914-1917 (English translation supplement): “In the second place our result shows that, according to the general theory of relativity, the law of the constancy of the velocity of light in vacuo, which constitutes one of the two fundamental assumptions in the special theory of relativity and to which we have already frequently referred, cannot claim any unlimited validity”.

Volume 7: The Berlin Years: Writings, 1918-1921 (English translation supplement): “Second, this consequence shows that the law of the constancy of the speed of light no longer holds, according to the general theory of relativity, in spaces that have gravitational fields. As a simple geometric consideration shows, the curvature of light rays occurs only in spaces where the speed of light is spatially variable”.

Creation time: Dec 11, 2018 04:32 PM PST

 

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Well, if we assume the typical interpretation of special relativity is correct, then since all the sources of radiation would be time dilated so extremely according to your frame’s perception, then anything that would normally be producing ionizing radiation should be such a low frequency that you’d be perfectly safe from all radiation created by outside sources.

Think about it. If an atomic clock ticks slower, that means that a cesium atom’s frequency is lower. Any atom moving with respect to you would be time dilated by an enormous amount. Specifically a second would take 2236 times as long (at 99.99999% C) and wavelengths they emitted should then also be 2236 times the size they would normally be. This far more than makes up for the blue shift created by things moving towards you.

The radiation dose should be zero, but often I’m not sure what sort of mental gymnastics relativity proponents might have up their sleeve next. With how frequently I hear alternative and conflicting explanations of various effects from academic sources, I’m not sure if another weird one might be right around the corner.

After all, even though clocks are theoretically ticking faster in space, particles dropped to the earth are said to speed up and be blue shifted (Pound–Rebka experiment)

So, how exactly does that track?

Let’s talk about Gravitational redshift

So let’s pretend a cesium 133 atom on earth transmits its exact frequency to a cesium 133 atom in orbit.

If everything actually happens faster in space then according to the atom in orbit the signal sent up to is will seem slow by comparison. (because it’s running faster) and therefore appear redshifted.

So far we’re on track with “gravitational redshift”

And now if we use that same logic, then when the faster cesium 133 in space sends down its signal, the slower running cesium 133 on earth will see a sped up signal by comparison.

It will appear blue shifted and we’re still on track.

Unfortunately however we’ve stipulated that “particles” get slowed down or sped up based on their location. So if a photon is particle then why is it speeding up as it moves to a location that will cause it to slow be slower?

Generally this is explained as a gain or loss of potential energy.

Thus the drawing above allows us to represent a difference and an effect simultaneously. It’s a little confusing to use it this way.

There’s really no ambiguity here with general relativity, however. The problem I have is the application of special relativity and the twins paradox.

In GR one subject is definitely the slower of the two and the other is definitely the faster. In SR that is forever ambiguous.

But if you just assume you’re the stationary one and ignore the twins paradox inherent in that claim, then, sure, everything else is happening slower and would be massively red-shifted.

I just don’t personally buy into any explanations of the twins paradox as sufficient and there’s really no rational way to pick the dominant twin without shenanigans.

Creation time: Feb 06, 2019 01:57 AM PST

 

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As Mark Barton suggested, it was initially held that in small spaces general and special relativity appear the same. Unfortunately the smallness of the space in question is infinite. (more on that in a moment)

The relativity of simultaneity, however, is still somewhat present in the time displacement caused by gravitational fields. Gravity really is a lot like moving upward away from the center of the earth in certain ways. When Einstein spoke about the “rubber sheet analogy” he was speaking about a single sheet in a foliation of spacetime and most people no longer understand his explanation and say it’s bad. It’s not, they’ve just lost the understanding of it along the way.

Unfortunately you must understand that there is a wide difference between time displacement caused by relative simultaneity and clock rate differences but very few people can wrap their heads around that topic for some reason.

So, special relativity is the unfinished precursor to general relativity. It inspired it conceptually but very few things still perfectly hold.

The Lorentz transform which is the mathematical core, however, retains its validity for most applications so long as we recognize that gravity does define a preferred frame. (and most of those twins paradox discussions you’ve heard are a silly exploration of an unfinished theory)

The crucial and most surprising difference, however, is this:

The constancy of light’s speed is no longer valid in General Relativity.

This is something I was never able to get across to Mark via any one of numerous means even though he is a very learned and rational professional. In my opinion he has always understood relativity in a non-standard way but in a better way.

What I mean by this is that he automatically corrected in his head many of the rational errors of the version of relativity that is taught to us today and never recognized his more rational corrections deviate from consensus. So it’s a “left-handed” compliment that very strongly irks him.

He believes his explanations are consensus. They are not, because they are better and more correct than consensus and do not match up constancy. Unfortunately he still believes constancy is correct and it simply is not. He doesn’t recognize the irrational meaning of constancy and believes his rational explanation is the consensus one. His explanations, however, usually match Lorentz’s aether kinematics, not Einstein’s. (two theories long held to be mathematically indistinguishable)

The difference between the two is an illusion in the math (mathematical sleight of hand) that few people understand and was further complicated by Minkowski. Minkowski’s complication (his convention) was pushed forward by the emotional event of his untimely death combined with his central place in the friendships of all the physicists working on the topic at the time.

His convention codifies constancy and hides the problems in the forms you are told to use. He solidified Einstein’s mistake and then died leaving Einstein having insulted his work by both denying constancy as well as a little offhand remark directed at Minkowski:

“Since the mathematicians have invaded the theory of relativity I do not understand it myself any more.” - Einstein

This left him in a very sticky situation among direct complaints from people (Minkowski’s students and close colleagues) who were more strongly within the establishment of theoretical physics than Einstein, himself, was.

This is a why we culturally still treat constancy as a valid concept when Einstein himself told us so often to abandon it.

So, the point here is that Einstein didn’t initially understand the perspective illusion Lorentz purposely created as of his 1905 paper, but eventually did later. Unfortunately Minkowski had pressed his mistake into a format and then died leaving people eager to respect his legacy.

Volume 4: The Swiss Years: Writings 1912-1914 (English translation supplement): “On the other hand I am of the view that the principle of the constancy of the velocity of light can be maintained only insofar as one restricts oneself to spatio-temporal regions of constant gravitational potential”.

Volume 4: The Swiss Years: Writings 1912-1914 (English translation supplement): “I arrived at the result that the velocity of light is not to be regarded as independent of the gravitational potential. Thus the principle of the constancy of the velocity of light is incompatible with the equivalence hypothesis”.

Volume 4: The Swiss Years: Writings 1912-1914 (English translation supplement): “the writer of these lines is of the opinion that the theory of relativity is still in need of generalization, in the sense that the principle of the constancy of the velocity of light is to be abandoned”.

Volume 6: The Berlin Years: Writings, 1914-1917 (English translation supplement): “In the second place our result shows that, according to the general theory of relativity, the law of the constancy of the velocity of light in vacuo, which constitutes one of the two fundamental assumptions in the special theory of relativity and to which we have already frequently referred, cannot claim any unlimited validity”.

Volume 7: The Berlin Years: Writings, 1918-1921 (English translation supplement): “Second, this consequence shows that the law of the constancy of the speed of light no longer holds, according to the general theory of relativity, in spaces that have gravitational fields. As a simple geometric consideration shows, the curvature of light rays occurs only in spaces where the speed of light is spatially variable”.

For example, Einstein even had to engage in polemics with other physicists via well known publications because of his departure from constancy.

"Already a year ago, A. Einstein has given up the essential postulate of the constancy of the speed of light by accepting the effect of the gravitational potential on the speed of light, in his earlier theory; in a recently published work the requirement of the invariance of the equations of motion under Lorentz's transformations also falls, and this gives the death blow to the theory of relativity.“ (Abraham, Max 1912)

To which he responded:

"This is, in my opinion, not the limit of validity of the principle of relativity, but is that of the constancy of the velocity of light, and thus of our current theory of relativity." - Einstein "Relativität und Gravitation. Erwiderung auf eine Bemerkung von M. Abraham", Annalen der Physik 38, 1912, pp. 1059-1064 (CPAE, Vol. 4, Doc 8), pp. 1061-1062.

Abraham is wrong here but only in a very subtle way. Relativistic aether which Einstien later favored and is now expressed as Quantum Field Theory (QFT) is still valid even when constancy is no longer viable.

"According to the general theory of relativity, space without aether is unthinkable; for in such space there not only would be no propagation of light, but also no possibility of existence for standards of space and time (measuring-rods and clocks), nor therefore any space-time intervals in the physical sense." -Albert Einstein 1920

What I’ve said in short above is very very complex and very subtle because it results in very similar outcomes to modern theory. I cannot explain this vast topic here and besides, I still favor a fluid dynamical re-interpretation of all of physics over QFT, (both of which rely on emergent/virtualization of particles) but these subjects are very important for a field on the cusp of fundamental revolution.

If you’d like to know more, enjoy this paper:

History of the NeoClassical Interpretation of Quantum and Relativistic Physics

Creation time: May 02, 2019 08:26 PM PDT

 

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I wouldn’t. I’d explain the theory that came just before “it” which it was based upon.

First, you do need to known that there are two things written by Einstein called “relativity” that are pretty radically different and they are called “Special Relativity” (1905) and General Relativity.” (1915)

The first is about how light behaves with regards to various observers and their observations and the second is about how matter interacts with space to cause gravity.

The truth of the matter is that no laymen usually knows or cares about what Einstein actually contributed to special relativity that he called “the Electrodynamical part,” they are usually only interested in all the craziness with time and length in “the Kinematical part” which is just Einstein’s explanation of Lorentz’s prior work as preamble for Einstein’s electrodynamics later on in the actual first paper titled “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies” (OEMB) and, it’s very ironic that Einstein’s actual work is never what anyone is explaining when they talk about special relativity. They are talking entirely about Lorentz’s work with Einstein’s spin on it. The math is utterly unchanged and it’s still called the “Lorentz factor” and the “Lorentz transform” when you’re dealing with special relativity. The mathematical representation of electromagnetism that Einstein gave just isn’t what people other than career scientists are interested in.

Secondly, nobody does a whole lot to explain general relativity other than to say that matter bends space and by doing so slows time with that bending. They will usually just show you a drawing of Einstein's rubber sheet analogy and then some smart aleck will pop up and say that the analogy is no good. That’s a new trend in the past decade and it’s just a oversimplification of what Einstein was conveying that is called “foliation.”

To those people I say sorry, no…. Einstein knew his own theory and the analogy is good even if a bit too technical in its intent and presumption of context, but let’s not get into that. Here’s one of the typical pictures to explain the “bending spacetime” rubber sheet analogy.

Here’s the gravity bit:

And here’s the affect on light bit:

The images above only do the best job when accompanying a sizable amount of explanation about how time and space are related, so I can see how these simpler 3D visualizations below of spacetime might be superior for a first introduction to the concept from visuals alone without having to go too deep.

“Wait, didn’t you say something about not teaching relativity?”

Why yes I did! But I have to tell you about what I’m not going to to tell you so you can understand what I AM going to tell you: How to develop Lorentz’s kinematics for yourself.

Lorentz’s kinematics is the part that leads to all the light cones and twins paradoxes and time travel weirdness that most laymen care about when encountering relativity. All the confusing stuff comes from there alone, so instead of teaching the confusing stuff in a confusing way, I personally prefer to teach about the difference between Lorentz’s kinematics which are an aether theory and “Einstein’s special relativity” which is a set of modern teachings based on the paper I mentioned above “OEMB.” (Einstein rejected the part called “constancy” by the time of his 1915 paper and advocated for he necessity of aether by 1920 most most modern sources never EVER bring that up)

However, if you want to be able to understand exactly how and why all that crazy weirdness came up in the first place and why Lorentz came up with it, then the blogs below should help you understand relativity well enough that you’d come up with “the kinematical part” all by yourself.

Each post in the series gets more technical so the first may be all that is interesting for a beginner who has googled around a little:

Relativity Demystified

Creation time: Aug 23, 2019 06:47 AM PDT

 

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It’s widely accepted that, if Henri Poincaré’s corrections to Lorentz in 1905 didn’t have publication irregularities that changed the timing, he would be known to history as having primacy in the development of special relativity.

Even then name, “Relativity” comes from Poincaré a year before Einstein’s 1905 “Special Relativity” paper.

Both Poincaré and Einstein were only developing the “electrodynamical part” (as Einstein called it) while Lorentz’s transform provided an underpinning for treatment of the Michelson Morley experimental results that both theories eventually used.

Then interesting thing is that if those small publishing irregularities had not occurred, our current mathematics of physics would be unchanged while our metaphysics would still suppose an aether today!

This includes general relativity which would have almost certainly been awarded to David Hilbert (around the same year, even) if Einstein had been even mildly discouraged or held back by lack of recognition. The contribution of Hilbert to Einstein’s development of GR was so great that Wolfgang Pauli refused to give Einstein credit. (though recent evidence points quite strongly to Einstein coming to the most final stroke of development of GR before Hilbert)

Hilbert’s work, however, was based upon a 4D generalization of MacCullagh’s aether by Gustav Mie. (Thus both special and general relativity can represent aether in their current mathematical form)

This is especially ironic in the face of the fact that Einstein abandoned the concept of constancy well before even general relativity. (the only reason to remove the aether) He repeatedly railed against the concept but Minkowski’s untimely death caused his linkage of space and time (also only required by constancy) to be deeply embedded into the social environment simply as an attempt to honor that man’s contributions.

Thus Einstein repeatedly expressed “space without aether is unthinkable.” (Leiden, 1920)

…yet somehow the simulacra of aetherless space persists today because of one central figure’s mathematical conceptualization of constancy and sudden death in 1909.

History of the NeoClassical Interpretation of Quantum and Relativistic Physics (PDF)

Creation time: Sep 04, 2019 12:52 AM PDT

 

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Yes, but the difference would be negligible even at relativistic speeds.

To really create some strange effects with relativity you need to blow the experiment up (not with dynamite) to enormous scales.

If you made the plate with the slits the size of the earth, for instance, and you were approaching at relativistic speeds from the side (closer to one slit than the other) then theoretically your bigger-than-a-planet display screen where the interference pattern is striking, would look significantly different from someone viewing it in the same frame.

In a single electron dual slit experiment, how then would a single electron interfere with itself if the far portion of it is so far ahead of the nearer portion of the wave/particle?

(hint: I’m sort of neo-Bohmian and don’t buy into assumptions that come from Copenhagen interpretation)

https://youtu.be/_K-3sJLANbo?t=1233

But that’s not the only experiment that gives strange results.

One can create some interesting violations of constancy and all the related effects (relative simultaneity included) by simply expanding a Sagnac interferometer to the size of a galaxy.

If the mirrors were set up billions of years ago and the light is both leaving one side of an experiment spaceship and entering the other already, all we need to do is board the alien experiment vessel as is passes by and look at the interference pattern.

Since the Sagnac effect isn’t dependent on radians per second, but actual edge speed, what we’ll see even at a very slow speed will indicate that light is traveling one direction faster than the other. Additionally, the spaceship and the light will all appear to be going in a straight line because of the negligible angle of the turning there fore all “accelerating frame” based arguments are also nullified.

This obviously violates the isotropic constancy of light and everyone who has been trained about relativity in the past 50 years would gasp.

The only thing Einstein would gasp at, however, is the pitiful state of our university educational system and how the entire culture of science communication has utterly failed to capture the most crucial understandings of general relativity.

Here’s one of many quotes on the topic of the constancy both before and after GR:

Creation time: Jan 06, 2020 01:44 PM PST

 

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You can. Constancy is an illusion. We’ve accidentally played “the telephone game” and disagreed with Einstein for the past 100 years.

Volume 4: The Swiss Years: Writings 1912-1914 (English translation supplement): “I arrived at the result that the velocity of light is not to be regarded as independent of the gravitational potential. Thus the principle of the constancy of the velocity of light is incompatible with the equivalence hypothesis”.

Volume 7: The Berlin Years: Writings, 1918-1921 (English translation supplement): “Second, this consequence shows that the law of the constancy of the speed of light no longer holds, according to the general theory of relativity, in spaces that have gravitational fields. As a simple geometric consideration shows, the curvature of light rays occurs only in spaces where the speed of light is spatially variable”.

(there’s nowhere in the universe where gravity is not in effect, ergo there is nowhere constancy applies. Constancy as we understand it today is an oversimplification from an unfinished theory. GR finishes it and abandons that faulty version of isotropic constancy)

Minkowski caused all the confusion in 1907 and then abruptly died just a couple years later leaving Einstein to honor his mentor under the pressure of the entire community. (after having first publicly poking fun at Minkowski)

Einstein initially joked that after the Mathematicians got a hold of his theory he didn’t understand it himself anymore. This was in response to Minkowklsi’s spacetime which codified constancy in the assumptions of its format and structure. Unfortunately Minkowski was a close friend and colleague of all the greats in math and physics of the time especially David Hilbert who immensely helped Einstein finalize general relativity later! Hilbert and others were surprised and devastated by Minkowski’s sudden death and this emotional trauma is the actual cause for the lasting repetition of confusion about constancy.

If you use Minkowski spacetime or diagrams, you cannot represent the version of illusory constancy that already existed in Lorentz’s initial formulation of the Lorentz transform well before special relativity. Lorentz’s original work that Einstein directly imported in unaltered from, as the basis of special relativity, had length contraction, time dilation, and the mathematical illusion of light speed constancy in it.

Minkowski’s work limits the usage of the Lorentz transform artificially and without empirical evidence to support the reduction of available information!

It is precisely the same math but there is metaphysics bound up in Minkowski’s convention that make it such that the One-way speed of light is isotropic whereas the Lorentz transform was designed to works when the one way speed is anisotropic.

This anisotropic alternative is UTTERLY UNAVAILABLE under the Minkowski system, even though it’s mathematically equivalent.

It is an unsupported arbitrary metaphysical assertion bound up in the Minkowksi form, that light speed is both constant and isotropic.

There has never been a test of the one-way speed of light which has been considered viable because arbitrary belief in the faith-based assumptions of relative simultaneity provide an alternative explanation when experiments PROVE that light behaves in an anisotropic fashion, just as Einstein said it must.

(IE there’s tons of empirical evidence that isotropic constancy is an illusion, but religious-like behavior in physics ignores the irrefutable voluminous evidence to support a misunderstanding that is just 100 year long habit of preferred metaphysics with NO EMPIRICAL UNDERPINNING)

If you first believe relative simultaneity is physically real (which is just different expression of isotropic constancy and therefore is a belief in constancy) then you can assert that all one-way tests of light’s constancy are invalid because of the effects of …constancy. (in it’s alternative form as relative simultaneity)

That is why one-way speed of light tests are said to have never been accomplished! (even though the results falsify constancy)

It’s clear and obvious circular reasoning.

…and it’s against Einstein’s claims and contrary to general relativity!

Would you like to know more about this interesting faith-based belief system infecting physics?

History of the NeoClassical Interpretation of Quantum and Relativistic Physics (PDF)

Want to understand relativity better?

Below is old laymen’s-terms understanding of the difference between Minkowski-type relativity and Lorentz’s original relativistic aether written some years ago.

The difference ISN’T Mathematical… but the metaphysics determine the application of the exact same math and the interpretation of what it means.

Relativity Demystified

Creation time: Jul 15, 2020 08:48 PM PDT

 

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Perhaps no one explained it to you properly with a comparison?

If you’re on a train traveling nearly the speed of a bullet and pass a person on the ground who fires a gun in the same direction as you pass, you’ll see the bullet riding beside you just barely creeping ahead.

If you are on a train travelling nearly the speed of light, and they fire a laser as you pass, instead of seeing the front of the laser beam barely creeping past, it still goes by you at the full speed of light!

If you were on the train thinking intuitively, you’d guess “Hey, given my speed, that fellow on the ground must measure that light out there as going nearly double speed!”

…but he measures it as travelling the normal speed from his perspective too. This gives you a location mismatch in regular 3D reality for the front end of the light. That’s a paradox for reality to conflict in that way. The front end of the light can’t be in two different places at the same time. (so we redefined what time means)

Therefore that is why we now say the world is 4D; to allow for different versions of the world to exist for different people traveling at different speeds. We call these conflicts in the 3D world “relative simultaneity.”

If you dislike the idea of using math tricks to represent a conflicting world, you’re not alone!

The origin of relativity is the Lorentz transform which Henrik Lorentz designed to represent an illusion. That same math was ported in by Einstein as a basis for advancing electromagnetism in 1905 (he was building on top of prior art) but then Minkowski created a convention in 1907 which assumed that the topical appearance of the illusion was the actual reality. (thus reinterpreting Lorentz’s math trick as a new way of seeing reality)

This is a matter of metaphysics (opinion) that has never been decided experimentally. (One-way speed of light - Wikipedia)

It is basically the same as believing David Blaine really can rip out his own beating heart because it’s the most economical explanation and thus any inference of unseen devices must fall to Occam’s razor (just like aether) as non-empirical speculation.

“Space without ether is unthinkable.” - Albert Einstein 1920 (many years after relativity)

Einstein understood the constancy of light was not a tenable concept and so he taught against it for many years repeatedly stating that the concept must be abandoned, but his mentor, a very central and popular figure in the scientific community of the day, Hermann Minkowski, abruptly died after creating the confusion and Einstien tried to be subtle in disrespecting this superior figure’s work. (relativity didn’t yet become popular until the late 1920s)

…so, while there is an alternative interpretation of relativity and the current one is just a metaphysical preference, teaching habits, fashion, hero worship, politics, and time can often turn opinion into “hard science.”

Lorentz-Poincare relativistic aether is mathematically equivalent, has all the same features, but in it, it is understood that constancy and relative simultaneity is an illusion and the world doesn’t need additional dimensions because it doesn’t have to conflict if you understand what the original math was intended to represent.

It provides a description of the little mechanisms hiding under the illusionist’s shirt that allows him to do magic (explains the mechanics that makes light speed constancy and all the paradox make sense)

If you’d like to better understand the history, read this paper:

History of the NeoClassical Interpretation of Quantum and Relativistic Physics

If you’d like to better understand the illusion, these three blog posts below are a little guide with pictures etc, to explain how it initially worked and what Lorentz was describing with that math of his that Einstein used.

Relativity Demystified

Creation time: Oct 06, 2020 05:11 PM PDT

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According to Special Relativity(SR), No. However...

 

The precursor to relativity was Lorentz Ether Theory(LET) and it was a fully mechanistic theory. (light was a wave in a medium) It was neo-classical in that way and there was an intuitive reason for time effects and the contraction effect that fit into a classical mind-set. There was also an inferred universal frame of aether, therefore all motion was relative to this frame and a "full stop" would be possible. (Even light was governed by the medium such that light-speed constancy still existed but was a physical illusion)

 

What it means is that, while Lorentz never speculated about a frame that could not be detected according to his theory, there would not only be time-dilation and length contraction, there would also be time contraction and length dilation in equal measure. (because some people could be travelling slower than you)

 

So, though the calculations are precisely the same between SR and LET, the way the math is applied means there was no apparent version of the twins paradox in LET because one of them is definitely moving according to the medium and though one of them experiences the commonly understood "time slowing" effects of SR the other has an equal and opposite reaction.

 

The travelling twin looks backwards at the other twin that he insists is moving but the other tins time is contracted and his length is dilated. The stationary twin looks through a telescope to see the moving twin squished and moving in slow-motion, while the moving twin looks through his telescope and sees the stationary twin all stretched out and zipping around.

 

So while many people think there is little difference between SR and LET, this little known difference between the two is actually quite a large conceptual difference.

 

(It's a little known fact that early in the history of SR, the "time-contraction/length dilation" inverted calculation was considered an equally valid interpretation of the theory)

Creation time: Oct 04, 2013 09:07 AM PDT

 

 

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Numerous times Einstein used the idea of Aether as a tool for explanation. Make no mistake, he did not believe there was a specific medium for light that behaved like a conventional physical medium, he simply used it as a tool to describe space-time.

 

When you look a the curvature diagram typically shown I think it is a less intuitive way to describe space-time than an aether model. Neither model accurately represents space-time but when attempting to conceive something outside of experience you need something that is halfway between.

 

Think of space-time as a gas for a moment and then imagine that space-time curvature is just a change in pressure. IE this "aether" of space-time becomes more stretched out and sparse closer to a planet.

 

Then it is simple to think of it just like a reverse of the gradient of air pressure on the earth. Air pressure around a balloon is greater on the bottom than on the top so the balloon goes up. Space-time around an object in a gravitational field is denser away from the gravity source than closer to it, so an object is pushed toward the gravitational source.

 

Clocks behave like barometers. Less pressure and they run slower. There are still some inconsistencies in this model when attempting to describe non-simultaneity but it is, at least, more intuitive for describing space-time curvature.

 

This model should allow you to picture space-time in a 3-dimensional fashion. The fourth dimension can simply then be viewed as the numerical representation of pressure.

 

Creation time: Apr 27, 2013 09:40 AM PDT

 

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We know for sure that we don't know yet.

 

While strings have been mentioned here, that's only one theory. Some argue that string theory has as many solutions are there are atoms in the universe and is therefore meaningless. This is only one of a number of valid criticisms (doubts). This doesn't invalidate the theory utterly, it just sheds light on the fact that we really should be calling these things Hypotheses since they are so far from having any real validation. They are just protoscience and shouldn't be taken too seriously since they are works in progress.

 

Perhaps you've heard the recent news about the Higgs Boson being possibly discovered? While it's not really a "made-of" per se as much as it is a "fundamental mediator" issue, right now, the Higgs Boson might be the closest idea to "what space-time is made of" that a large number of people are sort of agreeing on.

 

Since we're going far afield, the truth is that there are even models of space-time based on fluid dynamics that solve a lot of problems by eliminating the huge undetectable universe of Dark this and Dark that. Since this breaks standard model, people really hate the idea but the emotional response is no reflection on its ability to solve problems.

 

The idea literally turns the universe inside out with space-time being the solid and matter being the ephemeral bubbles in it. Probably the biggest thing disliked about it is the fact that it sounds an awful lot like Aether theory and we just can't have that come up again.

 

Any big question always asks whats smaller or what came before and we always have a floor or ceiling that is current and there's always some scientist getting egg on their face by insisting we've hit bottom but the truth is that we just don't know how far it goes.

 

Currently, the answer is that space-time is made of space-time.

 

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If you'd like an analogy to get you a little closer to something intuitive, think of it this way:

 

Let's say for a moment that time depends on the speed of a wave in a medium. For instance let's base the ticks of clock on sound waves. Like a pendulum we bounce sound back and forth between two places to measure a second.

 

Well, it just so happens that the speed of sound is determined by the density of air and so, since air is denser at sea level than on a mountain, our clock will tick faster as we get closer to ocean level.

 

Now, while this isn't strictly correct for relativity, it may be helpful to think of space-time being less dense near massive objects and therefore causing light speed (the electromagnetic interactions of atoms) to be "slower" closer to a massive object.

 

The analogy is a bit clunky but perhaps it will make a halfway point for you to get the idea of space-time being stretched and causing time effects.

Creation time: Jul 26, 2013 05:09 AM PDT

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Anti-matter is something we figured "must exist" in an opposite charge configuration to matter because there's no reason in modern physics for it not to. We think we created a hyper minute amount of it for a super-tiny period of time but that's somewhat "debate-able".

 

Dark matter is the mathematical error of General Relativity that we decided to ignore collectively. We looked out into the universe and compared GR to how the universe really works, (rotational speed of galaxies) and nope, it was waaay wrong. So instead of deciding, "Hey GR isn't right", we invented magical no-see-ums fairy dust to make up the difference.

 

Now we've decided the most abundant thing in the universe is something we can't detect in any fashion. You just gotta have faith, because that's just good science.

 

Dark matter is the exact mathematical amount General Relativity is wrong by on galactic scales that is too small to easily detect on solar system scales. (billions of solar systems in a galaxy = billions of tiny errors compounded)

Creation time: Jul 28, 2013 12:38 PM PDT

 

 

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According to Special Relativity(SR), No. However...

 

The precursor to relativity was Lorentz Ether Theory(LET) and it was a fully mechanistic theory. (light was a wave in a medium) It was neo-classical in that way and there was an intuitive reason for time effects and the contraction effect that fit into a classical mind-set. There was also an inferred universal frame of aether, therefore all motion was relative to this frame and a "full stop" would be possible. (Even light was governed by the medium such that light-speed constancy still existed but was a physical illusion)

 

What it means is that, while Lorentz never speculated about a frame that could not be detected according to his theory, there would not only be time-dilation and length contraction, there would also be time contraction and length dilation in equal measure. (because some people could be travelling slower than you)

 

So, though the calculations are precisely the same between SR and LET, the way the math is applied means there was no apparent version of the twins paradox in LET because one of them is definitely moving according to the medium and though one of them experiences the commonly understood "time slowing" effects of SR the other has an equal and opposite reaction.

 

The travelling twin looks backwards at the other twin that he insists is moving but the other tins time is contracted and his length is dilated. The stationary twin looks through a telescope to see the moving twin squished and moving in slow-motion, while the moving twin looks through his telescope and sees the stationary twin all stretched out and zipping around.

 

So while many people think there is little difference between SR and LET, this little known difference between the two is actually quite a large conceptual difference.

 

(It's a little known fact that early in the history of SR, the "time-contraction/length dilation" inverted calculation was considered an equally valid interpretation of the theory)

Creation time: Oct 04, 2013 09:07 AM PDT

 

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We'll assume you already know that time is affected by motion. According to relativity, someone moving with respect to you will count less time on their clock than you.

 

A simple answer is incorrect but leads to the theory. The reason Lorentz derived what is called the change factor (the amount that other person is different by) is based upon a wave's motion through a medium. This is called a mechanical wave because it's just a compression of some substance they used to call ether. (very different from modern theory of light)

 

A mechanical wave always goes a specific speed related to its medium which is why the waves in your cup of coffee in your car move according to the coffee not the road outside.

 

Well, now imagine that you're out on a boat in the ocean and you're measuring how long it takes for one wave to pass your boat. If you're moving through the medium (the water) it might take a shorter or longer time for the wave to pass because the waves move the same speed in the medium so you can catch up to them or go through them quickly.

 

If you've ever watched a pond you know waves can go all different directions through each other at the same time. If there were two sets of waves go straight at and through each other and you were travelling toward one set and away from the other set of waves then as you measured how long a wave took to pass your boat, the ones going your way might take a very long time and the ones you're heading into would zip right past.

 

Now imagine for a moment that light was a mechanical wave in a medium like they used to think. It's just like the water waves we've been talking about. If you know that all interactions in the universe are waves and particularly electromagnetic waves (light) then you've got to figure that when you push on one atom and it then pushes on the next, the forces that hold them apart and allow them to push each other must also travel in waves.

 

This means there's a time delay at the very smallest levels. A super-extra-crazy-tiny delay... but it's there. (there's no such thing as perfectly rigid) Even the gears in a clock have to flex a little and that has to spread from atom to atom.

 

Here's the kicker:

If you're that boat (or anything) moving through that medium and you need to interact with something distant (say the front of the boat from the back) with waves that have to travel through the stationary medium, the time that communication takes is going to be very different from a stationary boat.

 

What does all this mean? Two atoms (front and back of the boat) are travelling through a medium and then try to push and pull on each other with waves that can only move a certain speed that is related to the medium. That total interaction (even though the return trip may be real fast) will always end up greater (take more time) than two stationary atoms the same distance apart.

 

The point is that even the electrical impulses firing in your brain are electromagnetic and travel in waves and are therefore governed by the speed of light. But when you are moving even though the speed of the wave doesn't change in its medium, the time it takes for a wave to traverse a moving gap will. If you increase the total time for all atomic interactions, you've changed time. IE a moving clock ticks slower. (because the wave from behind had to catch up the front of the boat)

 

Once you add relativity and remove the medium the story changes quite a bit but many of the principles remain the same. It's really a matter of flipping the situation around a bit but that's a story for a different time.

 

The take away is that motion is relative to light and light is a wave, therefore relativity says that time is affected because of the way the numbers add up.

Creation time: Sep 26, 2013 09:32 AM PDT

 

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If you're looking for a causal chain you're going to have to look further than modern physics. They always use the excuse that questions of "why" are "meta-physics" or philosophical in nature. There is a general attitude of "shut up and calculate" whenever you point out that they fail to provide further causes. It's a convenient tool to shame people into not questioning.

 

Imagine if spontaneous generation was still a theory today. They'd tell you the number of worms a piece of meat would produce, average fly production, the ratio of fly weight of flies produced to original rotting meat weights at different stages.(their math would be flawless and genuinely accurate) And each time you attempted to ask about the process before the worms emerge they would refer to how accurate their models are of what is happening and blow you off as asking absurd questions of meta-physics.

 

Ask why particles entangle. Ask why spac-etime is bent. Ask why particles are indeterminate. Ask a number of questions and you'll find that science at its core is pure unadulterated faith that they defend in the same way that faith and dogma is always defended: Anger, indignance, shaming, snubbing, ridicule etc.

 

Allow me to answer your [Go back to the top]

 

Space behaves like a fluid, perhaps a super fluid or a liquid crystal.

 

The idea of waves without a medium is magical nonsense and there are massive volumes of peer reviewed evidence against it. There are hordes of nobel prize winners and science "giants" who (now forgotten to history)pointed out the absurdity of light speed constancy and a medium-free transmission of light.

 

The problem is that the theories which espouse these absurdities are based upon tremendous volumes of prior art and replicable observations. There are real truths which make up the body of these theories with some horrifically nonsense assumptions wound in. (baby and bathwater) The evidence is so enormous, credible and voluminous that it's hard to believe its been so thoroughly quashed by dogma, but dogma is a basic human instinct that has ruled us for tens of thousands of years. The consensus of this particular dogma peaked about thirty or forty years ago so only digging through history reveals the truth which cannot be found in modern texts.

 

Here is a quote from one of my favorite credible sources. The inventor of the atomic clock and the man responsible for our current most precise measurement of the speed of light, Louis Essen (He probably knows a little huh?)

 

"No one has attempted to refute my arguments, but I was warned that if I persisted I was likely to spoil my career prospects. …the continued acceptance and teaching of relativity hinders the development of a rational extension of electromagnetic theory." - Louis Essen F.R.S., "Relativity and time signals", Wireless World, oct78, p44. ‘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.’

Creation time: Dec 06, 2013 06:09 PM PST

 

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According to special relativity (SR), when you sped up, your time (according to the place you left) slowed down and according to your new perspective, the distance between points shrank.

 

So you must remember that the time you experienced and the time they experienced is completely different. Even the distance you traversed is different.

 

 

Now here's the important part:

 

Do you care why we came up with such an absurd idea? Or do you just swallow whatever is handed to you by your "betters"?

 

If you do care about mechanism and refuse to swallow any type of magical thinking no matter what authority shoves it down your throat, then you'll want to read about the history of the theory which is summarized in laymen's terms here: Relativity Demystified

 

And in the end you'll see that the mathematical basis of SR which was called "Lorentz Ether Theory" is a description of an illusion in which this newer theory (SR) accepted the surface illusion as truth and threw away the underlying mechanical cause of the effect.

 

It's a really entertaining set of effects that make perfect sense mechanically when you understand the underlying mechanisms that Lorentz was modeling but it makes absolutely no sense without that context. (which you are never given in school)

 

It's like looking at an illusionist on stage and accepting that the spear really did go through his chest because it is against the rules of science to speak about what you cannot observe and you'll never be allowed back-stage. (This is literally the consensus excuse used to accept the illusion as truth in SR)

 

Then, after you understand this, you find out that the original experiment that Lorentz was modelling, the Michelson-Morley experiment, was not actually null but the readings were misinterpreted.

 

• Michelson specifically commented only about readings representing an east/west direction instead of his maximum reading which was north-westerly.

• He commented about the reading size instead of speed it meant. Crucially, it detected a speed one-third the expectation but a second order effect is non-linear so the reading for that speed is not also one-third the reading size of the expected reading size. (device readings apposed to what they translate to, make the story quite different)

• It was not only non-null, the readings were non-random; they consistently and repeatedly showed precisely the pattern expected: a dual sine wave for 360 degree turn.

 

Then you find out that the guy who blocked Einstein's nobel for relativity repeated that experiment tens of thousands of times over a 30 year period and found consistent, reliable results that varied in a pattern that repeated according to the time of the year and the proximity to the sun. (and won a prize from the AAAS for proving the aether wind but you've never heard of him)

 

Then you find out that all the replications of that experiment after his (Dayton Miller), are fundamentally flawed and use monochromatic light whereas the original Michelson and all of Miller's experiment use white light. (and thereby avoid numerous problems such as lock-in and unequal path lengths)

 

...and then, after thinking about the fact that all theoretical scientists admit that a revolution is necessary, you start finding out that numerous scientists are using fluid dynamics to solve most of the problems of science. (specifically a super-fluid like Maxwell proposed for the aether)

 

...and then upon seeing how un-believably obvious all this is, you try talking to some of the people in field and after much frustration you figure out that sociology of scientific knowledge is far more of an influence than rational thought in the process of "determination of truth" used by the vast majority of humans. (but only after being treated like garbage for having a mind of your own)

 

Then you start quoting Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions and ending posts with quotes like this one:

 

"Science advances one funeral at a time" - Max Planck

Creation time: Sep 11, 2015 06:37 PM PDT

 

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Poignant question with only very complicated (and often conflicting) answers.

While most people would say that space-time itself is not dilated, the truth is that the whole coordinate system is altered so they are intimating there is a separation between the coordinate system and space-time. (without meaning to do so)

Space-time having some separate existence outside of simply the coordinate system describing it is an ontological question that hails back to the classical concept of the aether.

Many experts would insist that there is no separation of coordinate system and some underlying thing called spacetime, while others will remember the history of Einstein’s explication of Mach’s idea of an average of universal gravitation providing a preferred frame that could be called aether.

“Recapitulating, we may say that according to the general theory of relativity space is endowed with physical qualities; in this sense, therefore, there exists an ether. According to the general theory of relativity space without ether is unthinkable; for in such space there not only would be no propagation of light, but also no possibility of existence for standards of space and time (measuring-rods and clocks), nor therefore any space-time intervals in the physical sense. But this ether may not be thought of as endowed with the quality characteristic of ponderable media, as consisting of parts which may be tracked through time. The idea of motion may not be applied to it.” -Albert Einstein, University of Leiden, 1920

So first we must give the shortest and most mainstream answer we can under the circumstances. (but to tell you that, I’ve gotta tell you this)

We’ll limit the discussion to Special Relativity and inertial frames for the sake of expediency. When an object travels through spacetime, it only does so with respect to another object and perspective. (another coordinate system) If the object you think is moving is not accelerating then according to its own perspective, it’s completely still and you are actually the one moving.

The important factor in this discussion is not simply the difference of clock speeds (time dilation), nor is it the difference in measuring sticks, (length contraction) it is something called relative simultaneity. This topic is one the vast majority of people do not understand well, and this includes those who are well trained in the subject of relativity. (it is an additional and separate effect from time dilation / clock speeds)

This effect is why we call it “spacetime.” There is an inextricable link between the two in Einstein's relativity such that traversing space actually traverses time. When you traverse space you also end up in a different time: Often a different simultaneous moment as well, but the point is that you can no longer give simple space coordinates with an additional time that is disconnected from the space. When it is a specific time at a specific place, it may not be the same time in another location.

They are utterly locked together as one thing.

When you think of other places in the universe, you think of “now” here and “now” there as the same thing. This is completely incorrect in the theory of relativity when two objects are moving with respect to each other.

The time here may be simultaneous with what we’d normally think of as “the future” there. EG: If two observers very far apart were not moving with respect to one another then the naive (normal) idea of simultaneous is correct. However if you were in a spaceship passing by one observer toward the other, the actual moment you are simultaneous with is in what both of the other two would think of as the future of the distant observer while being the normal naive idea of simultaneous with the observer you are passing.

The video below explains it better than text alone could ever do.

https://youtu.be/vrqmMoI0wks?t=2...

Um, wow, do I really have to know all that weirdness just to get an answer to a pretty simple straight forward question?

If you want to understand the answer instead of just accepting it carte blanche then the answer is an emphatic yes. (and especially if you wish to argue with it then you better really know it)

The answer to your question is this:

• Just like looking at an object moving at an angle past you (not perpendicular) will appear shortened, so too will an object travelling at a significant portion of light speed will be shortened because it is travelling at an angle to you through spacetime.

• Even if the object appears to be moving through three dimensions perpendicular to you, it is moving through the fourth dimension at an angle so it is distorted in your three dimensional coordinate system.

As you can see, if you have understood the above information about relative simultaneity and the link between space and time, the answer is meaningless nonsense without that information.

Unfortunately, at this point, if you have gone through all the mental acrobatics necessary to follow, it is easy to think that I have given you a rational mechanical reasoning. It is, however, a very long and abstruse set of presumptions which closely mimics various religious methods of explaining natural phenomena.

There are holes in this mainstream explanation that you could drive a semi-truck through but the complexity of the story is such that it is difficult to point them out because of the level and number of presumptions inherent in them.

It is mainstream metaphysics but metaphysics nonetheless and is therefore open to numerous cognitive biases.

Wait, what? Are you saying you don’t even believe what you just told me? Are you mad? What the heck do you even believe?

There is a simpler explanation of the cause of time dilation and length contraction that existed before Einstein’s version of relativity.

In Lorentz’s version of relativity, there was time dilation and length contraction and even the illusion of light speed constancy. (even an illusion of relative simultaneity) The reason these things happened were purely wave mechanics and the central calculation of relativity (the Lorentz factor) was a description/model of aether’s effect on light when an observer was in motion.

While the math is basically the same, the interpretation of relativity that Lorentz originally based that math upon had no paradoxes and the only strangeness was the difference in clock speeds which also has a very intuitive and mechanical explanation.

Once again, we are speaking of metaphysics, but I personally believe that the only superiority that humans have over computers is not ability with maths or strength and quantity of memory but our ability to understand.

It is out meta-analysis that is the essence of understanding and allows real invention. Math provides proof or falsification; metaphysics provides understanding and application.

If you’d like more information on the subtle differences between Lorentz’s original relativity and Einstein’s subsequent version, read the following:

Relativity Demystified

What you’ll find is that there is a very good reason Einstein eventually tried to promote an idea of the aether. There were social factors including Einstein’s relationship with Minkowski that led to the dominance of one interpretation over another. The “no aether” metaphysics dominated because of social factors alone.

The difference between Lorentz’s relativity and Einsteins is so small they have long been called “mathematically indistinguishable” but when each is extended and applied to numerous situations, the differences become ever more magnified.

Creation time: Feb 15, 2017 02:16 AM PST

 

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Flat space is an idealization that doesn’t necessarily really exist anywhere in the universe. It is, however, the idea of space and time that was used previous to Einstein.

Let’s build it up from classical ideas which are more intuitive and easily digested.

One of the easiest first concepts that can help with the idea of curved space is fluid density. Since that’s not necessarily much more intuitive to everyone, let’s try some other analogies:

If you were to imagine space as an elastic jello-like substance, you could think of how part of it could be pulled towards a point and how the stretching would make it be different from one place to the other. The concept is, perhaps something between jello, rubber and an accordion. Massive bodies would tend to suck at the substance thus it would have low density near the object and a gradual return to normal density further away.

By simple buoyancy-like effects of seeking the least resistance, we have gravity in this concept.

But wait, so far we haven’t described the time effects or really why we’d speak of curvature instead of just density.

We will cover exactly how curvature is radically different from normal intuitive physical models but we must build the whole picture first.

With this classical model, we can also have some time effects that are intuitive. If one idealizes the idea of density as being directly related to rigidity, and therefore wave speed, then one would assume that the speed of light would be slower near massive objects because of the lower density. (only in this classical analogy, not modern physics)

If we assumed, like they did just before Einstein, that all particle interactions were entirely mediated by electromagnetic signals, then it follows that every effect would be slowed as well. Everything from the workings of your brain to the turning of gears rely on particles being able to “communicate” their position to each other to be able to react to any changes. Ergo, slower light = slower time.

Now we have time occurring faster in satellites than on the ground just like in modern experiments.

But we have STILL not gotten to curved spacetime!

The crucial difference between a classical aether theory (even when extended like above) that is fundamentally different from General Relativity (GR), is the conjoining of space an time necessary because of the relativity of simultaneity found in Special Relativity (SR).

Few laymen understand that in GR, to be in a different place in a gravitational field is also to be in a different time. Even this simple previous sentence makes little sense without a lot of explanation.

A real 4th dimension, relative simultaneity and spacetime unity.

In the example above it is easy to conceive of spacetime curvature as density and one can conceive of time occurring differently along that gradient but now we must add the final component that differentiates the classical from the modern: Relative simultaneity.

When you think of a single instant in time, if you are like most people, you think of “now” independent of location. If it’s now here, you feel like it’s the same moment everywhere in the universe.

That is a flat spacetime, specifically in the time coordinate. That’s simply not true according to relativity. Some places, according to their speed and gravitational potential, with respect to you, can exist in something that, when viewed from a distance, is in a different time. If you were to move there to their location, however, the difference of their location in time would disappear.

These are consequences of a a system in which the 3rd dimension and time are tied together in very fundamental ways. In any classical system, even with time ticking faster or slower as described above, one does not require space and time to be joined into “spacetime.”

That is still an extremely confusing concept so we can now start using Einstein’s rubber sheet analogy.

Curvature of spacetime is not just curvature of space which impacts the rate of time, but it is literally a curvature of one’s location in the timeline. This “location in the timeline” part, which initially comes from SR, is where creative types have inferred sci-fi concepts of time travel.

To understand how curved spacetime is different from flat spacetime we need to reduce three dimensions down to only two so we can discuss Einstein’s rubber sheet analogy.

When we think of one moment on earth, let it be represented as a single flat plane or sheet. Let’s imagine that sheet of flat time extending all the way across the solar system with little pictures of the planets and the sun. Each moment is another sheet stacked on top of the previous.

So far, this analogy represents the flat spacetime concept we are all born with. One moment here is the same simultaneous moment as over there. Let the flatness of these sheets of time represent the flatness of our idea of simultaneous.

Since we know that the sheets stack up as time moves forward we can think of this Z axis of the stack as time’s progression. If we want to draw a line to the future on earth, we would see a line going straight up through the stack of sheets right through all the copies of earth on each sheet.

If we drew a line directly to the same moment on the sun, our line would be on only one sheet going directly over to the sun on the same sheet. Finally if we wanted to draw a line from the current moment to a future moment on the sun, the line would cut up through all the sheets, at an angle, to reach the sun on a different sheet from our starting point.

Finally, now the genius of Einstein’s rubber sheet analogy is revealed.

Let us think of only one of these sheets for the moment and it is made of rubber. It sinks down near the sun, but for this explanation let’s ignore that same stretchy effect near the earth, just for simplicity.

Now, if we remember that time is a stack of these rubber sheets, when we imagine our old flat and naive idea of a single simultaneous instant in time, we would normally draw a flat line straight out from the earth toward the sun. Now that those sheets of time are curved, our flat line idea of “right now this instant” cuts through the bowing stack of sheets to a version of the sun that is not on the same sheet as we are. It’s on a sheet much further up in the stack that has bowed down to be level with us.

It was special relativity and the subsequent joining of space and time (which, historically speaking, could be attributed to Minkowski) which allows us to model reality in this way.

The rubber sheet analogy is one of the few ways to really communicate the crucial difference between flat space and curved spacetime. The curvature exists not only in space (and therefore the ticking of clocks) but also within time itself.

Creation time: Mar 20, 2017 01:36 AM PDT

 

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The classical conception of time dilation leads to the most intuitive conceptualization.

While I am a neoclassicist and support Lorentz’s preferred frame mechanics AKA “aether,” you can simply remove the aether and the explanation is basically the same for relativity, it just lacks mechanism. (the reason I deprecate relativity)

1. In the classical model, all waves must have a medium because a wave is an action occurring to something and cannot stand alone. An ocean wave doesn’t exist without the water.

2. All physical phenomena occur because of and are mediated by elastic electromagnetic interaction. There is no such thing as a perfectly rigid rod. Push on one end and that push must propagate particle by particle in a wave to the other end.

3. Electromagnetism is light in all its various frequencies, therefore all processes are governed by the speed of light.

When one atom pushes another, it never actually touches but the forces propagate to each other as electromagnetic waves. This happens at the speed of light.

What would happen if two atoms were attempting to interact but were in motion in a line such that when the rear atom tried to push on the forward atom, it sent it’s signal toward that forward atom upstream? Since that forward atom is running away from the signal, it would take longer for the signal to arrive. Given that interaction is a two-way street, the signal sent back gets there faster than normal because the rear atom runs into.

Therefore going upstream, the signal travels further and downstream it travels a shorter distance, but this is not a cancellation and the overall round trip ends up being longer.

If electromagnetic interaction mediates all interaction from the transfer of torque in the gears of a clock, to the chemical messenger system in your brain… and all those interactions take a little longer when you’re in motion..

Then when you’re in motion, your time is dilated.

 

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Truthfully there is no explicit restriction in direction given by modern understanding of special relativity, only relative direction. Two observers in motion are moving through time at different angles. There is a limitation of the angle between the two, but a little known geometric consequence of this is the consideration of a third observer could allow a direct addition to the angle. Or more specifically, no popular accounts have adequately considered and/or treated the necessity of applying a limitation. (but I’ll take a stab at it)

First consideration leads us to the fat that there is relativistic addition of velocities in special relativity that keeps us from adding the speed difference between the first and second directly to the difference between the second and third. IE: 99% c + 99% c <> 198% c

A digression on block universe.

Let’s first stipulate that the “block universe” is a requirement of relative simultaneity and the only meaningful way in which light cones and the various directions through time make any sense at all. If one accepts all the other axioms and tools of special relativity, one must inevitably accept this viewpoint. This block universe inherently gives a definite vector for forward time because the lines of simultaneity are specifically defined. The angles are not willy-nilly but represent real definite mathematical consequences and in a block universe they are a specific deviation from “forward time.” The question however, is if the actual vector of “forward time” is relative or not.

I recommend the whole video below but the relevant part starts around 17:45

https://youtu.be/OTTCqnEnz6g?t=1...

So, this inevitable consequence of the theory leads to other inevitable consequences dealing with the direction of time.

The direction of time?

In the visualizations in the above video, there is an inferred forward time but it is for one particular idea of simultaneity and therefore one particular vector of time. When they explain lines of simultaneity drawn are drawn at different angles, they are also explaining that vectors of forward time are at different angles. (perpendicular to the lines of simultaneity)

Minkowski gave us conventions that allow us to geometrically model the relationship of light and time as a 45 degree cone. As we observe an object moving very close the speed of light, we also see it approach the edge of this light cone. That is to say that it is progressing along a vector through time that is physically different. This means very particular things about relative simultaneity and the progression of time. Therefore it provides another real vector with respect to forward time. (or one particular perspective’s “forward time” vector)

However, if the difference between A and B creates a 44 degree angle through time, and the angle between B and C is also 44 degrees we might have a serious problem. The relativistic addition of velocities makes us immediately believe the angle between A and C must also be limited in the same way, but this extremely ad hoc assumption actually creates a conflict in the mathematical consequences of time having a vector.

IE: When we compare two versions of simultaneity we establish real positions within the block of time for events and real vectors for “forward time” of each frame that are concrete. The light cones of these two vectors overlap but are not pointing the same direction.

This leads to the consequence that Einstein identified in OEMB, that light is more like a property than a normal event because it “ we shall, however, find in what follows, that the velocity of light in our theory plays the part, physically, of an infinitely great velocity”

IE: The light cone of any one observer does not define a real vector through time for light itself.

Therefore there is no reason that light must travel at a given angle through the block universe if time is truly purely relative without a universal frame of reference.

Ergo if there is no universal reference frame, and the forward time vector is truly relative, then some light and some observer’s light cones and therefore vector for forward time, should point backwards from another.

Enter General Relativity, Einstein’s Aether, and Mach’s principle. (Or the cosmic microwave background)

Thankfully, general relativity does infer preferred reference frames and is no longer truly universally “relative.” The general theory of relativity does give a preferred frame, therefore there is a universal vector for forward time as well. Light itself must also be limited by this preferred frame as well and therefore special relativity is an overly idealized version of relativity that is limited to a special case which exists only mathematically and not in reality.

Okay, that’s how the theory works out but it seems like the question is still unanswered…

The whole of these properties infers a gestalt that suggests that the speed of light is simply a measure of how we view the geometric layout of how energy and matter interact in the universe. Why we experience time at all, is not really addressed.

Unfortunately there’s no very compelling reason anyone has come up with for why we should experience the passage of time in the direction we do.

One might suggest that QM interpretations such as “many worlds” might suggest there is more matter amongst all the the various realities splitting off forward from a given moment and that bends time in that direction, but this is purely speculation at best and nonsense at worst.

Most all fundamental questions of reality run into an infinite regression problem. You can either end that regression with “I/we don’t know” or with [insert religion].

I choose “We don’t know.”

Creation time: Mar 25, 2017 09:51 PM PDT

 

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You first need to know the history of the theory prior to Einstein or it’s all magic.

Most people in the field don’t think in terms of mechanism. They just accept the theory as a bottom level truth. (in my book that’s called faith) That, of course, begs the question of how one rationally “figured out” something that had nothing underneath it.

You can just pile one magical belief upon another and presume that Einstein had some unfathomable spark of genius about the universe, (AKA divine revelation) or you can start digging.

The only rational way one could come to a conclusion about an action or type of change without understanding any underlying phenomena is to take one carte blanche effect which you do not understand but know is true from experiment and then calculate all the surrounding effects by extension.

This is what Einstein did. But he inherited it from someone who did understand: Henrik Lorentz.

Lorentz Ether Theory (LET) is where the central beating heart of relativity came from.

LET has length contraction, time dilation and the illusion of light speed constancy. It has purely rational and mechanical classical reasoning at it’s heart that is easily understood. The one thing that tells us exactly what is changing and how, is the change factor. It is the most singular representation of relativity and Lorentz figured it out, not Einstein.

Lorentz created a set of maths that model how light and physical bodies act in an aether (modern spelling) environment if the Michelson-Morley experiment was taken to be occurring in an aether wind. It is a model of how reality could hide the effects of that aether wind.

He did this at the suggestion of George Fitzgerald who first understood that. if the aether strengthened the bonds between particles in the direction it flowed across them along the direction of travel (physically shortening all matter), there would be a formula that could describe this effect at every speed. The aether wind could be hidden but still having a very real effect.

“Hey! I asked about time, not length contraction and aether!”

All of these effects are part of a single system of mechanical processes. One cannot describe one effect without the others.

One must understand that what Lorentz was attempting to model was the affects of a moving medium on the waves which propagate at a fixed speed in that medium. (typical mechanical waves) Furthermore, his task was to model an interferometer moving through the aether, which would experience light beams which are attempting to “catch up to” the forward mirrors and “running quickly into” rearward mirrors. Signals would also have to travel cross-ways against the wind.

Luckily there is a simple formula which will model all this so that simply shortening the wind aligned bar of the experiment the right amount will always result in light traveling the same distance in every direction regardless of whether it is going across the wind and back, or having to “swim upstream” and back down against the wind. This “same distance in the aether” effect means that light beams always arrive back at the origin at the exact same time in a two way experiment. That amount is the change factor in both LET and relativity.

This shows the fact that the change factor works to describe the motions of a mechanical wave in a medium, even when it seems retarded or sped up because of the motion of its medium. It does this through physical shortening.

“OMG, seriously! Where’s the time in this???”

When we model this neat little system it will make the Michelson-Morley always come back null in an aether environment. When we use Lorentz’s system in which light is a regular mechanical wave in a medium, we have a little leftover effect: The experiment takes longer.

The actual time required for an electromagnetic wave to traverse the distance (and back) between two particles moving through the electromagnetic wave’s medium, will take longer to complete than if the experiment was stationary in the medium.

Now, if one simply understands that that dominant worldview of the time was an electromagnetic universe, then it is easy to conceive of time as nothing more than a measure of change. If all waves and changes to physical objects, must occur elastically and are mediated by electromagnetic waves, then a change to the communication time between two particles is a direct change to “time.”

Everything from moving a steel bar to the electron transport chain that governs the biological processes of the functioning of your brain, would be dependent upon the speed of light and, most importantly, the communication time between particles.

If that process takes longer than normal, then time in a moving frame is slowed.

This is the reason for time dilation which was ported directly over into relativity carte blanche. There is no mechanism for time dilation in special relativity because the mechanism was removed by people who didn’t understand it. They said it was removed because of Occam’s razor when that is clearly a judgement based in ignorance.

If you’d like to understand the Lorentz view and how it differs from special relativity, please enjoy the following explication with simple figures:

Relativity Demystified

Creation time: Mar 31, 2017 03:44 AM PDT

 

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Because the Lorentz factor is, at its base, just a mathematical model of a Michelson-Morley experiment moving through a medium.

Think about it like Lorentz originally did and it all becomes crystal clear.

For Lorentz, the length contraction, time dilation and apparent light constancy was all a trick nature plays on us by screwing with the lengths of things, but light was still travelling in a medium and only appeared constant according to two-way experiments. (and two-way only)

So when we think this way, the light is having to chase after the forward moving mirror to catch up with it as it moves away. Like any classical mechanical wave, moving through the medium makes us think of a wave in that medium as moving a different speed in our frame or “according-to-us-but-not-really.”

So when a Michelson experiment is going near the speed of light, the light is just creeping toward the forward mirror and once light speed is reached, light never hits the forward mirror to return to the origin, the experiment never completes, and the math describing the experiment falls apart.

This is why light speed is the universal speed limit in relativity!

Now, of course, the light is creeping toward the forward mirror but rushing much faster than normal toward the rearward mirror. (from our skewed perspective)

All the while, the path of the light along the crossways path has been travelling a wider and wider upside-down V-shape depending upon speed. This is important for understanding the answer.

Here’s where the weird non-linearity comes from.

So the trick the math Lorentz created is supposed to perform is this: To make sure that light going along the V-shape crossways… and light going upstream toward the forward mirror and back… both arrive at the origin at the exact same time and therefore travel the exact same distance in the medium. (therefore null on the Michelson-Morley experiment)

To do this he calculates the amount you have to shrink the forward facing leg which obviously has to get tiny at really high speeds and there is a weird transition point and that transition is the 45 degree mark for the beam travelling cross-ways in the V-shape! That point is .707C

Think about it geometrically a second.

This same transition point occurs in trig as well and you can just use simple trig calculation for determining the change factor in relativity because that’s all relativity is. (bet you never heard that before)

Change factor = sin(cos^1(decimal of C))

So, what exactly is causing it?

When I say 45 degrees, I’m actually speaking in terms of right triangles because I’m comparing the light path going cross-ways to the one going forward and back. If we consider the V-shape in total (up and back along the cross-wind leg) then the total angle of that V is 90 degrees at the transition point.

The 45 degrees can be seen as either one half of the crosswind path or the relationship between the along-the-wind path and the cross-wind one. (You’ll have to excuse my propensity for switching vertices at a whim.)

So, remember that the crosswind leg doesn’t get shrunk so the V just gets wider with speed. The distance of each leg of that V, however, are limited within the first 45 degree swing of each leg of the V. This is because of the limited length of the arm the mirror is attached to. Once it goes past that mark however, the V starts widening way out and the growth rate totally changes per additional degree. (as you go faster than .707C)

So, the relationship between the crosswind path’s growth rate as you go factor… and the forward-back path’s growth rate with increased speed… is totally changed at that point.

Beyond the 45 degree mark, the crosswind path is affected by forward motion more and more. The path the light is taking “cross-ways” is more and more actually upstream.

So it comes down to this: It’s a relationship of growth rates which has a transition point.

Wait, hold on, I’m talking about time dilation and length contraction, where the devil is that in all this geometric weirdness?!

The concept of time dilation comes from the idea that all changes in the universe are mediated by electromagnetic interaction. From the movement of a steel rod to the electron transport chain that governs neural processes, all the particles must interact electromagnetically.

If light has to travel further, then those processes take longer and time (occurrence of processes) is altered.

In Lorentz’s model, though the time for light to travel down either path is exactly the same, the total distance grows and therefore the time for the experiment to complete. (or for a single particle interaction) is longer in total by the change factor.

To really understand relativity, you need to understand what came before it.

So to sort-of finalize, bear in mind that the crosswind path is calculated in a very classical way and the adjustments that are occurring via Lorentz’s formula are just to match the lengths of things going along the path of motion through the medium to the path light has to travel cross-ways.

It really requires more visualizations to really grasp intuitively and those can be found in this quora blog:

Relativity Demystified

"According to the general theory of relativity, space without aether is unthinkable; for in such space there not only would be no propagation of light, but also no possibility of existence for standards of space and time (measuring-rods and clocks), nor therefore any space-time intervals in the physical sense." -Albert Einstein 1920

Creation time: Apr 14, 2017 03:16 AM PDT

 

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Einstein did not come up with the idea, so let’s discuss the history of the concept.

"The influence of the crucial Michelson-Morley experiment on my own efforts has been rather indirect. I learned of it through H.A. Lorentz's decisive investigations of the electrodynamics of moving bodies (1895) with which I was acquainted before developing the special theory of relativity. Lorentz's basic assumption of an aether at rest seemed to me not convincing in itself and also for the reason that it was leading to an interpretation of the Michelson-Morley experiment which seemed to me artifical" - Albert Einstein 1952, in a letter to Robert Shankland

The original rough idea came from George Fitzgerald as a suggestion to Hendrik Lorentz that the problem of the null Michelson-Morley experiment could be solved by the shortening of objects in the direction of travel.

Essentially it was suggested that the universe plays a trick on our perception and shortens up exactly the amount needed for us to not notice that light has to travel further in one direction than in the other.

“Further one direction than the other? What are you talking about?”

The original ideas of Relativity, both length dilation and time dilation, were descriptions of the way aether interacted with matter. You must understand the Michelson-Morley experiment to understand Lorentz’s theory and you must understand Lorentz’s theory to understand the how’s and why’s of relativity.

Michelson’s interferometer experiment was designed to detect the motion of the earth through the galaxy by detecting out motion through the aether or by detecting an effect called aether wind. It’s just like the wind outside your car window as you drive along on a placid windless day. Your motion is the cause of the wind.

It was presumed that since a wave is a word than means an action to something else, that action of waving we knew was occurring in light was occurring to some substance between the stars called aether.

The think is that, just like you can catch up to or even ride alongside an ocean wave, the waves themselves move at a given speed in their medium which you can also move through and therefore the speed of a wave compared to your perspective of moving through the substance can seem to be faster in one direction or another depending on how you are moving through that substance.

Michelson realized that if we were moving through light’s medium then if we set up a race between two light waves going two different directions, one of those two has to go further than the other.

“A race?”

Think of making swimmers race in a flowing river but since you know the distance across the river you put stakes in the ground along the river the same distance on the ground as the width of the river. If you make one swimmer go across the river and one swim upstream, have you set up a fair race? Have they gone the same distance or not?

The answer is no because the one that goes upstream has to paddle through more total water. The same thing is true of Michelson’s design but he has the swimmers (the waves) go there and back and it still turns out that the one that has to go against the wind goes further.

So here’s the illusion.

Fitzgerald’s suggestion was that because everything in the universe gets shortened up, all our perceptions would be tricked and we wouldn’t be able to tell that anything was scrunched-up in the direction of travel through the aether. He proposed that maybe forces between particles became stronger in the direction of the wind flowing across them.

Lorentz liked the idea and decided that it needed to be modeled exactly for every different possible speed because it would only make sense if the universe happened to shorten up just the right amount for every possible speed, otherwise we had to presume that the earth had some preferential treatment in the universe.

So, in response he found the Lorentz transform or more basically the Lorentz factor of change which is the central calculation of relativity that describes how much things shrink depending on speed.

What about time though; why the time change?

Think about the experiment. Once we have the shortening, the racers now both go upstream and across the river (and back) and if they swim at the same speed, they arrive back at the start at the exact same time.

…but the total time of the race is now longer than if the river wasn’t flowing.

Why does the experiment taking longer have anything to do with time?

At that point in science the belief was that the universe is totally electromagnetic in nature. Time is seen as simply how humans measure the changes of the universe. If everything is electromagnetic then everything, from the motion of gears in a clock to the electron transport chain in your brain, is governed by the forces between particles which are waves that must travel through the aether.

Then the experiment is just like the interaction of two particles and that means that every interaction between particles which just allows the to move or change in any way, takes longer to complete in total.

Therefore “time” and anything which could perceive or measure it, would take longer if it was in motion through the aether.

Ergo time must be dilated for all observers moving through the aether.

Wait, how does that fit with relativity then?

If you think about it, now in light of Lorentz’s math, it seems that light travels the same speed in all directions according to the Michelson-Moreley experiment, even though someone might be in a different sort of motion than another. Each of them measure the speed of light the same.

Einstein then took this ideal that light was constant and saw that even without the medium, if one presumes this principle is just true, time still has to be different because the mechanics of making light “constant” demand it.

The mechanics and the effects are interlocked as a system, so even if you disbelieve the aether, you must still believe in time alteration and length contraction if you believe light behaves in the way Lorentz described it and the Michelson experiment showed that it behaved. (The same speed in for all observers regardless of their motion)

Don’t be fooled by the term “constant.” The use of this term is solipsistic in nature and doesn’t represent the common-sense version of the word.

Nothing else in the universe is “constant” in the way light is. Nothing! If you associate constancy with any other phenomena, you’ve misunderstood it entirely. According to Lorentz’s illusion and therefore Einstein’s theory, light moves the same for every observer when it should obviously be different for those in different sorts of motion. (Galilean relativity is ballistic and not applicable to wave phenomena)

If light moves the same for all observers when it clearly should not, then the only explanation that works mathematically for this incongruity is Lorentz’s math that describes light.

Thus the reasoning for time dilation comes from the effects of aether on light, but people started to believe that there was no need for a medium. If there was no way to detect it then scientifically speaking, it should be removed as prescribed by Occam’s razor.

The question is whether or not you believe the effects of a substance are a detection of a substance. Later in life, Einstein understood it differently and believe that removing the aether was an impossibility. He simply presumed that we couldn’t assume all the same characteristics for it that we did before.

"According to the general theory of relativity, space without aether is unthinkable; for in such space there not only would be no propagation of light, but also no possibility of existence for standards of space and time (measuring-rods and clocks), nor therefore any space-time intervals in the physical sense." -Albert Einstein 1920, University of Leiden

Further reading on the subject here: Relativity Demystified

Creation time: May 03, 2017 12:50 AM PDT

 

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This is a subject that requires pure speculation so let’s go have fun with relativity!

If the idea is that you’re creating a warp bubble, then you’re temporarily cut off from the rest of the universe anyhow. (and that avoids a few causality problems)

If you have your own little spacetime bubble then the “curvature” of it would likely be only relative to the massive bodies within it, therefore your gravitational time dilation would be some of the smallest amounts you can get.

If you’re speaking of time dilation from travel, then theoretically, since you haven’t traveled through space, only an area of space has traveled through space and it doesn’t count as motion. There is already a precedent in modern science for this.

Objects at opposite sides of the universe are traveling away from each other at speeds that are greater than C. (No really, it’s true! I’m not joking.)

However because it is due to the expansion of space and therefore it is local areas of space traveling with respect to other space… we give it a pass and say it doesn’t count. (“no take-backsies”)

So we’d have to believe that time inside the bubble would continue at whatever rate is dictated by the initial inertial frame it left when it created the bubble regardless of where it goes or the speed that bubble travels.

Then, if we consider the relativity of simultaneity things might get weird…

Once we remove the bubble the space would join with some inertial frame again and the question is if it reappeared in a different inertial frame AND in a different location, then it would arrive in a version of simultaneity that could be considered time travel.

IE: Let’s just reduce the problem to instant travel for a moment since light-speed is no longer a consideration.

There are cases in which the moment you are simultaneous with at a distant location, according to relativity, might be considered the past or the future of that location. If you travel there instantly, you’re arrive in the future or past depending on the frame relationship (moving toward or away from each other)

This same effect occurs at all speeds of traversing the distance that are greater than light’s speed with the effect being nullified down at light speed and maximized at instant traversal.

So, in effect, faster than light travel, even when not through normal space, is basically time travel as well because of the relativity of simultaneity.

One would have to take special care to try to avoid time travel in one direction or another.

…so causality still ends up screwed anyway. But hey, ton’s of recent work coming out of quantum mechanics has been fiddling with causality recently too so I guess it’s all up for grabs huh?

(I’m a stodgy old believer in determinism and causal mechanics so pay no attention to me and my complaints.)

Creation time: May 22, 2017 01:11 AM PDT

 

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According to relativity it is possible to traverse spacetime such that one is “at an angle” to another observer along the time axis. The entire simultaneous line one cuts through the universe is shifted by speed. Therefore your time occurs at a different rate.

Imagine an x/y grid. imagine one car travelling directly x but the other one traveling at 45 degrees to x. If you only measure progress along the x axis then, even though they are travelling the same speed, the car going at an angle will not go as far in the x direction as the one going directly along it. These cars are like two people traversing time in relativity. What they think of as simultaneous is directly out their side windows. Each of them see the other as running slow compared to the direction they are going.

What is more, one can be situated such that your simultaneous moment is “in the past” with some far off place. This is normally not a problem because one can not travel faster than light to arrive in anything like the past.

This restriction is broken by a wormhole. Because it shortens the distance for the traveler, one could arrive at a space-time moment that is “in the past” at that distant location. Then, because one’s simultaneous moment can also look back at the original location as a moment “in the past” there. A quick ride back through the wormhole and viola, you’re in your own past.

It all relies on a concept called the relativity of simultaneity.

Furthermore there are other, less well known ideas about relativity and time travel.

Technically one should never be able to shift their time-like vector more than 90 degrees to another observer.

This is where some serious disagreement can come in…

When working with multiple observers, one can have spaceships like nesting dolls which can accelerate to near light speed, then launch the next ship which accelerates to near light speed compared to the last. So on and so forth such that a rational examination would assume the final ship is travelling many times the speed of light.

Relativity has a neat trick to fix it all up by simply using special math to erase the effect called the “velocity addition formula.” There’s arguable reasoning for putting this in just like there was arguable reasoning for the cosmological constant he added, then removed and they are thinking of adding again.

That trick, however, hasn’t expressly been proposed for the difference in vectors (though it could be assumed) So why not allow their time arrow to point in the opposite direction?

This would mean, however that there’s no reason why multiple things wouldn’t be going in opposite directions through the time in our universe just like things are moving at very different rates through space (some galaxies are travelling near light speed with respect to us)

So then there’s some wild speculation out there that perhaps things do travel greater than light speed and just tend to enter another dimension in which their time is in reverse to our own. IE They are converted to energy.

You can see why sci-fi authors have thought “Maybe a black hole is a portal into another dimension or opposite time…”

…then again I don’t buy any of it because I think that math can be right while interpretation (and application of maths) is completely wrong.

Relativity Demystified

There is a viewpoint in which all the math of relativity is utterly unchanged but relative simultaneity (and light speed constancy) is just an illusion created by poor conceptualization.

Creation time: Aug 02, 2017 09:11 PM PDT

 

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Yes. The original idea of time dilation came from an aether-based perspective. (and a little relativity history)

The fact of the matter is that if a material could be made to shorten in the direction of a gaseous wind(normal, not aether) at the same rate as Lorentz believed objects shortened in response to the aether wind flowing through the spaces between particles, one could construct sound clocks (like a light clock) from these materials which would measure times differently depending on their motion.

The whole set of effects mathematically described by Lorentz and then Einstein could be modeled with air and sound! The speed of sound, would then appear to behave as a constant. (this should blow your mind)

It comes down to the link between electromagnetism and interaction/change AS a measure of time.

When you model things the way that Lorentz originally did when he derived/invented length contraction and time dilation, there is a perfectly rational and mechanical reasoning for time dilation. (which doesn’t fully hold in modern theory) It just takes a little history.

It was held at the time that the universe was purely electromagnetic in nature. All the interaction that occur between particles... All the elastic deformations that happen in the metal of the gears of a clock as the forces are distributed… All of these things are mediated by and caused by electromagnetic signals between particles. Even what we now know as he electron transport chain in our brain is tied up with electromagnetic interactions, so they weren’t far off the mark by any account.

Therefore, this classical perspective gives the idea that all changes that occur in reality are tied to the speed of light.

Enter classical wave mechanics leading to time dilation.

With the perspective that light must propagate in a medium, then the speed of light in a given direction is dependent upon one’s motion through that medium. If a full interaction between particles requires a signal to go “upstream” in a wind and “downstream” then you have a perfect analogy for the Michelson-Morley experiment. One path will take longer than another so for both paths to be equal in timing, (a null reading) one leg of the trip (the one facing into the wind) must be shortened. Before shortening, the path length in the wind would be gamma^2 (Lorentz factor of change) so we simply shorten it to gamma to match the crosswind path length. Notice, however, that shortening didn’t eliminate the extra path length, it just equaled it for both directions.

The light clock is back.

If you can see how the light clock creates a longer path from one perspective than it does for another then you should understand that longer path has to be accounted for.

If the interaction signal has to travel through more space and therefore takes longer than it would in a stationary environment, then all changes in a moving frame take longer to propagate because light (electromagnetism) must travel further. Hence time itself is slowed in a moving subject’s frame.

Since their perspective itself and their perceptions are also slowed, everything seems normal within their frame.

This is why, in the analogy, even a sound-based clock could appear to give sound speed constancy (in an air wind) if the material simply shortened as Lorentz described with the factor of change. All interactions based on waves are changed by having to travel through more medium.

Illusion versus reality without math to tell the difference.

Understanding the subtle differentiation of the illusion I have described and what is held to be true by modern relativity, is a crucial factor that most people do not grasp about the constancy of light speed. Sadly, even most professors do not know the difference between the mathematical illusion created by Lorentz and constancy postulated by Einstein because those two things are mathematically indistinguishable. They show the necessary hierarchy of object language and meta-language.

I give more details in the blog posts below:

Relativity Demystified

Creation time: Aug 29, 2017 09:58 PM PDT

 

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Just like Dark Matter is the exact amount relativity was false, Dark Energy and the narrative surrounding it is special pleading.

To say that expansion doesn't count against the constancy of light is simply proof of a widespread lack of understanding of the theory. Most people who know relativity, can only regurgitate it at you and run the numbers like they are some sort of poor AI incapable of the sort of thought that separates us from machines.

To say that there is a substance expanding between objects that allows them to travel faster than light is to also say that light only travels at C within the preferred frame of that substance. That constancy only counts within the substance of spacetime. They just are ignoring how the system explained in relativity is connected within itself like a machine. You don't get to swing one part of it around without moving the parts its connected to.

The assertions they make fundamentally break the system outlined in special relativity. I find that they often do this because they’ve never understood that constancy in relativity is a property nothing in the universe has ever been described as having in before or since. It is unique. I’ve noticed that the level of ignorance on this topic within the supposedly educated is mind-blowingly high. They somehow never learned how constancy and the conjoined nature of space and time are two parts of one thing. (they never learned the “why” questions about the theory only the “how” ones)

If expanding space doesn't break constancy in one way with the simple speed between objects, it breaks it in a more fundamental way with their excuse. They are simply too ignorant of the workings of the theory they defend to be able to realize the defense given breaks the fundamentals of the theory and do not fit within it.

The revolution in physics everyone called for has finally started and people are going to look back on all this with amazement. The level of self-delusion required to uphold absurd beliefs when such a similar, easy and mathematically equivalent answer was on hand, is truly mind boggling.

Special relativity and constancy are mutually exclusive to preferred frame mechanics and we’ve found preferred frame mechanics in a thousand ways. (CMB is one glaring example) This leaves Lorentz-Poincare Ether as the superior theory even though it's mathematically equivalent. It gives more information and works with preferred frames.

Einstein taught about the necessity of aether as late as 1920 but nobody listened to his half-hearted recognition of being wrong.

"According to the general theory of relativity, space without aether is unthinkable; for in such space there not only would be no propagation of light, but also no possibility of existence for standards of space and time (measuring-rods and clocks), nor therefore any space-time intervals in the physical sense." -Albert Einstein 1920, University of Leiden

While he still didn’t believe in a superfluid like Maxwell originally used or anything physically rational, he did at least recognize that the overage gravitational arrangement of the universe defined a preferred frame.

Einstein saw this as a logical extension of an overly specialized theory, but the truth is that utterly falsifies all the extended concepts that come from it such as the truth of constancy, minowski’s aditions, the reification of the fourth dimension and relative simultaneity.

They all get completely re-interpreted and some get utterly thrown out.

Creation time: Dec 15, 2017 07:50 PM PST

 

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According to General Relativity, it MUST exist.

This is the opinion of many prominent physicists. This is not my personal opinion, but I do agree that it is a necessary presumption from the mechanics described by the consensus interpretation of general relativity. I will link to a NOVA PBS special at the bottom that explains it better than I can and interviews some of those scientists. (I personally subscribe to the Lorentz-Poincare interpretation of relativistic effects in which relative simultaneity is a mathematical illusion)

But let me briefly comment first:

Specifically the answer relates to the relativity of simultaneity and the idea of being physically oriented and travelling through time “at an angle” to some other frame.

If one can be simultaneous with the future or ast of another frame’s location,(yes that weird terminology is required) there has to be a pre-destined future that exists for that location.

All those diagrams of angles to explain things like the twins paradox have a physical meaning. You can’t just draw lines and throw around fancy equations and say “this proves it” without it conceptually matching some idea about reality. (IE you say more than you directly say)

Unfortunately one CAN throw around those numbers and compute them quite well but, just like a computer, have no clue what they are saying when they say it via those equations and numbers. This is a common occurrence within the field of physics. People mentally behave like a computer. They calculate without any understanding of what the calculation means or does at a physical level.

You may need to seek to the position in the video best for you, but here is a good place to start on the topic of the “pre-existence” of time:

https://youtu.be/9Qu9XaF2K10?t=19m

From a viewpoint of Lorentz-Poincare relativistic aether, the problem is not noticing presumptions

From here forward I must emphasize that my personal views below are contrary to consensus because they match earlier concepts created by the scientists who were just prior to Einstein in their publications.

The problem lies in the fact that Einstein/Minkowski spacetime creates a real physical nature to the 4th dimension. A full fourth dimension.

This is counter to the fact that prior to relativity, a 4D constuct was necessary to fully represent a 3D world over time. IE Multiple 3D constructs are required to represent time and therefore one sinply adds a subscript on an array to make it higher dimensional.

This 4D array is used, however, in a highly constrained way that is not required in Special Relativity. Each 3D construct is unique and without duplication. It is a full description of all viewpoints of the universe. So, in this way, when we are talking about only one moment, then the universe is 3D in that three dimensions is all we need to mathematically store it. If we want to consider the universe over time however, then classically there’s a hidden 4D requirement for “the universe over time”

In special relativity, however, three dimensions cannot fully represent one moment. An infinite number of 3D mathematical constructs is required to store a singular model of the whole of reality for one single moment. Therefore we need a fourth dimension to simply store a single moment. It’s a 4D universe.

This also means that, just like the hidden classical requirement of a 3D universe is that another dimension t represent it over time and therefore the classical concept “over-time” was 4D, the whole requirement of a 4D universe when you represent it over time is that it be 5D.

…in terms of the analogies in the video above, this means there is actually a requirement of infinite “loafs” of 4D reality to be able to represent a 4D universe over time.

It’s a problem of defining the starting relative positions “on a given 4D loaf” for the alien on the bike and the man on the bench that spirals into a Godelian infinite regression problem.

Creation time: Dec 21, 2017 06:07 PM PST

 

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If you add time to a 2-dimensional universe, does that make it a 3-dimensional universe?

Yes and No.

(and only “no” because I think you’re wanting to apply it like Einstein and Minkowski instead of Lorentz)

Great question! So let’s start with yes.

I wrote this some time ago: Understanding Dimensions Beyond Three …but I’ll try to keep from making it required reading.

Dimensions, as you have shown some understanding of, are simply the way we store information about something. If we wanted to show the way a 2D universe evolves over time we would need a 3-dimensional array to store and calculate anything about that 2D universe that occurs over a span of time.

If we think of a 2D world as a sheet of paper without borders then a 3D world with time as the additional dimension would be like a stack of those sheets of infinite height.

Each “point” along our coordinates is like a box holding something. So if it was a one-dimensional array and I want to see what was at the coordinate where x=10 it might be “red” or “chicken” or “19965223″ because 10 is just the number of a box in a numbering system.

When we use it to represent the real world then if the units are inches and we set zero at your left shoulder then x=10 would contain info about somewhere in your neck (if you’re a big guy)

So, the reason I say infinite is because the storage unit we think of as the “x” coordinate can be any number we want. The same is true of each dimension we add. The “infinite” nature is just a reflection of the abstract nature of a numbering system for our storage boxes.

It’s just a fact that it’s a box that can have any number “on” it, and so long as it’s a natural progression of numbers for a coordinate system (3 follows 2 which follows 1) it can be used to store and retrieve information about something.

An important ambiguity.

So, when you add time as something you want to represent, calculate or “transform” about your 2D world, then it does indeed become three-dimensional and a world which only occurs in a single 2D plane but evolves over time can be thought of as 3-dimensional in nature OR 2-dimensional in nature depending on your contextual desire to work with a single moment or to work with multiple moments.

This is the way in which Lorentz conceived of the 4th dimension when he developed his transformations. The important thing to know, however, is that Lorentz believed he was storing faulty information about time from an illusory perspective. He had a distinction between “proper time” and the time he was storing.

The full illusion is too complex to go into here, but it’s similar enough to clock error for me to use is analogously. Imagine if someone believed sound was instant and they used sound to synchronize clocks. The clock receiving the sound signal would be set behind the reference clock by sound’s travel time. Every clock along any given path would be off by a specific amount. If there was a wind, the amount the time was off would be more or less off depending on direction.

If you wanted to keep up with all the wrong clock times and be able to calculate any given clock’s time based on location then you’d need a tool very much like the Lorentz transform.

This is what Lorentz used his 4th dimension for. Storing an illusion, not for storing real time. That’s easy in classical physic since the same as the origin everywhere, but instead storing and calculating the illusory or “improper” time. You don’t need to store proper classical time. However, after Einstein and Minkowski, though they used Lorentz’s math, the meaning of proper time and the 4th dimension changed radically.

Lorentz was simply adding infinite slots for copies of the 3D universe to be represented and that’s what you want to do when you want to represent something that evolves over time. However, instead of storing a unified single 3D universe that changed over time like you are suggesting above, Lorentz did something different. (His work reflects that he saw the universe that way at that time.) What he did is use a 4D array to store a single moment in time in every wrong way a badly synchronized clock might mark that time.

IE Because he knew the exact mechanism causing their clocks to be off and therefore the exact amount they would be off at any speed or distance from the origin, then by storing it in a 4D array, all those faulty views of one single moment could be represented. (and you need a 4th dimension to do any calculation to get you those numbers)

Unfortunately there is an important underlying assumption here. There is a relationship between one moment and the next we automatically assume even in a 4D reality. We assume that reality cannot blink wildly between different 3D configurations.

To understand the next step added by Einstein and Minkowski, you need to understand how the 3rd and 4th dimensions are conjoined in modern theory and how that differs from Lorentz’s view.

…and subtler yet!

Now that you understand that a 4-dimensional array can represent infinite number of 3D realities the real trick is revealed. Hopefully you now understand that Lorentz thought time was the same everywhere but people could have faulty clocks means you can represent multiple moments where time is the same everywhere or a single moment where time is recorded differently everywhere.

Now that you understand these two options a third option appears that is very very difficult to understand properly because there are many assumptions that happen automatically which we are not aware of.

In Lorentz’s view, he was representing a single moment of time and all the wrong clock readings one might get. If he wanted to represent that world and all its faulty clocks evolving over time he would need to add yet another dimension to represent that world, right?

In a single moment of Lorentz’s world, each 3D location other than the origin has a clock that is wrong by a certain amount. (and, incidentally they are wrong by the same amount in circles around the reference clock.)

What I find as I look at all the variables (when I look inside the x,y,z boxes) in Lorentz’s world as I’ve described it so far is a single world from all perspectives but just with different time labels for that one unified 3D perspective of reality

This is important to understand before you move forward. It’s one unified 3D world “instant” with lots of different times for that instant but just a single 3D configuration.

If I expand it to a 5th dimension, however, and therefore store many copies of single instants with all their possible wrong clock readings evolving over time, I’ve added a new ability!

I can now pick a certain particular wrong clock reading and look at the world from the perspective of that faulty time and therefore the configuration of the 3D world will look different from every one of those clock’s locations.

The information I just relayed to you is still only 4D when I speak about one clock’s view of the world. When I speak about a given clock/location’s perspective about the 3D configuration of the world it can all be stored in a 4D array.

I’ve made a selection of information from a 5D array to populate a 4D one. In 5D, every single time at any given location can be set to seem the same while the 3D configuration of the world will look different. (IE line up a bunch of wrong clock times and look at the world from any one of those wrong times and the world will look different except to similar members of the circle of wrongness I mentioned above)

It’s only the ability to select the same time in any location I want that requires a 5th dimension.

When the 3D world is configured a particular way, the clocks are also configured a particular way. (even though they are wrong, it’s by a very particular amount) When I attempt to select the same time reading in a different location I’m asking for a different moment (a different version of 3D reality) altogether. I’m asking for more information than exists in a 4D array which simply stores all the wrong clock readings for one single given moment of time we think of as a configuration of 3D space.

It seems so natural and easy to ask for more information than would exist that a person can do it without realizing it. We all naturally think time can progress and would automatically be there for us to consider. It’s simple to want to have all the times lined up and look at the world from there but it can’t be done in 4D. The info just isn’t there.

In a 4D array that stores numerous clock times for a single 3D moment that is caused by that synchronizing sound signal, only one moment can be stored!

So the time reading on all those faulty clocks is indeed relative to your location. This, however, is Lorentz’s relativity and not Einstein and Minkowski’s.

What would it mean to believe the clocks were right instead of wrong?

Even in this simplified model, it would mean that the very idea of simultaneous doesn’t work. If we pick a given time and location, the 3D reality is different from one place to another. If we line up all the times at every location, (using info from a 5D array) the 3D realities are out of alignment.

EG: I, personally, use Einstein’s convention from the rubber sheet analogy in which he’s collapsing 3D worlds down to a 2D stack of moments. (with forward time upward)

If you are like me with 3D spatial modeling in your head, you’re can literally see the center of the synchronization ring falling deeper as you examine each successive place outward from the center and rising back up as you move your examination inward.

It’s a self consistent model of reality.

The only problem is if the signal could take infinite time to reach a distant point, the center of my little model would be a hole instead of a depression. If you could travel faster than my synchronization signal, my model would have a hole in it. So to avoid confusion, for now let’s not mess with the signal or speeds with respect to it. We will do that later. We’re still dealing with a nice consistent 4D moment of time.

But here’s the trick:

I’m using a 5D world’s information and then only discussing one 4D piece of it that I’ve selected. No matter what I do, however, that synchronization signal travels through 3D space so I cannot play any tricks with it that will change the center location of the synchronization signal and the relationship of what is lower or higher in clock readings. Even making a 4D selection out of my 5D data set will not allow the 3D progression of events “unlock” from each other. I could arrange a 4D world in which time ran backwards and the synchronization signal appears to run inwards but the center is unchanged and there is an unbreakable 3D relationship because of the fact that my signal runs through 3D space.

This may seem to represent relativity, but it does not yet. More is needed. I’ve not allowed the progression of 3D events to be altered. There is no discontinuity between how quickly the signal travels from one 3D place to another even when I fiddle with the time readings, the events are locked together with an immutable chain.

What if the synchronization signal traveled through 4D space instead?

It is at this moment that I must quote Einstein and apply it from this point forward:

“For v=c all moving objects—viewed from the “stationary” system—shrivel up into plane figures. For velocities greater than that of light our deliberations become meaningless; we shall, however, find in what follows, that the velocity of light in our theory plays the part, physically, of an infinitely great velocity.” - Albert Einstein 1905, ‘On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies’, Section 4.

(Emphasis mine)

Now the 3D relationships are no longer constrained. The actual progression of events can be seen in multiple ways which are in conflict in certain ways but they can also be constrained in others.

If the progression of the signal does not need to be aligned through 3D space such that it sets up a single immutable progression of 3D events that keeps the time readings in a particular relationship and alignment and spacing… Then I now have joined the 3D and 4D worlds in a way. I’ve allowed reality itself, including the configuration and progression of events to be relative.

Now the center of the synch signal can be set anywhere - not contrary to, but in Addition to the first synch signal - and all the 3D conflicts are allowed because any configuration of 3D events is allowed, but there’s a catch. I’ve got to store all these new possible configurations of 3D reality that my synchronization signal travelling in 4D space will allow. I’ll need another dimension to select information from at the top level because I’ve promoted all dimensions. We’ve just gone 6D…

Within the full 6D universe, we can have the constraint that 3D objects can not just jump around wildly from one moment to the next but that the difference in physical 3D configuration from one moment to the next can only change by a specific maximum amount: A constant

This means that there are 5D progressions within the 6D structure. One event leads to the next within the constraint and within that line through 6D space.

Even with the constraint set at the 5D level that reality progress at a rate, multiple conflicting versions of this constrained reality can exist in 6D space.

Just like 4D was a single unified 3D moment with different times affixed to different places and we then needed a 5D expansion to be able to see more moments. Now that we have allowed very real conflicts of 3D space to be true, each of the dimensions above goes up by one to accomplish the same tasks.

Or we can vaguely (erroneously) conceptualize 3D reality as “actually intrinsically 4D” and just like we can collapse a 3D world into 2D sheets in our head, we can stealth promote the 3rd to the fourth and then we’re back to thinking we only need 4 dimensions to represent a single moment and an unnoticed 5th dimension to select that single moment from.

There’s no twins paradox in 5/6D.

Both twins are factually older than each other in the worlds it is now possible to represent because there are multiple valid versions of 3D reality.

The issue is that there is no reason to wind up in the same 3D space if travelling through space allows one to travel through time and that time travel is allowed to happen in both opposing directions (or angles) at the same time.

If travelling though space allows travelling through time then the travel itself is happening in 4D and cutting through 3D space. If those cuts can be in opposing directions simultaneously, the 3D worlds each traveler ends up in are different worlds altogether.

Additionally when considering topics like the relativity of simultaneity, one cannot define who is simultaneous with who’s future unless we take the appropriate selections from 5/6D

When we choose the “frame of calculation” we choose a subset of information to pull from a larger dimensional set of information which includes information that appears conflicting from a 3D perspective.

In this way there’s always conflicting 3D data to select from but so long as we collapse it back down to a subset, it never is actually conflicting.

A note on necessities of additional dimensions beyond 4

One of the popular conceptualizations is that one is travelling through time or space. The faster you travel through space, the slower you are travelling through time.

Unfortunately this suggests time has a very specific vector (it sets the frame of calculation to universal) and therefore we lose any ability for time to progress in a fully relative manner.

If one allows each frame to define a vector then 50% of the frames would have their vectors pointed into the past with respect to the others. If one does not allow them to do so then there is one universal vector for time.

And finally…. none of these problems appear in Lorentz and Poincare’s “mathematically equivalent” version of relativity.

No additional dimensions are actually real. They are only math tools.

No twins paradox appears.

Simultaneity is not relative.

Light is not constant, it only appears to be.

There’s still time dilation, length contraction, differing clock times, and synchronization errors.

All the rest that comes from special relativity is just unproven metaphysical assertions represented mathematically by the Minkowski convention of spacetime. It was something he initially found very disconcerting and in reference to it said, “Since the mathematicians have invaded the theory of relativity I do not understand it myself any more.”

Here’s the real kicker. Einstein admitted over and over that Mach’s principle must be true. Preferred frame mechanics are the only rational extension of mechanics. He even called it aether.

"According to the general theory of relativity, space without aether is unthinkable; for in such space there not only would be no propagation of light, but also no possibility of existence for standards of space and time (measuring-rods and clocks), nor therefore any space-time intervals in the physical sense." -Albert Einstein 1920

Creation time: Jan 20, 2018 02:29 AM PST

 

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Space-time is a concept that descends primarily from Hermann Minkowski’s interpretation of Einstein’s special relativity and his convention for the treatment of space and time as related and interlocked.

In Einstein’s original publication of special relativity, he suggests that the concept of luminiferous aether is unnecessary. This leads to specific consequences because of the fact that the maths used by Einstein for kinematics were directly from Hendrik Lorentz and they represented an illusion. If one presumes the illusion modeled is not illusory, just like any illusion, new assumptions about physical reality are necessary.

Specifically, the second postulate of special relativity is that the speed of light is the same to all observers. (This is modeled as an optical illusion by Lorentz)

It is from this necessity of accommodating a new concept about reality, that the space-time concept is born. It is a specific methodology for arranging events for different observers which are in motion with respect to each other.

Furthermore, the extension of this concept indicates there is something called the “Relativity of simultaneity” which states that anything an average person might think of as “now” is actually related to their physical position and is a naive idea of simultaneous. One observer might actually be simultaneous with the future or past of another location. This idea of future and past in another location is entirely “relative” to the observer.

The plane of “now” or a given instant of time can be thought of as a flat sheet represented by the Minkowski convention.

This PBS special explains it well:

https://youtu.be/MO_Q_f1WgQI?t=2...

Bending of spacetime is when those flat sheets of “now” are curved.

We might say this bending causes gravity but it is probably better to say it is gravity. The bend in the spacetime alters the relative simultaneity of events in a more complex way than relative velocity alone.

Remember how the motion or speed of two observers affects their actual slice of “now?” Imagine what would have to happen if their speed with respect to each other is constantly changing. You know another word for this is acceleration. If we think of it in phases you could see how increasing speed would alter the angle of the spacetime slice and if you, increase it over and over, then each new increased angle connected to the previous one, eventually looks like a curve, right?

When Einstein was working on the next extension of relativity called “General relativity” he set as a central principle the idea that acceleration and gravity are the same phenomena and are completely inseparable and interchangeable.

This means that simply standing still on earth could be thought of as accelerating upward in the “flat spacetime” from special relativity. (and therefore the spacetime is curved)

Those nice flat lines of simultaneity were only for constant speed between observers but since we’ve moved on to general relativity we’ll need a more complex representation of spacetime than those tidy lines since the speed between subjects is altered by acceleration.

According to general relativity, it just so happens that you can warp your simultaneous relationship with another point in spacetime via gravity just like constantly increasing or decreasing your relative speed since they are fundamentally the same phenomena.

This leads to much more complex topics like geodesics, topology, and the fact that what is curved to one observer is straight to another, but that’s a discussion for different question!

Creation time: May 30, 2018 05:32 AM PDT

 

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No satisfactory causal explanation has been proffered by mainstream physics.

Larmor and then Lorentz attempted to mathematically represent the required circumstances for light to appear to travel the same distance in the same time to all observers “at the same time.”

This means that when you’re traveling in a train that moves at near the speed of light, a person on the ground should see the light pass your window very slowly but you, inside the train, should see it zoom past super fast at its normal speed.

You both have to experience this at the same time in full view of each other.

There’s only one way to make that work out mathematically. George Fitzgerald suggested that objects shortening up would do the trick but it turns out that you also need time to slow down to do this “meet in the middle” trick with the math.

In Lorentz’s aether version, it also requires that you can only measure the average of light co-propagating an counter-propagating. Each of these is called One-way speed of light but together as an average they are the two way speed.

The one-way speed would blow the whole illusion, but the two-way speed maintains the illusion that light is going the same speed for all observers.

So if you presume the Michelson is perfectly null and the earth is not the center of the universe then one must presume the universe is doing something weird with light that is caused by alterations to length and time.

“Why,” is a question that was left for later.

This is the mathematical construct Lorentz created and Einstein imported into relativity unaltered as he worked on electromagnetism in that context.

Einstein and Minkowski’s interpretation of Lorentz’s kinematics, described above however, assumed it was not an illusion but a new property of reality and light. Specifically their explanation (with the same math) was that the universe has another dimension that light shortcuts through. Said another way, time and space are linked such that time is a real thing that can be traversed by light and objects.

Time is different according to the place you are located. The 4th dimension allows a completely different 3D configuration of the universe for any given loation.

This interpretation does not have the one-way light speed issue that the Lorentz version does (same math!) but in return, all the familiar paradoxes such as the Twins paradox and many others become apparent. These paradoxes do not exist in Lorentz’s original version. (same math!)

A root cause for each can be vaguely guessed at…. sort of.

For the older aether interpretation, the shortening was suspected to be a strengthening of the forces between particles. Then, because waves of electromagnetism had to traverse a moving medium, the round trip for signals between particles would travel further in the medium and take longer, so all changes to your local reality would take longer in a moving frame and therefore time would appear to be altered since electromagnetism mediates all change. Time wasn’t some singular thing that can be traversed in this theory, it was just our way of measuring changes.

For modern sources based on Einstein and Minkowski’s interpretation, the geometry of spacetime makes it such that you are traveling through time and space “at an angle” the faster you go compared to another fame. So it’s like looking at a car from an angle when you think you’re looking directly at the side, it looks shorter. You’re also traveling through time at an angle when traveling through space so that’s altered as well.

It’s much more vague and hand-wavey for modern explanations. It doesn’t seem to really work in my opinion because you have to assume the other subject is partway inside another dimension or something, but that’s the best you can really do. That’s why there’s no attempt to really explain it usually.

Creation time: Dec 09, 2018 02:16 AM PST

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Time dilation from General Relativity (GR) “feels” sort of opposite of Special Relativity (SR) but they are closely related through the equivalence principle.

What I mean by this is that popular knowledge of gravitational time dilation is usually related to the GPS system and the relativistic time dilation from the speed of the satellite with respect to the Earth is opposite to the difference in clock rate caused by gravitational effect.

A clock on an orbiting satellite is slowed by its speed around the planet but it is sped up by being out in space. The two effects are opposed.

However, think about this a second. Einstein thought about the fact that a person in a closed elevator cannot tell if they are being accelerated or if they are just feeling gravity. Therefore the closer to the Earth you are the more you are effectively being accelerated away from the planet. Just standing on the Earth’s surface is like being launched away at 9.8 m/s^2.

So it’s like moving and therefore like moving faster near the earth than you are away from the Earth. So it’s like we’re losing some of the SR- like type of time dilation as we move out into space away from the globe. Don’t try to use this generalization too much because it was only a starting point for GR.

Einstein took roughly a decade to come to general relativity from special and quite a lot changed in the interim:

Unfortunately if we start to talk about length contraction in general relativity it’s going to get more complicated than is useful for common sense explanations but let’s say that, just like time dilation is greater in a gravitational well, the length contraction effect from SR is present in greater amount closer to the earth compared to further out, just as you’d expect, but it’s in a form that really couldn’t be called “length contraction” with an acceptable level of accuracy.

Distance and time are too closely tied together and too big of a consideration in GR to call it “length contraction” without some lengthy caveats that aren’t terribly useful to the casually interested.

So in laymen’s short terms: “Yes, for the most part…”

But in more accurate terms, general relativity has a set/preferred frame defined by the gravitational potential such that trying to say “longer” or “shorter” is somewhat of an absurdity. It’s more about place and time than “length.” Things are happening to the very space the object is inhabiting. This is different from the various perspectives of length one has in 4D spacetime in which we are observing a given clock or object from a different cross-section of spacetime.

A laymen would want to ask about just looking at an object deeper in a well but it’s still just not easy to discuss without a lot of other concepts as a framework. You can’t talk about space without time and the “distortion” is of a different quality from the one caused by inertial motion, so there is no common sense extended frame of “now” to really talk about.

IE: If you want to understand this at a deeper level you’ll want take a class rather than just ask a question.

So at best, when it comes to length contraction, the best you might say is “sorta.”

Creation time: Oct 04, 2019 01:04 AM PDT

 

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Unfortunately, like most people it seems you might be fundamentally misunderstandings what the holographic principle means in some way.

It’s really hard to suss out what you might be missing so I’ll just briefly explain the whole thing…

The important concept of holography is not image production, it’s wave convergence. In this first image we see a blue and green wave running into each other to create “constructive interference.”

Those two waves are of exactly the same wavelength and lined up perfectly in “phase.”(a measure of peak-to-trough alignment) Below we have two waves of different frequencies interacting and as you can see, because they are of a different wavelength, it changes from constructive to destructive interaction, making the resultant wave amplitude greater or lesser.

There are two very different things most people generally think of as a hologram.

(I’ll ignore the Star Wars “help me Obiwan Kenobe” version that isn’t a real current technology as the third option people think of.)

The first cheaper version is a Lenticular image and isn’t a true hologram. You can recognize them by the corrugated surface that makes the funny sound when your nails drag across it. I’ll skip explaining how this simpler technology works.

Real holograms are the ones you’ve seen that are generally color changing or just green but have a very detailed image of some real object. The dove on the older Visa cards is one example.

These true holograms are an amazing and counter-intuitive phenomena that operates by building a “custom” image in the air at every possible viewpoint simultaneously. Furthermore, when you cut a hologram of a “star” for instance, in half you are not left with two images of a half star but two entire images of a whole star! (How Holograms Work)

All this is accomplished by a combination of two contributing complex behaviors. Wave interference combined with angle of incidence. Here’s a fun little video that gives a quick overview:

https://youtu.be/0ics3RVSn9w

The holographic principle is a concept based upon the two crucial properties I have highlighted, but with another complication so let’s start with basics.

A normal hologram relies upon all the various angles light can reflect off a flat surface. The light coming from the top left and the bottom right of the holographic surface interfere with each other in your eye and those combined angles are very important for shaping the image you perceive.

So, first you need to understand that reflection of light relies upon the incoming angle and the surface. In the image below we have light coming in from just one angle. (but light is coming in from various different places to strike a reflective surface in reality. Keep that in mind when looking at this simplification below)

While the second surface above is changing the outcome of the angle, a hologram does a slightly different trick by changing the phase and frequency instead of just the angle of reflection. The point here to remember, however, is that there is lot going on at any reflective surface. That’s why you look into a mirror and can see another person in a room and they can also see you. The light scattered off you from lighting sources is going to the mirror toward their eyes (and every other point on their body too, incidentally) and at the very same time, the light scattering off their body is reflecting off the mirror converging on your eyes. (and converging on tons of other places on your body etc)

This should make you realize that at any given moment, if you freeze time, there is an image of the whole room, at (converging on) every single point, anywhere in the that room. This is why you can see the whole room from anywhere in the room. There’s zillions of possible versions of the image of the room hanging in the air during our frozen-time version of reality.

There’s a lot going on with light bouncing all over the place and converging!

The trick of holography is getting light to line up in just the perfect way so that when it does converge, it creates a specific image on the eye via interference effects. (amazing right?)

So now remember that light can come in from all different angles, so if we think of all the light incoming, it’s all bouncing off each individual point of a surface in a sphere shape. (since it’s incoming from every possible angle) Now when we think of just two points on a holographic surface and how the light coming off it interacts with the reflections from another point, we can see that the angles create interference patterns in the air.

That ends up looking a little like this for single colored “monochromatic” (one frequency/wavelength) light: (…and this is just a 2D slice)

So now we can finally add the last complication that will give you the first seeds of the idea of how holographic principle is supposed to actually work.

In all the cases, we’ve been talking about a flat surface doing the reflection which allows you to expect the normal rule that “angle of incidence equals angle of reflection,” but in holographic principle the “hologram” of the universe is created from a curved surface and that creates a whole lot more complication.

Let’s look at curved surfaces from a moment:

So whenever we have a curved reflective surface it will distort the image like the Chicago “bean” sculpture.

This change of angles is why you can see yourself upside down in a spoon reflection. Beyond the convergence point labeled “image location” below, the top is being directed to the bottom and the bottom to the top.

Now you finally have all you need to start understanding holographic principle. READY? THEN, HOLD ON TO YOUR HAT!

Holographic principle is a deep and interesting correspondence between two very different versions of modern physics theory: Anti de Sitter Space (AdS) and Conformal Field Theory (CFT)

The reason it’s called holographic principle is the way the two of them fit together is just like a hologram projected off the inside of a sphere:

So, the hologram projected inside a circle (an anti-de Sitter space) like this ends up being a crazy fractal looking thing:

But that’s just one slice and when we start adding more dimensions we can allow it to evolve over time.

Unfortunately, I cannot easily explain how the dimensional difference allows for spacetime curvature and gravity to be produced, because it seems to simply be modeled, (described) not really actually explained. So it’s more of a statement that space IS curved near matter, not that matter curves space. There is more of a correlation than causation as I currently understand it in this theory.

Thus, through this specific description, there is a connection between space and time intimated to be responsible for gravity in the holographic universe. (as we would expect from relativity) Explaining quantum gravity, however, is beyond the scope of this answer but I’ll give you my favorite current “intuitive explanation” source for that research here in Klee Irwin’s site: Quantum Gravity Research - Quantum Gravity Research

So, spacetime simply IS bent but the “hologram” produced is everything in the universe so the mass containing objects (matter) you think of as doing the bending, isn’t necessarily the cause as much as a correlated phenomena.

While we think of the massive objects as the “holograms” being produced, truthfully the whole space in which the convergent waves interact constructively or destructively is all one hologram. There’s just one “hologram” which is the whole universe. (with lots of possible viewing points)

This is only confusing because, just like normal holograms, we call the surface AND the wave phenomena produced -and finally even the perception of an image - all by just one word: “Hologram.” Then we also call non-holograms by the name as well! That’s a total of about 5 or 6 different things all being called by the word. This is just a big deficiency in our language that makes an already complex subject far more confusing than it should be.

Finally a little direction on how all this might add up to more than just an image but a physical reality via pilot-wave mechanics:

As you should be aware, there is a wave nature to matter at the atomic level. You’ve probably heard of “wave-particle duality” explained in some semi-magical, weird way. In most modern explanations, there’s particles apparently “entangled” which are magically affecting each other at a distance. None of this makes much sense until you have one set of new experiments carried out by John Bush at MIT.

http://thales.mit.edu/bush/index...

In his experiments, he proves that all the weird quantum behaviors can be explained in rational and understandable terms. He starts from a circular corral where, just like an anti-de Sitter space, the waves are reflecting off a circular border and converging in the middle to create some strange and apparently chaotic phenomena that perfectly fits with what we see in Quantum Mechanics. (though this is a simplification because there is also local reactivity of the medium that is also responsible)

https://youtu.be/nmC0ygr08tE

Furthermore, as you can see, the information needed to create the next bounce trajectory for the walker was, at some previous point, spread out around at the edges of the corral. (creating an AdS/CFT-like correspondence between activity at the edges and activity at the droplet)

This is why the chaotic movement is directly related to the Faraday wave mode of the cavity/corral. Reflection from the border is playing a crucial role in the behavior of the particle.

Think this through for a moment: When the walker strikes the surface it creates a wave that, later, strikes the external border of the corral and then reflects back to the walker at a later time and interferes with itself at the location to create a shape to the surface that will alter the bounce angle.

Properties of the particle (relating to its “position and momentum”) were “smeared out” and “nonlocal” until the bounce actually occurs because the incoming wave convergences create the “holographic” surface the walker interacts with and creates.

Hopefully this leaves you with the impression that a “hologram,” at its core, is just wave convergence and interference phenomena and not really the image eventually produced that you usually think of.

If you’re interested in speculative science, I highly recommend this paper on the Neoclassical Interpretation (NI) of quantum and relativistic physics that is emerging from the advancement of all these new understandings and experiments that have emerged in the past couple decades:

Introduction to the Neoclassical Interpretation: Quantum Steampunk (PDF)

Finally, I’ll leave you with this entertaining compilation video on the walker experiments:

https://youtu.be/8mMU4pnyQJs

Creation time: Aug 22, 2020 11:54 AM PDT

The first indications of E=MC^2 probably came from Fresnel's drag coefficient. Fresnel found that instead of "aether drag" causing light to be affected in pure v+c fashion it was instead a squared relationship.

 

At the time, aether theory was dominant so he conceived of this being an issue of the combination of the forward and back stroke of the light wave having second order components.

 

A good thought experiment for this is to simply imagine a Michelson interferometer or, more simply, a swimmer which has to swim both up and down a flowing river. At first intuitive glance you might incorrectly assume the up and back paths somehow cancel each other, but they do not. What you instead find is a more interesting exponential relationship that changes with the speed of the river.

 

Furthermore the path length for a swimmer going directly across a river and back is actually a triangle and also grows with the speed.

 

When you study the relationship of these two paths and they way grow you will begin to understand, to some small extent, the derivation of Lorentz Ether Theory. If you then combine this with the fact that we know the energy of a particle in a two particle system is dependent upon their relative speeds, you understand that speed wrt the speed of light gives us our idea of energy and that it is altered by the total mass.

 

I know this is an extremely short way of putting it but I've described a way for you to understand the genesis for the squared relationship, the mass component and their tie to the speed of light in as few words as possible. If you really want to understand E=MC^2 in a way in which you would derive it yourself, your first step would have to be to understand how to derive the Lorentz transform from classical physics as Lorentz did.

 

IE: You must use the null of an interferometer in an aether wind(mechanical wave in moving medium)environment to describe a system of object shortening which will hide the effects of a moving medium on a wave travelling through it; in the context of an interferometer. (You must understand the squared relationship between the cross-wind path an the co-wind path)

Creation time: Apr 27, 2013 10:10 AM PDT

 

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There are other good answers here but perhaps you're looking for something that relates energy and matter in a way that relates to light regardless of all the numbers. Let me try to put together the best laymen's no-math explanation I can.

 

All "energy" is an electromagnetic phenomena. All radio waves, gamma radiation, and microwaves etc are different frequencies of "light" even though you can't see them with your eyes.

 

While working on an extension of Maxwell's equations which are a description of the way light moves, Einstein was dealing with the fact that a particle which is moving faster seems to possess more energy and that amount is related to its mass as well. (temporarily ignoring that it's relative)

 

So, when you can see that the more mass something has, the more energy it takes to change its momentum then it's not a big leap to remove the barrier between mass and energy because energy is conserved and is somehow added as a property of a given mass. (to try to keep it simple)

 

The final piece is "Why squared??" And that answer is actually fairly straight forward. When Fresnel devised his "drag coefficient" to describe why light is only partially "dragged" along by a given medium it's travelling through (like water) he proposed that there was a forward and back "stroke" to each light wave.

 

When two sets of motion are considered, like a swimmer going upstream and back compared to the shoreline, the total change of both components (up and down) combined is a squared relationship to the "norm". To explain exactly what is meant by this would require a bit too much math etc. Just think of it as the forward and back "averaged" or "combined" and then compared to the other "speed".

 

Remember that "stationary" or the shoreline is a speed as well. Instead of a shoreline you could compare the swimmer to someone walking along the shore and there would still be a relationship. In a nutshell, energy is relative, and therefore there is always a consideration of two "speeds" and furthermore there must be a bi directional consideration and this leads to a squared relationship.

 

 

Energy and matter are conserved. Energy is intrinsic to matter, therefore, since energy acts upon the energy contained in matter that we call momentum. (by slowing something down or speeding it up) So since a certain amount of energy can speed something up and the same amount of energy can, sort of, cancel out the previous energy and slow it to a stop again, you can see energy amount acts on energy amount.

 

Obviously more energy is required to slow something with more energy in it from being sped up. Then if we just don't add any energy to start, the amount required to change its speed at all is the amount of energy already present. You can see that it's tied up in time and speed though. IE period of time at certain energy to obtain certain speed.

 

So, matter an energy are equivalent and energy travels at the speed of light. Add in the fact that motion is part of energy and two states must be considered. Once two motion states must be considered there is the bi-directional consideration that causes a squared relationship to appear. Therefore E= MC^2

 

That's about the best explanation for "why" that I think can be done in a dinky article like this...

Creation time: Aug 09, 2013 06:58 PM PDT

The acceleration explanation simply reduces Special Relativity to Lorentz Ether Theory by selecting a preferred frame. (and it does so on shaky ground at best)

 

One problem with the acceleration based explanation is that a twin could be sent on a constantly accelerating path that was more circular in nature and you could accomplish 1G of constant acceleration in both frames and the paradox reappears.

 

There are scenarios using objects on large orbits and therefore in free fall as well that can be arranged to create the twins paradox in a way that the acceleration excuse falls away like the garbage it is.

 

But yes, the idea of multiple universes... specifically infinite universes actually does originally come from relativity indirectly. It's also unsatisfactory, however.

 

What is more fascinating than all of this, however, is that the Lorentz transform was derived to describe the action of a wave in a medium. It is based upon classical wave mechanics that are utterly incompatible with special relativity. The transform relied upon a differential between the wave speed and the observer.

 

This is a very difficult to understand and reconcile truth without a great deal of digging.

Creation time: Mar 20, 2014 04:32 PM PDT

 

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You’ve simply re-stated the twins paradox.

In the twins paradox, we say that one twin went away and came back and therefore aged more slowly. The paradox presented in the twins paradox is that there doesn’t seem to be a good reason to say that the twin on the rocket ship is the one moving.

When first presented, the argument was that it could be held as equally valid under relativity that the planet moved away and came back and therefore the twin on earth was the one that aged more slowly.

A variety of “solutions” have been given, but each of them eventually resolves to preferring one frame as actually dominant. Those who defend the theory don’t notice the point you’ve brought up.

Additionally, they do not notice that the original point of the argument was that all inertial frames are not necessarily equivalent and purely relative but require a dominance. Resolving the paradox by claiming a dominant frame does not defeat the argument but instead enforces it.

[And for those hung-up on the various arguments, it’s possible to place two observers in orbits around larger bodies such that they approach and recede from each other without any difference in acceleration and both having equal turn-around and therefore one must either claim both are equal, thus invalidating SR, or re-introduce the paradox. (or require GR define a dominant frame, like the Machian solution favored by Einstein) So, therefore one cannot argue the validity of space which is devoid of a dominant frame.]

What you’ve brought up is crucial.

Those who defend relativity will never understand it because it’s not part of their idea of reality and conflicts directly with their beliefs about reality.

It is an undeniable and irrefutable fact that if you “solve” the twins paradox with any of the solutions they might give, then the stationary observer must appear to age quickly from the perspective of the one they picked as moving.

This is, of course, counter to the claim that each observer sees the other as aging more slowly than themselves because that claim is irrational and re-introduces the twins paradox without the solution.

If the paradox is solved, then one observer is time-contracted and length-dilated in exactly the opposite of what is claimed in relativity. (whichever they pick as stationary)

But those who have viciously and ruthlessly defended (with extreme ridicule) the theory, will go in a non-terminating loop if you press them on it. …just like all other religious beliefs.

“Scientists have now become a church and I do not regard it as an honor to be part of this or of any church.” -Ernst Mach

This problem is completely non-existent in the preferred frame mechanics of the original precursor theory to relativity presented by Lorentz and Poincare.

Because there was a dominant aether frame, even with all the effects of relativity, there is never a twins paradox and there is factually an illusion of one observer seeming time-contracted and length-dilated. (along with the normal time-dilation and length-contraction) This “illusion” is the truth of a comparison, not a trick of the light. It is only illusory because there is one truth that is relative to the dominant frame and the truth is therefore not “purely relative” in the same way as special relativity.

Relativity Demystified

Creation time: Apr 22, 2017 11:19 PM PDT

 

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You’re going to get a lot of nonsense, hand-wavey answers out of this and many of those nonsense answers are taught as consensus.

The only real way to “solve” the twin paradox is to accidentally infer or purposely select a preferred frame. People will give you silly little triangles with no base meaning or mechanics. They’ll refer to the minkowski diagram which, when you push them, they reveal they don’t actually understand in this context. (because they don’t understand there is a shadow opposite version they are missing) They’ll say it’s about the “turn around” which is a description of a theory and not an explanation of mechanics, but all of these irrational answers spawn from a basic lack of knowledge of how the theory works in the first place.

They lack a knowledge of history of the theory that grants a basic set of mechanical reasoning and therefore they cannot understand the theory, only “know” it as in the way a computer can memorize and use mathematics but not understand anything about what it is doing.

Einstein, however, understood the historical mechanics…

And that is why by 1920 Einstein preferred Mach’s idea of a preferred frame defined by the average gravitational field of the universe.

"According to the general theory of relativity, space without aether is unthinkable; for in such space there not only would be no propagation of light, but also no possibility of existence for standards of space and time (measuring-rods and clocks), nor therefore any space-time intervals in the physical sense." -Albert Einstein 1920, University of Leiden

What is not understood is that basically he was preferring Lorentz’s version of relativity over his own because it’s the only one that is rational and doesn’t break itself.

The vast majority of those who have studied relativity, but not history, do not understand that Lorentz’s version has all the same effects and is mathematically indistinguishable but does require preferred frame mechanics. This is because light constancy is a mathematical illusion instead of a real physical effect in Lorentz’s version of relativity.

The rational result of time being actually slowed is that from the slowed time perspective the other frame would be sped up…

This frame preference immediately eliminates any sort of paradox. There is never even the appearance of any single one of the many many paradoxes discussed around relativity.

Every single one of them is absent in Lorentz’s version. (Lorentz and Poincare actually) Yet every single effect of relativity is also present: Length contraction, time dilation and the illusion of constancy and the illusion of relative simultaneity.

So the answer is that the consensus is simply irrational and held as a set of beliefs like a religion and the twins paradox is a Socratic question.

Rationally, each and every one of their “solutions” results in proving correct what the Socratic question was meant to prove: That one must have a preferred frame. They imply infer one though some convoluted means and lose sight of the context. They prove their first principles wrong. (That there is no preferred frame) Yet somehow lack the cognitive ability to recognize their arbitrarily halted regression.

This occurs with all circular arguments in religions beliefs. Because they are circular eventually the person holding them fails to follow the regression back to the source and recognize the circularity. This is also true in the twins paradox.

Everything about relativity can make perfect -mechanical- sense from first principles.

Unfortunately those who are familiar with the common metaphysical interpretation given by Minkowski (It’s actually more his fault than Einstein’s) that is used today, cannot tell the difference between knowing something (being very familiar with a set of facts) and the very different cognitive arrangement of interdependencies called “understanding.” They believe they are one thing. Familiarity is substituted for actual understanding.

If you would like to understand how and why you’d come to the exact same conclusions as Lorentz and then Einstein about length contraction and time dilation, please read the following blog:

Relativity Demystified

Creation time: Sep 09, 2017 01:01 AM PDT

 

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Tens of thousands of people, hundreds of thousands of times. (minimum)

…and in various ways that often conflict within themselves or refute what they initially set out to defend.

Most people familiar with the field will agree with my first statement and then look like they’ve been fed a lemon after my second statement even though they know its true. I’m about to make them dislike this answer even more now:

The twins paradox can be explained, but cannot be solved without refuting the initial claim the “solution” was meant to defend: No preferred frames.

By 1912 Einstein was already capitulating on the fact that his formulations of general relativity created a preferred frame and that the principle of relativity was only maintained in infinitely small spaces. (look up the “Polemic” between Einstein and Abraham)

The position always has been and always will be untenable but people with very little ability to do regression analysis will always be fooled by little problems like this. It’s the same as asking them what will happen when an irresistible force meets an immovable object, but just doing it with different language.

“Both frames are slower” is the same as “irresistible force and immovable object” in that there are two things presumed true that are mutually exclusive. An adult can usually get out of the second riddle but just add a little math and the ability to add a subscript on an array and poof, you can trap an otherwise intelligent seeming adult in the same little riddle.

You can get them drawing cute lines and making up lots of stories, just like the kid with the second riddle but it’s exactly the same thing.

“Give me an example of what you mean!”

In recent times the most common solution to the twins paradox is to draw a diagram and talk about the fact that the traveling twin turned around. This requires that they call upon general relativity (which already violates special by inferring preferred gravitational frames) to say that it is acceleration that is responsible for the difference between the two.

However, this sad little excuse can easily be eliminated by simply causing the “travelling” twin to be accelerated at exactly 1G along a parabolic path and suddenly there is no longer a difference in acceleration anymore and the frames are equivalent again with no ability to differentiate and the paradox returns.

But here’s the kicker!

If one ever selects a frame for the “home” twin as each and every supposed solution does, you have inferred a preferred frame and reduced Einstein’s version of relativity to Lorentz’s version. One frame is actually slower and then the other frame is actually faster. (they are not both slower)

A real symmetry arises instead of the pseudo-symmetry Lorentz knew full well was an illusion. That’s what he set out to model… an illusion.

So basically, by selecting a frame, you’ve acknowledged the requirement of a single dominant frame and blown away the idea of “no preferred frames” that you were defending in special relativity.

…that thing Einstein had admitted wouldn’t work by 1912, you know?

Creation time: Jan 02, 2018 12:55 PM PST

 

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Oh, this is a fantastic question to watch relativists present strong religious behaviors as they flounder horribly upon easily recognized logical errors! Watch in awe as they try to squelch me instead of providing any rational rebuttal to my very specific critiques. (the most common religious behavior)

 

“Scientists have now become a church and I do not regard it as an honor to be part of this or of any church.” - Ernst Mach

 

There's a great discussion on how to separate an AI from a human intellect by presenting them with a logic problem which has a conflict in the presented axioms. Unfortunately, this test is no good because in any discussion of a religion or other strongly held consensus belief system, real humans would be categorized as AI! ...but I digress.

 

 

The top voted answer at the moment from Viktor Toth does a great job of explaining the situation rationally but let us examine it for a moment to see if it can be applied to relativity in a fashion which considers all situations combined without breaking any tenet of the theory. Let's use his answer as a primary example of a common "relativistic" explanation.

 

He first explains the rational wave mechanics version that would work without relativity. Obviously this means that there would be 1000 years worth of waves written into the space between and any motion with respect to those waves would cause them to "play" slower or faster depending on moving toward or away. It's simple, intuitive and rational. This, however, is a classical view which inherently presumes that the rate at which the crest of each wave strikes the observer can be altered by motion with respect to that wave. This is utterly in conflict with light speed constancy.

 

Let's break it down:

"I am already 8 light-hours closer to the Earth so light has to travel 8 hours less to reach me"

 

Here, without saying so, he has presumed v+c. He has allowed light to travel at C and himself to travel at .5C and combined these effects.

 

"However, because the world is relativistic, you will also see my clock ticking more slowly because I am moving rapidly."

 

Here, he arbitrarily picks a preferred observer which will be convenient for his explanation without realizing there are two equally valid observations which are in conflict. (Each observer "sees" the other clock as slow according to relativity) And then because the language around relativity is always vague, when he says "see" he means that your calculations if you are using relativity should guess the instantaneous reading elsewhere (without needing light to travel from it to actually see it) as .866 ticks per 1 tick on earth.

 

(We'll cover the fact that "instantaneous elsewhere" is a bit misleading in my link at the bottom so ignore it for now)

 

Now, while this currently is all perfectly rational, we've disregarded a central tenet of relativity which is the perfect equivalence of frames. Without saying so, he has inferring only one possible universal frame as accurate. That is the earth centered frame. You'll see relativists do this repeatedly. They'll either ask you to believe something irrational or explain something rational that violates their theory. It's just like a debate with any believer of a religion. You see precisely the same behavior in any of them as you futilely chase them around in circles hoping their ability to recognize rational conflict will engage... but it won't. Faith always trumps logic.

 

 

Lorentzian Relativity != Einstein's Relativity. (but it's really close)

 

Before moving forward, let me further explain that he has successfully described Lorentzian relativity which includes aether (a preferred frame) and easily understood classical wave mechanics reasoning for length contraction, time dilation and the illusions we call "light speed constancy" and the "relativity of simultaneity." This is, however, in utter conflict with Einstein's version of relativity. Lorentzian relativity (known as Lorentz Ether Theory or LET) is rational, mechanical and quite intuitive when you understand that it's simply describing are the effects of a clever illusion.

 

For instance, he's right about the additional blue shift as well. If your time as the moving observer were actually slowed to tick .866 times as frequently as an earth clock, (the Lorentz factor for .5C) then you would experience not only the "speed up" of running into the signal but additionally your slowed perception of time would make more peaks and troughs of the wave run into you during one second. There's 1.1547 more time between the ticks of your clock so 1.1547 more waves strike you during what you measure as a second.

 

 

So, what's the issue?

 

To comply with Einstein's version, however, we must presume that it is equally valid to say that the earth observer is the one that is actually time dilated. It's his clock that is ticking slower and he's the one that is aging slower. (It always comes back to the twins paradox)

 

Now that we have centered the experiment on the observer in the spaceship everything falls apart:

 

First, you're not running into the peaks and troughs any faster because light is travelling towards you at only C because everything is the same as if you're standing still, so any rational mechanism for the Doppler effect (other than pure faith in the glory of Einstein) goes right out the window. Then, because you presume that the earthbound observer is the one who is actually experiencing slower time, then the rate at which peaks and troughs are released from his device should also be slowed with respect to you. This means greater space between the waves and subsequently a redshift of the light.

 

 

Wait, that's just the twins paradox and it's been solved!

 

Sigh... not even close. The "solution" to the twins paradox just does precisely what Viktor Toth did. It reduces one of the two equally valid choices down to a single absolute truth of one universal frame. It makes perfect rational sense and totally conflicts with the theory. (It fits Lorentz's relativity and not Einstein's)

 

In the twins paradox they attempt to use excuses like the "turn around" or acceleration as reasoning for selecting a preferred frame but this, of course, falls apart when considering two star systems or any other situation where we can't just ad hoc presume some special starting conditions to shoehorn our rational understanding into an irrational presumption. It should be obvious to any blithering and drooling idiot that any selection of a preferred frame -by any means- to solve this problem doesn't solve the problem! (But faith turns us all into blithering and drooling idiots I guess)

 

a) One of the next attempts to resolve these issues comes in the form of insisting that there is a preferred frame created by the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) or Dark Matter or the average acceleration frame of the universe etc, etc etc... Of course this, once again, seems quite rational until you realize that it blows apart Einstein's relativity again. If any of these were true then light is no longer constant in the slightest. It will have c+v and c-v components whenever a subject moves with respect tot he CMB and the central tenets of Einstein's theory are thrown out the window. This argument reduces it to a classical wave again.

 

b) The next thing you'll be told is that it's just the Relativity of Simultaneity. Someone who thinks they are particularly clever will attempt to invoke this little bit of magic, but it too simply extends the twins paradox and eventually infers one true universal frame of reference. They'll wow you with all the space-time coordinates and you'll think they're dazzling you with brilliance when they are, in fact, just baffling you with bullshit. All the displacements will conflict with each other, just like the twins paradox if you examine both perspectives as equally valid. So don't buy into this putting off of the problem via additional complexity you have to untangle. (but go untangle it yourself at least once to watch the twins paradox problem re-appear)

 

"Today's scientists have substituted mathematics for experiments, and they wander off through equation after equation, and eventually build a structure which has no relation to reality. The scientists from Franklin to Morse were clear thinkers and did not produce erroneous theories. The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane." - Nikola Tesla 1934

 

 

Hold on, did you say there's another version of Relativity that's more rational and came first?!! Why wasn't I told this???

 

That's right boys and girls! Special relativity used to be called "Lorentz-Einstein Relativity" and the central calculation that is the source of all the weirdness of relativity was conceived of and developed by Hendrik Lorentz. (which is why we still call them Lorentz transformations and the Lorentz factor) Lorentz's version makes perfect mechanical sense and it's utterly intuitive with zero paradoxes. Do ya want to know why?

 

...a preferred frame of course.

 

Well, that and the understanding that the effects are both commutative and illusory. Specifically it is light speed constancy and the relativity of simultaneity that are known to be illusions in Lorentz's theory. The other main effects are real however in that time dilation happens because EM forces between atoms take longer to propagate through the additional space (upstream and downstream of a wind) and length contraction happens because of a strengthening of EM forces when exposed to the wind. More details on all that in the blog linked below.

 

 

If it's so great then why aren't we using it, hmmmm Mr. Smarty Pants??

 

Because there are good rules of science that, when combined, have a weird little failure point that rarely comes up and is difficult to understand. (it's an exception) Specifically when you consider Occam's razor and falsifiability, the idea of an aether seems to need to be removed according to the rules.

 

The reasoning Lorentz used to come up with length contraction, time dilation and the illusion of light speed constancy was based upon the effects an aether (a medium) would have upon light (the wave propagating in it) but the mathematics of his theory were designed to hide any method to directly detect the existence of that medium.

 

This means that his theory included something his theory was insisting couldn't be detected. This sounds a lot like magical thinking at first ignorant glance, but a deeper understanding of the theory shows that eliminating this mechanic is what actually requires magical thinking. (hence the good scientific rule gone bad)

 

It is best described as follows: If you were to watch David Blaine shove a spear through his chest and then you were tasked with describing this event scientifically and mathematically but also knew you would never be allowed to view the mechanics of the real event under the illusion, you might start by simply plotting the events which are visible mathematically. Lorentz did the equivalent of this.

 

If you then found that there was literally only one set of underlying circumstances which could cause this effect to mechanically happen according to the data you were able to collect from multiple camera angles then you might also model this mechanic as well.

 

According to the rules of science, however, the simpler answer is the more correct one. Additionally, positing some completely non-observable and non-testable effect as part of your scientific theory is strictly against the rules! (You're only allowed to test David Blaine) Proposing an underlying mechanic is technically unscientific. (and incidentally it's inductive reasoning) This is also how good laws go bad as well; strict application under exceptional circumstances.

 

Therefore, according to the rules of science, (when applied poorly) you must simply accept the exterior truth of the illusion alone and discard the underlying mechanics.

 

Aether is that underlying mechanic and Einstein discarded it.

 

 

"No one has attempted to refute my arguments, but I was warned that if I persisted I was likely to spoil my career prospects. …the continued acceptance and teaching of relativity hinders the development of a rational extension of electromagnetic theory. [...] 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." - Louis Essen, Inventor of the Atomic clock

 

My blog here only speaks on the development of Lorentz's theory very briefly and concisely in the first entry but the subsequent two posts will help any reader separate the two theories in a very precise fashion while dealing with the more convoluted subjects such as the relativity of simultaneity:

 

Relativity Demystified

Creation time: Feb 06, 2015 06:22 PM PST

 

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The apparent commonality of spacetime in special relativity is an illusion of human bias. (specifically the 3D portion of it)

If we presume that Minkowski and Einstein’s interpretation that includes relative simultaneity is the correct interpretation of Lorentz’s kinematics instead of a preferred frame set of mechanics, then there isn’t actually a sharing of a 3D space that most descriptions of relativity will imply.

There is a commonality of existence via the 4th dimension but infinite 3D configurations of reality can exist in a single 4D moment so that’s not much of a commonality by anyone’s estimation.

Whenever we examine relative simultaneity there is an extension of the twins paradox in play. Just as one cannot decide who is moving and who is stationary in that paradigm, one cannot determine who is in the future and who is in the past. The initial placement along the world’s timeline is relative as well.

Just like we have “Your time is running faster! No, yours is!” in the twins paradox, we also have, “You’re in the future over there! No, you’re in the future over there!” in consideration of relative simultaneity.

The infinite 3D realities available to choose from in a 4D structure can give the impression of compatibility but just like the twins paradox you have to decide who is really in the future or the past if you want them to ever meet in the same 3D reality. The trick is that with a 4D structure you can just keep switching between two 3D mirror universes and believe you’re looking at the same 3D reality when you aren’t.

With a 4th dimension you can just imagine them meeting according to one perspective but the other perspective will disagree until you (mentally) move over there and impute the preferred frame upon that perspective and start calculating from there. (thus fooling yourself)

In the twins paradox, we “solve” the problem by preferring a frame but then after this operation we pay no attention to the irrefutable fact that the younger twin now sees the older twin as time contracted and length dilated during his trip, not the way relativity reports that they are both equally time dilated.

The argument given to defend the undecidability (relativity) of a preferred frame is to pick a preferred frame. (IE it’s circular logic)

This is, of course, never a problem in Lorentz-Poincare relativistic aether because a preferred frame is present somewhere (even if we don’t know where) and we are aware of virtual quantities and equally valid alternative answers. We know we’re not certain which of the two is actually stationary, thus there is an inversion that is always possibly the reality of the situation.

So, in the 4D situation created by Lorentz, there may be infinite configurations of 3D space but only one of them is true and the others are virtual. There’s no way to accidentally select two different 3D mirror realities and presume them to be the same one.

You know that perhaps he’s the one that’s right and you’re the one who’s actually time dilated and length contracted therefore he’s time contracted and length dilated… but you could be right and the opposite true. It could also be something in between because you’re both partially in motion. That makes nearly infinite choices but they are always in inverted pairs and only one pair is right.

The one thing that is definitely not true is that you are both right if each of you think the other is faster.

Creation time: May 31, 2018 12:20 AM PDT