A Test of Special Relativity

Discussion in 'Physics & Math' started by MacM, Jun 14, 2005.

  1. Rogue Physicist Registered Senior Member

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    But that's the point: See what the experimentalist said above. Of course you can have any interpretation of the formalism that you want, but do you want it?

    It is accessible to all points in spacetime. That's a good working definition for a new start. Think of the 'light field' as an orthogonal structured extra scratch-pad to interact with, but which is under no obligations such as Newtonian action/reaction within spacetime or conservation of momentum in the normal sense. Once again you may have to re-define a few concepts to make it take off and land smoothly.

    Again, I think there will always be problems with semantics when new ideas are being reasoned out and modified on the fly via fruitful discussion. I would point you back to thinking of 'light' as one gigantic 'field' like the B-field in Gen Rel, you are going to have to step outside the box a bit to try these ideas on for size...

    Wow, only the second post, and the 'flame' turbos are on standby. Why not relax and let scientists be a little flakey too. How else are we going to try new things? Don't worry about my ego. But please maintain common courtesy and dignity, else why a science forum? I'll be nice if you will.

    In the new view, these would simply be 'effects', not the light itself, but the exchange of energy e.g. as a photon is emitted at spacetime point A and re-absorbed at point B would simply be an appearance, much like Einstein's idea of travelling light packets isn't as air-tight as one might think. Are we looking at photons really travelling in little packets, or simply the fact that our detectors can only emit and absorb them in packets? Similar to the dilemma of collapse of the wave-function...
     
    Last edited: Jun 16, 2005
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  3. wesmorris Nerd Overlord - we(s):1 of N Valued Senior Member

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    What is useful is the practical. Velocity allows me to understand a practical aspect of light, allowing me to manipulate it and comprehend how it relates to other components of the universal system. It allows it to be quantified. Until we can devise some form of formalism for the qualitative, saying "light has no speed" has zero utility excepting perhaps a segway to .... something that the statement itself does not specify.

    Can you see me from there? If not, I suspect this hypothesis is incorrect. Perhaps you can explain further.

    It would be could you support it. If light is accessible to all points in space-time simultaneously, you should be able to see me now. Otherwise, I reject your hypothesis. I can think of ONE THING that is accessible from any point in space-time: Abstracts (ideas)... but a perspective has to be present to bring them into space-time.

    I think I know what you're getting at, but I don't buy it based on the rejection of the working definition.

    Certainly. I'm willing to hear you.

    But in doing so you've re-defined what light is. Light is what reflects off your mirror. It can be absorbed and transferred to electrical energy. It as momentum and velocity. I like trying to think of it differntly, but since light is NOT accessible to all points in space, your analogy doesn't work for me.

    Just trying to be honest and straightforward. Perhaps it's not relevant though. Reading MacM for over a year can give a guy a crackpot hair-trigger. You seemed to me to be insisting that accepted theory is stupid in comparison to your grand idea. Just giving you the barometer readings. I realize you may not be doing that, hence my hope that you show me to be incorrect about your ego.

    I'm down with flakey. If you'd read much of what I've posted regarding this that and the other on this site, you'd understand. However, when posting such stuff I try to stress that I don't take my ideas there tooooooo seriously. I got the vibe that you were taking your assertions fairly seriously, hence my quackometer registered a vibration. It has not at all pegged at this point. I hope you understand.

    I'm down with new stuff, I just don't think you offered much but presented it as fact. "light does not have a velocity", and such statements seem ignorant without a broader context, yet you seemed satisified to present them with very little broader context.

    My only concern is its effect on my stimulous.

    What then, is a photon in relation to "light" as you define it? How is it "an appearance" when I can run my calculator from it?

    That might be tantalizing if you offered more. Otherwise, it seems egotistical.

    I see a contradiction in terms. If it can be emitted or absorbed in packets, it's really traveling in packets. I don't think the quantization of light is worthy of debate. My understanding is that it has been clearly shown. Have you refuted the pertinent experiments showing that it is quantized?

    I'm not sure how YOU interpret that. In your words, how do you describe that dilemma?
     
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  5. Rogue Physicist Registered Senior Member

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    Let me regroup a bit here:

    First from a theoretical point of view, I am deeply interested in the formalism of SRT, not just the nuts and bolts. We should take it as a given that we agree upon publicly published measurements and conventions, units etc. I am not claiming that Michelson and Morley hallucinated, or that somebody forgot to throw the 'on' switch in some experiment.

    But the reason the interpretation of the formalism is important in my view, is that it can lead us to new experiments and new exploitable phenomenae, not just more elegant ways of turning equations into poetry. And you may not feel the same about this as I do, but there is room for opinion here too: I think that unlike QM (where the interpretation of the formalism was overdone by Bohr) SRT was not subjected to anything like a coherent analysis for many years, and the result was that textbooks attempting to explain SRT only began to make sense in the late 80's. This may be harsh (and a bit exaggerated), but it is based upon both what can be found, and what people trying to learn relativity have experienced at the hands of University Curriculums.

    It is not wholly unreasonable to challenge the description of light measurement as a 'real' velocity, when it obviously doesn't behave like one. That is a reasonable premise from which to begin a new interpretation of the formalism, just like Einstein did when dismissing the aether as unnecessary.

    Einstein did not have to do this, and there is a strong argument that in fact he didn't get rid of the aether at all, except to re-name it a Riemannian Manifold. Granting that the mathematics of Riemannian Manifolds was an elegant and workable framework in which to place the electromagnetic field equations, there really wasn't much going for General Rel until people found ways to apply it to questions of cosmology, and even that still appears rather muddled and dubious.

    So it isn't just for the sake of frivolity that one might want to eject the older viewpoint of 'light' as a particle packet, and reconsider it as a unified field of some kind. For instance, it is well recognized now that Schroedinger's wave theory is an isomorph of Dirac's Matrix Mechanics - two sides of the same coin. An alternate fresh view of SRT cannot hurt, along with some alternate mathematical formulations. Just as wave mechanics is usually easier than matrix mechanics for many applications, some other form of SRT might be far more useful than the current one.

    One goes too far to say that Einstein or in fact any evidence we have unequivocably demonstrates that light in fact travels in quantized energy packets. Every experiment conceivable involves objects with mass to act as absorbers and emitters, and this just begs the question of whether the restriction/quantization occurs in the act of absorption/emission or is 'prepackaged' and shipped in a bundle between the two points. There is no experiment which could answer the question. The question isn't whether light is quantized in some way, but when and where it is quantized.

    As per the collapse of the wave function, I dismiss the Copenhagen Interpretation entirely as primitive and childish. There are better Interpretations of the formalism of QM available now, so why go back to the dim times? For instance, my favourite at the moment is the Transactional Interpretation, which has both experimental support, and is a logical extension of Feynman's program.
     
    Last edited: Jun 16, 2005
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  7. Anomalous Banned Banned

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    http://www.free-forum.com
     
  8. Anomalous Banned Banned

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    Wait a minute Mr. U r Nonsense Garbage, Hence U should be banned.
     
  9. Anomalous Banned Banned

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    1,710
  10. MacM Registered Senior Member

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    10,104
    1 - Shame on you James R. The discussion never is productive. You and the others avoid providing any viable answers and only want to interject personal attacks and innuendo.

    2 - I have never stopped discussing my position. You have stopped responding claiming I don't understand when in fact you either don't understand or don't want to acknowledge the facts I have presented.

    3 - I don't rant and rave.

    4 - Now once again other than to claim your answer is valid lets see you justify the reason that given a relative velocity you cannot predict what the gamma factor will be.

    RE-STATING THE UNANSWERED ISSUE:

    Clocks A and B have a relative velocity of 0.866c. What gamma and resulting time dilation does SRT predict?

    Your answer gamma = 2.000

    A = 0.5B and;

    B = 0.5 A.

    The standard answer and one which is physically impossible since it requires reciprocity. Reciprocity has never been observed nor recorded by emperical data in the 100 years of relativity.

    Now the proof.

    The clocks were launched in opposite directions from earth and each has a 0.433c relative velocity to earth (ignoring velocity addition for simplification of the issue). Each physically and actually become didlated and run at approximately 90% of a clock on earth at a gamma of 1.109.

    Without a third point of referance relative velocity has no meaning in relativity. The existing 0.866c relative velocity turns out to result in "0" dilation between clocks and a gamma (according to accumulated time) of 1.109, not 2.000.

    Gamma can be any thing from 1.0000 to 2.0000 (clock tick rate no change to 50%) depending on the velocity component of each that comprise the total relative velocity. That is if A is still on earth C and B has a relative veloicty of 0.866c to A then indeed B = 0.5 A but even then A DOES NOT = 0.5B. Reciprocity does not exist. SRT is only 50% correct under special and limited conditions.

    Some theory. Shssssh.


    Your SRT theory is pathetically flawed and you inability to see that is nothing short of ironic since you have repeated been guilty of a smart mouth trying to demean those of us that can still think.
     
    Last edited: Jun 17, 2005
  11. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    39,397
    Rogue Physicist:

    But you can measure the time it takes for light to travel a certain distance. Then, by definition, speed = distance / time, and voila! Light has a speed.
     
  12. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    39,397
    MacM:

    The 0.866c figure is the relative velocity of one clock with respect to the other.
    The 0.433c figure is the relative velocity of one clock with respect to the Earth.

    The time dilation between clocks has nothing to do with the Earth. It depends only on the relative velocity of the clocks.

    You're still mixing reference frames, and therefore drawing the same incorrect conclusions.
     
  13. superluminal I am MalcomR Valued Senior Member

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    Poor Mac. Muon scattering crossections are clear proof positive of "reciprocity". Anyone who requires an actual person on a spaceship with a clock, to show exactly the same thing, is unfortunate. Each muon is a clock.
     
  14. wesmorris Nerd Overlord - we(s):1 of N Valued Senior Member

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    Fiat, innuendo, appeal to authority, personal attack... LIES.

    (call me clairvoyant)
     
  15. Anomalous Banned Banned

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    Thank God that Mr. Rogue Physicist didnt twist science so much that light no more originates from the universe itself.
     
  16. Anomalous Banned Banned

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    So Tell me, Exactly What are this frames made of ?
     
  17. wesmorris Nerd Overlord - we(s):1 of N Valued Senior Member

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    A frame is a (potentially moving) reference point. It's made of a convention that adopts the perspective of the point in question. If we want to say "this appears that way from here", we can call it a "reference frame". Pick any point or object and you can choose it as a "frame".
     
  18. superluminal I am MalcomR Valued Senior Member

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    Wes, you are clairvoiant. And you forgot:

    ...unproven gendanken with no validity since all measurements are referenced to the lab frame. It is sad to see you, SL, being duped by the establishment line that SR is true. Clearly no one has ever ridden on a muon and observed "reciprocity" (synonym for "physically impossible and just plain dumb"). Get Real!!!
     
  19. MetaKron Registered Senior Member

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    I always keep wondering if an item like a muon actually changes its fundamental nature when accelerated to relativistic speeds. It could be argued that a particle that has been accelerated to a particular energy is a new particle with a much greater mass, a different spin, maybe a different static charge too. Is it an intelligent question to ask if such a particle might have greater longevity?
     
  20. superluminal I am MalcomR Valued Senior Member

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    I've posted this before but here goes again.

    If physics changed for observers at high velocity, namely the speed of light was not isotropic or constant in their frame, then all sorts of interesting things would occur.

    First, at roughly 6% of light speed, any computer system running at a modest 1GHz would be disabled by a gamma causing picosecond shifts in the critical rising and falling edge timing of any clock signals present. This is depressing. Even if we manage to reach speeds of 5%c, 10%c or more, we could have no reasonable computing equipment aboard.

    At higher speeds, what happens to the delicate balance of electrochemical reactions in the human body if c changes or is biased in a preferred direction? If you keep looking straight ahead you're OK, but don't turn your head or you'll die from massive propagation delays in your neurochemical signalling pathways.

    I'm sure there are many other fundamental problems that would result in disatser for anyone attempting to go too fast.

    Who here thinks this will happen? MacM, Geist, and friends better hope they're wrong, otherwise even modest speeds are useless to us.
     
  21. superluminal I am MalcomR Valued Senior Member

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    Well, there is nothing in physics that I know of that allows a particle to change its fundamental nature (its "proper" attributes in its rest frame) due to speed or any other condition. An electron is an electron is an electron as far as I know. If an electron changed fundamentally (proper mass, charge, spin) at high speed, then it might be deflected differently than expected in magnetic fields and would have shown this behavior in accelerator detectors. I can't imagine a mu meson behaving in such a way either.
     
  22. kevinalm Registered Senior Member

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    993
    I've had similar thoughts myself, like what fraction of c through the "aether" would the molecular bonds be so disturbed (they are e/m in nature after all) that matter as we know it can't exist. Something happening like water becoming harder than steel or diamond becoming a plasma at room temperature.

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    Of course astronomical data and lab experiments show that this doesn't happen. To me this is one of the best intuitive arguements for SRT.
     
  23. superluminal I am MalcomR Valued Senior Member

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    Absolutely!
     

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