Most math & science are outside my comfort zone but getting the drift is happy enough. Big time thanks for a totally different flavor & one question I can answer.
"Let’s hold for experimental purposes the idea that Special Relativity is usually not claiming anything about reality; why does the Wikipedia page for the speed of light claim that it is a “universal physical constant” that nothing (not even light) can go faster than?"
Because science funding is a turf war & deepest pockets declare truth & Wikipedia the low hanging fruit supplemented by journals & text books.. incredible your brain can puzzle the rest of it!!
If I define my velocity as "1 lengths I travel in a second per second" it both is and isn't circular; in other words, it is a robust truism. If this truism produces equal lengths whenever you reconstruct it for light (due to the speed of light being c + v) then it serves fine.
The prima facie problems with Hafele-Keating is you don't need to go up in a plane to spin around the Earth, and in fact planes add little to velocity of rotation at the equator; and, the effects are tiny and if I recall correctly required several takes to produce. Hafele-Keating implies clocks at north pole should run faster than clocks at equator; they do not.
Distance to each other doesn't matter - e.g. when particle accelerators purport to bring particles close to the speed of light, it isn't discounted because they are running in a circle with a central pole. Most wind is caused when air spun by surface features in one latitude to be rotating the invisible pole of the Earth slips north or south to a different latitude which is spinning more quickly or slowly. But otherwise we don't notice the extreme difference in velocity of latitude features because we can't change latitude except step by step, when the rotating faster or slower is imperceptible. Regardless, it is a huge difference and dwarfs anything we can manage in a train, plane, or automobile.
Halton Arp... I was a physics student in the 90s and was told to not submit a paper quoting Arp’s theories because “you’ll never get a job”... oh well, also designed a space shuttle experiment recreating the Michelson Morley experiment using a Sagnac interferometer -and it was “shuttled” but still, it’s always good to look at the discredited theories - they might not fit the popular mindset, but still it’s fascinating to find mavericks who make sense...
This is a magnificent exposition of misunderstanding, which is unfortunately common, due to relativity's non-intuitive nature (just wait for quantum electrodynamics, which is far worse). However, Einstein's realization, that c is constant in all non-accelerating reference frames, is nearly a miracle of intuition, and the surprising results, such as time dilation, mass variation, and length variation, all fall out of that assumption. All of these results have been confirmed, repeatedly, and are now built-in to systems like GPS and aircraft navigation systems - if they were not, these things would not work. Even the tiny velocity of an aircraft, over time, causes de-synchronization of the clock on the plane vs the clock on the ground. None of your conjecture about the relative speed of photons is correct, because you don't understand how fundamental relativity is. No matter how fast you move away from something else, you will never measure your speed relative to that something else as higher than c. Even if that something else is traveling, relative to a third point, at a high velocity away from you, relative to that same third point. This is because the *length* of space between you and these other points is *different*, varying with your relative velocity to each. Time is also passing differently for you, the other traveling item, and the "stationary" third point. That length change, combined with the timing you observe, changes the velocity measurement. This is what I mean by the fundamentality of the constance of c - that fundamentality alters everything else in reality that you may have expected was constant. The fundamental nature of c changes everything else. Again, this is all not only very well-tested, it's so well-tested that it's built into many mundane devices you use all the time.
E=mc^2 is also profound, because it demonstrates another facet of c's fundamentality: that light ties the universe together. Everything is energy. And a tiny bit of matter is a *lot* of energy.
As for c's "value", it's often useful in physics to set constants to different values for different operations. Sometimes it's useful to set c to its value in our "normal" view of the world, 3x10^8m/s, and sometimes the math is easier if we set c to 1. Remember, though, when you convert in this way, *everything else must also be converted*. That is, if you set c to 1, it's no longer in meters/second. :)
The real problem with physics today is the same problem with everything today labeled as "science" - it's all captured by government and institutional money. Back in the days of Einstein, science was done for its own sake, for the pursuit of knowledge and understanding. Today it's only done for money. Scientific papers are a product. Almost no one is vetting them, and today's "great theories", like "superstring", aren't even testable, yet they're sold to the public as actual scientific theories. They aren't. They are mere conjecture, dressed up with a lot of hopium. Relativity and QED are two of the most thoroughly tested theories in all of science, and the entire modern world rests upon them. They deserve the awe they inspire, even though most people have almost no hope of understanding them.
Good post. But the awe goes to mother nature not to science. Science is so clunky it should hang its head in shame and would if it weren't for its outsized hubris. Science today just ridicules anyone who speaks outside our their boundaries. It's like another religion. I'd like it to return to the days when people did science for the pursuit of knowledge. But we have this other "vector" that gets in the way - $$$.
Science isn't clunky. What is clunky and shameful are the things that are being labeled as "science" that have no relationship to it. Science is nothing more than a formalized search for truth. It is best explained by this man, and the explanation lasts for one minute:
Science is *nothing more nor less* than this. Simply a disciplined, reasoned, rigorous method of guess, test, guess, test.
As for the awe, of course it's for nature - which proper science *reveals*. The awe of the performance of the theory is the awe of the magnificent revealed.
No, science has been reduced to mechanics. It's really like being in awe of the manuscript to an opera and ignoring the opera. And yest experiment. But one can experiment in certain conditions where the experiment doesn't work, but in other conditions it does. I know what you mean about the true meaning of science. But this again shows how manipulated and molded has been our thinking - the language makes us argue when no argument is necessary because the terms are too broad. So one person says "science" meaning meeting experimental criteria and anther person says "science" meaning Neil de Grasse Tyson said so. This is how our entire vocabulary has been wrought without our even realizing. Often when people argue it's mostly over their differing definitions - one sees one definition while another sees another definition but if definitions were to be properly defined, they would both agree. It's really interesting to witness this deception once you know. People do it all the time and it's deliberate. What we need is for the people to add to the official dictionary and we need to make our own supplementary dictionary without going through the "official" channels but make credible channels of our own. These are the sorts of things we could be tossing around but instead we're at each others throats talking about things we've talked about for decades. Well as long as I've been around. I'd really like to get to the next level now.
You have completely ignored the point I was making. Completely ignored it. This is another manifestation of the programming that barely anyone is aware of that is running them. The hubris is just spectacular.
I have no idea what you're talking about. You wrote a wall of text about all the various meanings people have attached to the word "science". My response was directly aimed at that wall of text.
The Lorentz time vector transform is absolutely built into the GPS system, as well as navigation systems. If it were not, they would not work, because they would drift relative to each other.
Yes, many others came up with parts of what eventually became relativity - but none were willing to make the intuitive leap Einstein did, which was the leap of stating c as constant in all inertial reference frames. That leap, one that was beyond any other scientist and was as shocking and upsetting to mainstream science at the time as anything could be, provided the theoretical framework into which things such as the Lorentz transform fitted.
E=mc^2 isn't used to "engineer" a reactor, of course, because it isn't speaking to anything you'd need to engineer a reactor. It is only a statement about matter and the amount of energy latent in it. Essentially, it tells the practical person why they might want to *pursue* the engineering of a reactor.
There was already a 'why' in ether theory. No one could make the 'why' work so Einstein replaced the idea that there is 'something'(ether) in empty space with the idea that empty space has a shape, and fitted the math for that shape post-hoc to the predictions which had already been made.
Interesting analysis. Certainly it is easy to note that light itself can easily travel at 2c relative to other light. Just consider photons leaving the sun in opposite directions. Now what that would actually look like from the perspective of an observer traveling at the speed of that light is a different question, and might have some surprising results if we could actually measure them.
I have not delved deeply into the Theory of Special Relativity, and I agree that any role it plays in generating a venerated scientific priesthood ought to be questioned. That said, I have always considered E = m(c2) to be a powerful and fundamental truth about the world. All matter is extraordinarily condensed energy, and (in my cosmology at least) all energy is ultimately consciousness. I find that it adds to rather than subtracts from the grand mystery of existence.
That dovetails with my skepticism that nothing can "go" the speed of light, since how do we know we aren't already. Really all going is relative except acceleration. If something somewhere is going the speed of light relative to most other junk, then most other junk is going speed of light relative to it. Nothing changes about the rules applying to most other junk. So it seems absurd to say that there are any knowable cosmic rules in that respect, or that we should believe any math-based assertion of the same. Though it's not like I think sci-fi matter generators that can accelerate infinitely are ever going to happen, and anyway they would crash or fry themselves on other stuff.
Ha - well, I cannot share the same attitude RE the equation, though I do think consciousness extends much farther than the human mind.
The spookiness of relativity does become somewhat unavoidable in certain thought experiments.
Consider a light-emitting particle moving toward us at 1.0c relative velocity. From its perspective, it is effectively stationary and its light is radiating out in all directions at relative speed c. From our perspective, no light reaches us ahead of the particle and so all of the light and the particle arrive at once in a sort of photon equivalent of a sonic boom. Or, alternatively, you could say that the frequency of the incoming light wave gets doppler-shifted to infinity. Exceed 1.0c and the topology of the equations sort of breaks.
I just accept that weird things happen at vast galactic and universal scales that we can't really comprehend with our meter-scale minds and bodies, just as the same is true at scales of quarks and electrons.
This certainly gets to the work of what I call restoring the mystery, aka permitting me to reveal my tremendous naivety.
If I am right that light locally goes c+V what of the case when V of Thing, relative to stuff here in the solar system, is almost c, tV? If space is totally squishy maybe this light is just ethereal and undetectable to us but totally coherent in a frame closer to tV. It’s just two comic books thrown past each other in opposite directions. You can only read one, there is no interaction between them, they don’t swap pages or anything. That would imply that light is something like a vinyl and you can change the needle (matter)’s relative velocity a little fast or slow from c but afterward the needle stops moving. And the movement that still permits picking up light (eg Earth being behind sV and “running in” to the light of the sun) doesn’t pitch shift (Doppler), why, because reasons.
Or a more maximalist answer is that pitch shifting is impossible at any c + relative V because reasons. These would be the answers that avoid confusing matter for a medium, which I think has to be wrong because the solar wind doesn’t seem to impart any resistance to light from other planets.
Aug 5, 2023·edited Aug 5, 2023Liked by Brian Mowrey
I’m reading one of my old physics text books and it goes on and on about clocks and time dilation and the twin paradox woo-woo and how “it’s real, trust me on this bro”. But when it comes to length contraction it just simply states:
————
The questions, “Does the rod really shrink?” and “Do the atoms in the rod really get pushed closer together? They are not proper questions within the framework of relativity. The length of a rod is what you measure it to be and motion effects measurements.
———-
Where’s the length contraction woo-woo? I feel cheated. I paid $49.95 for it back in the day (it still has the price sticker on the back 😀) even splurging on the extended edition and all it has to offer is “shut up and calculate”.
Thanks, I think your right warping of time makes for better woo-woo. We see length contraction and bending of light everyday and think nothing of it, but warping of time blows the mind.
Aug 5, 2023·edited Aug 5, 2023Liked by Brian Mowrey
Funny you mention it’s a clever trick to make the math work. That’s exactly what I thought when I started actually using the equations rather than reading the explanations, it’s pretty elegant and not hard at all as long as you stick to only one dimension in space. Does it have any physical meaning? I don’t think so but it’s been a fun thought experiment.
"SuperLight" travels at the speed of light squared! 1020 meters per second, or 10 billion times faster than light. It has a frequency 10 billion times higher, and has a corresponding, shorter wavelength.
———-
Wow! I don’t believe it. Are you serious? I just can’t believe “SupeLight” light can travel that fast, that’s almost 3x the speed of sound. That’s impossibly fast. I thought normal light which must be traveling at a whoppingly fast 1020/10x10^9 according to the quote above was fast, but this new “SuperLight” leaves it in the dust.
And the frequency and penetration looks awesome as well:
————
Well, the frequency is so high, its wave length so short, (4 x 10–8 nano–meters, or 4 x 10–17 meters), its velocity so fast, that it goes through everything as though the substance was nearly completely transparent (like glass).
We can say the higher frequency is completely penetrating like x–rays, but even more so.
———
Even more penetrating than x-rays, that’s impressive!
Is there anywhere I can read more about this amazing new discovery? Is he looking for investors or is too late?
I’ve got $10 billion dollars burning a hole in my pocket, happy to invest if is truly is 10 billion times faster than normal light.
Right, that’s the understanding I am leaning toward, hence the thought exercise that basically assumes not true constant. In appendix 3 of the Russian paper the they come out with “of course Dingle was right the clocks don’t actually go slower. So I think it’s just mathematical description turtles all the way down
If it works for angular momentum (perhaps because velocity on the plane of travel is different for different directions, or maybe (more likely) I'm just too dumb to get interferometers), angular momentum at equator is same as North pole - you are only spinning as fast as an hour hand. Whereas linear velocity at equator is a sine wave pinned to sV + eV with an amplitude of reV assuming only two dimensions, or with just the vectors of eV and reV that add to sV otherwise. So off hand an interferometer that sees angular momentum wouldn't necessarily see movement through space. And as I understand it gyroscopes won't see intervening accelerations because all these accelerations just disappear into the vector of Earth's gravity.
Something that's nagged at me for years. Thumbs up
Thanks!
On the vaccine front we now have this, which might be related to IgG class switching:
Leprosy adverse events associated with BNT162b2 anti-SARS-CoV-2 vaccine (two case reports)
https://discovermednews.com/leprosy-adverse-events-associated-with-bnt162b2-anti-sars-cov-2-vaccine-two-case-reports/
Most math & science are outside my comfort zone but getting the drift is happy enough. Big time thanks for a totally different flavor & one question I can answer.
"Let’s hold for experimental purposes the idea that Special Relativity is usually not claiming anything about reality; why does the Wikipedia page for the speed of light claim that it is a “universal physical constant” that nothing (not even light) can go faster than?"
Because science funding is a turf war & deepest pockets declare truth & Wikipedia the low hanging fruit supplemented by journals & text books.. incredible your brain can puzzle the rest of it!!
the speed of light can no longer be measured.
what i mean by that is the meter is defined by light.
so you end up having a circular argument.
https://www.nist.gov/pml/owm/si-units-length
If I define my velocity as "1 lengths I travel in a second per second" it both is and isn't circular; in other words, it is a robust truism. If this truism produces equal lengths whenever you reconstruct it for light (due to the speed of light being c + v) then it serves fine.
apparently time isn't constant.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hafele%E2%80%93Keating_experiment
The prima facie problems with Hafele-Keating is you don't need to go up in a plane to spin around the Earth, and in fact planes add little to velocity of rotation at the equator; and, the effects are tiny and if I recall correctly required several takes to produce. Hafele-Keating implies clocks at north pole should run faster than clocks at equator; they do not.
clock at the north pole and a clock at the equator are not changing distance in relationship to each other.
so isn't that consistent with special relativity?
my understanding is that gravity is a little different at the poles, does general relatively come into play?
i don't know the answer to those questions. but that is my line of thinking along with any measurement errors, etc.
Distance to each other doesn't matter - e.g. when particle accelerators purport to bring particles close to the speed of light, it isn't discounted because they are running in a circle with a central pole. Most wind is caused when air spun by surface features in one latitude to be rotating the invisible pole of the Earth slips north or south to a different latitude which is spinning more quickly or slowly. But otherwise we don't notice the extreme difference in velocity of latitude features because we can't change latitude except step by step, when the rotating faster or slower is imperceptible. Regardless, it is a huge difference and dwarfs anything we can manage in a train, plane, or automobile.
and supposedly the decay of the Muon slows down...
https://demonstrations.wolfram.com/RelativisticTimeDilationInMuonDecay/#more
Halton Arp... I was a physics student in the 90s and was told to not submit a paper quoting Arp’s theories because “you’ll never get a job”... oh well, also designed a space shuttle experiment recreating the Michelson Morley experiment using a Sagnac interferometer -and it was “shuttled” but still, it’s always good to look at the discredited theories - they might not fit the popular mindset, but still it’s fascinating to find mavericks who make sense...
https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/cosmologist-halton-arp-19272013/
This stuff is over my head, but I do recall being surprised when I read that Nikola Tesla -- no dummy -- never bought Special Relativity.
Are you familiar with Rupert Sheldrake? I believe he expresses some concerns in line with yours.
https://youtu.be/sF03FN37i5w
Unfamiliar, will take a look when have a minute
See also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-_LdejFnXM, his book is called The Science Delusion.
This is a magnificent exposition of misunderstanding, which is unfortunately common, due to relativity's non-intuitive nature (just wait for quantum electrodynamics, which is far worse). However, Einstein's realization, that c is constant in all non-accelerating reference frames, is nearly a miracle of intuition, and the surprising results, such as time dilation, mass variation, and length variation, all fall out of that assumption. All of these results have been confirmed, repeatedly, and are now built-in to systems like GPS and aircraft navigation systems - if they were not, these things would not work. Even the tiny velocity of an aircraft, over time, causes de-synchronization of the clock on the plane vs the clock on the ground. None of your conjecture about the relative speed of photons is correct, because you don't understand how fundamental relativity is. No matter how fast you move away from something else, you will never measure your speed relative to that something else as higher than c. Even if that something else is traveling, relative to a third point, at a high velocity away from you, relative to that same third point. This is because the *length* of space between you and these other points is *different*, varying with your relative velocity to each. Time is also passing differently for you, the other traveling item, and the "stationary" third point. That length change, combined with the timing you observe, changes the velocity measurement. This is what I mean by the fundamentality of the constance of c - that fundamentality alters everything else in reality that you may have expected was constant. The fundamental nature of c changes everything else. Again, this is all not only very well-tested, it's so well-tested that it's built into many mundane devices you use all the time.
E=mc^2 is also profound, because it demonstrates another facet of c's fundamentality: that light ties the universe together. Everything is energy. And a tiny bit of matter is a *lot* of energy.
As for c's "value", it's often useful in physics to set constants to different values for different operations. Sometimes it's useful to set c to its value in our "normal" view of the world, 3x10^8m/s, and sometimes the math is easier if we set c to 1. Remember, though, when you convert in this way, *everything else must also be converted*. That is, if you set c to 1, it's no longer in meters/second. :)
The real problem with physics today is the same problem with everything today labeled as "science" - it's all captured by government and institutional money. Back in the days of Einstein, science was done for its own sake, for the pursuit of knowledge and understanding. Today it's only done for money. Scientific papers are a product. Almost no one is vetting them, and today's "great theories", like "superstring", aren't even testable, yet they're sold to the public as actual scientific theories. They aren't. They are mere conjecture, dressed up with a lot of hopium. Relativity and QED are two of the most thoroughly tested theories in all of science, and the entire modern world rests upon them. They deserve the awe they inspire, even though most people have almost no hope of understanding them.
Good post. But the awe goes to mother nature not to science. Science is so clunky it should hang its head in shame and would if it weren't for its outsized hubris. Science today just ridicules anyone who speaks outside our their boundaries. It's like another religion. I'd like it to return to the days when people did science for the pursuit of knowledge. But we have this other "vector" that gets in the way - $$$.
Science isn't clunky. What is clunky and shameful are the things that are being labeled as "science" that have no relationship to it. Science is nothing more than a formalized search for truth. It is best explained by this man, and the explanation lasts for one minute:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OL6-x0modwY
Science is *nothing more nor less* than this. Simply a disciplined, reasoned, rigorous method of guess, test, guess, test.
As for the awe, of course it's for nature - which proper science *reveals*. The awe of the performance of the theory is the awe of the magnificent revealed.
No, science has been reduced to mechanics. It's really like being in awe of the manuscript to an opera and ignoring the opera. And yest experiment. But one can experiment in certain conditions where the experiment doesn't work, but in other conditions it does. I know what you mean about the true meaning of science. But this again shows how manipulated and molded has been our thinking - the language makes us argue when no argument is necessary because the terms are too broad. So one person says "science" meaning meeting experimental criteria and anther person says "science" meaning Neil de Grasse Tyson said so. This is how our entire vocabulary has been wrought without our even realizing. Often when people argue it's mostly over their differing definitions - one sees one definition while another sees another definition but if definitions were to be properly defined, they would both agree. It's really interesting to witness this deception once you know. People do it all the time and it's deliberate. What we need is for the people to add to the official dictionary and we need to make our own supplementary dictionary without going through the "official" channels but make credible channels of our own. These are the sorts of things we could be tossing around but instead we're at each others throats talking about things we've talked about for decades. Well as long as I've been around. I'd really like to get to the next level now.
The fact that someone misuses a word says nothing whatsoever of the word or its meaning. It only says something about the misuser.
You have completely ignored the point I was making. Completely ignored it. This is another manifestation of the programming that barely anyone is aware of that is running them. The hubris is just spectacular.
I have no idea what you're talking about. You wrote a wall of text about all the various meanings people have attached to the word "science". My response was directly aimed at that wall of text.
The Lorentz time vector transform is absolutely built into the GPS system, as well as navigation systems. If it were not, they would not work, because they would drift relative to each other.
Yes, many others came up with parts of what eventually became relativity - but none were willing to make the intuitive leap Einstein did, which was the leap of stating c as constant in all inertial reference frames. That leap, one that was beyond any other scientist and was as shocking and upsetting to mainstream science at the time as anything could be, provided the theoretical framework into which things such as the Lorentz transform fitted.
E=mc^2 isn't used to "engineer" a reactor, of course, because it isn't speaking to anything you'd need to engineer a reactor. It is only a statement about matter and the amount of energy latent in it. Essentially, it tells the practical person why they might want to *pursue* the engineering of a reactor.
I acknowledged that Lorentz had already written his equations, but Einstein supplied the *why*.
As for my language, it is mine, and yes, scientists thought the assertion was at best, mind-boggling, and at worst, absurd.
There was already a 'why' in ether theory. No one could make the 'why' work so Einstein replaced the idea that there is 'something'(ether) in empty space with the idea that empty space has a shape, and fitted the math for that shape post-hoc to the predictions which had already been made.
Interesting analysis. Certainly it is easy to note that light itself can easily travel at 2c relative to other light. Just consider photons leaving the sun in opposite directions. Now what that would actually look like from the perspective of an observer traveling at the speed of that light is a different question, and might have some surprising results if we could actually measure them.
I have not delved deeply into the Theory of Special Relativity, and I agree that any role it plays in generating a venerated scientific priesthood ought to be questioned. That said, I have always considered E = m(c2) to be a powerful and fundamental truth about the world. All matter is extraordinarily condensed energy, and (in my cosmology at least) all energy is ultimately consciousness. I find that it adds to rather than subtracts from the grand mystery of existence.
That dovetails with my skepticism that nothing can "go" the speed of light, since how do we know we aren't already. Really all going is relative except acceleration. If something somewhere is going the speed of light relative to most other junk, then most other junk is going speed of light relative to it. Nothing changes about the rules applying to most other junk. So it seems absurd to say that there are any knowable cosmic rules in that respect, or that we should believe any math-based assertion of the same. Though it's not like I think sci-fi matter generators that can accelerate infinitely are ever going to happen, and anyway they would crash or fry themselves on other stuff.
Ha - well, I cannot share the same attitude RE the equation, though I do think consciousness extends much farther than the human mind.
The spookiness of relativity does become somewhat unavoidable in certain thought experiments.
Consider a light-emitting particle moving toward us at 1.0c relative velocity. From its perspective, it is effectively stationary and its light is radiating out in all directions at relative speed c. From our perspective, no light reaches us ahead of the particle and so all of the light and the particle arrive at once in a sort of photon equivalent of a sonic boom. Or, alternatively, you could say that the frequency of the incoming light wave gets doppler-shifted to infinity. Exceed 1.0c and the topology of the equations sort of breaks.
I just accept that weird things happen at vast galactic and universal scales that we can't really comprehend with our meter-scale minds and bodies, just as the same is true at scales of quarks and electrons.
This certainly gets to the work of what I call restoring the mystery, aka permitting me to reveal my tremendous naivety.
If I am right that light locally goes c+V what of the case when V of Thing, relative to stuff here in the solar system, is almost c, tV? If space is totally squishy maybe this light is just ethereal and undetectable to us but totally coherent in a frame closer to tV. It’s just two comic books thrown past each other in opposite directions. You can only read one, there is no interaction between them, they don’t swap pages or anything. That would imply that light is something like a vinyl and you can change the needle (matter)’s relative velocity a little fast or slow from c but afterward the needle stops moving. And the movement that still permits picking up light (eg Earth being behind sV and “running in” to the light of the sun) doesn’t pitch shift (Doppler), why, because reasons.
Or a more maximalist answer is that pitch shifting is impossible at any c + relative V because reasons. These would be the answers that avoid confusing matter for a medium, which I think has to be wrong because the solar wind doesn’t seem to impart any resistance to light from other planets.
I’m reading one of my old physics text books and it goes on and on about clocks and time dilation and the twin paradox woo-woo and how “it’s real, trust me on this bro”. But when it comes to length contraction it just simply states:
————
The questions, “Does the rod really shrink?” and “Do the atoms in the rod really get pushed closer together? They are not proper questions within the framework of relativity. The length of a rod is what you measure it to be and motion effects measurements.
———-
Where’s the length contraction woo-woo? I feel cheated. I paid $49.95 for it back in the day (it still has the price sticker on the back 😀) even splurging on the extended edition and all it has to offer is “shut up and calculate”.
Thanks, I think your right warping of time makes for better woo-woo. We see length contraction and bending of light everyday and think nothing of it, but warping of time blows the mind.
Funny you mention it’s a clever trick to make the math work. That’s exactly what I thought when I started actually using the equations rather than reading the explanations, it’s pretty elegant and not hard at all as long as you stick to only one dimension in space. Does it have any physical meaning? I don’t think so but it’s been a fun thought experiment.
"SuperLight" travels at the speed of light squared! 1020 meters per second, or 10 billion times faster than light. It has a frequency 10 billion times higher, and has a corresponding, shorter wavelength.
———-
Wow! I don’t believe it. Are you serious? I just can’t believe “SupeLight” light can travel that fast, that’s almost 3x the speed of sound. That’s impossibly fast. I thought normal light which must be traveling at a whoppingly fast 1020/10x10^9 according to the quote above was fast, but this new “SuperLight” leaves it in the dust.
And the frequency and penetration looks awesome as well:
————
Well, the frequency is so high, its wave length so short, (4 x 10–8 nano–meters, or 4 x 10–17 meters), its velocity so fast, that it goes through everything as though the substance was nearly completely transparent (like glass).
We can say the higher frequency is completely penetrating like x–rays, but even more so.
———
Even more penetrating than x-rays, that’s impressive!
Is there anywhere I can read more about this amazing new discovery? Is he looking for investors or is too late?
I’ve got $10 billion dollars burning a hole in my pocket, happy to invest if is truly is 10 billion times faster than normal light.
Yep. It’s instantaneous, at 1,020 m/s you could instantly go from earth to the moon (2 x 384,400,000 metres) in less than the blink of an eye.
Right, that’s the understanding I am leaning toward, hence the thought exercise that basically assumes not true constant. In appendix 3 of the Russian paper the they come out with “of course Dingle was right the clocks don’t actually go slower. So I think it’s just mathematical description turtles all the way down
If it works for angular momentum (perhaps because velocity on the plane of travel is different for different directions, or maybe (more likely) I'm just too dumb to get interferometers), angular momentum at equator is same as North pole - you are only spinning as fast as an hour hand. Whereas linear velocity at equator is a sine wave pinned to sV + eV with an amplitude of reV assuming only two dimensions, or with just the vectors of eV and reV that add to sV otherwise. So off hand an interferometer that sees angular momentum wouldn't necessarily see movement through space. And as I understand it gyroscopes won't see intervening accelerations because all these accelerations just disappear into the vector of Earth's gravity.