A constant speed of light in all reference frames? Surely you can't be serious. [Physics]

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From: Ste on 18 Feb 2010 16:12

On 18 Feb, 16:35, mpalenik <markpale...(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> On Feb 18, 9:43 am, Ste <ste_ro...(a)hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I'm confused Mark.
>
> > My position is that someone must hold a priori that alternate
> > dimensions are a real possibility, in order to hold that any theory
> > that employs alternate dimensions is credible. Some here do hold that
> > alternate dimensions are a real possibility, so of course they hold
> > theories that employ them as credible.
>
> > I don't hold that alternate dimensions are a real possibility, so of
> > course I don't accept that theories that employ them are credible.
>
> The problem is, you act like everybody in this group went into physics
> classes knowing and believing everything that was taught in the
> physics classes.

No, I'm basically saying that the only people who came *out* of those
classes, and went into theoretical or experimental physics, are the
people who by the end believed any of that nonsense.

> The point is, your argument boils down to "the only people I see
> convinced of alternate dimensions are the people who believe in
> alternate dimensions," but that's a circular argument.

It's not circular. It's a simple statement that there is, to a certain
degree, a self-selection process, wherein the people who have a
susceptibility to these sorts of arguments are precisely the ones who
adopt and build on them.

> The only way
> for that to hold water would be if the people who believe in them had
> always believed in them. Nobody is born knowing these things. We all
> had to learn and change our opinions at some point.

It doesn't require that a person always believed something in
particular. It can be as simple as, say, having a preference for
mathematics and working with numbers in a very abstract sense.

Whereas I have a preference for what might be called "practical
mechanics" (and actually I think I'm going to adopt this phrase from
now on to describe what I mean by a "physical explanation"), where
there are mechanical relationships, moving parts, cause and effect,
etc. And that's not to say I don't understand abstract mathematics or
can't work with it, but in some sense I don't consider it synonymous
with reality, so a mathematical explanation of physical phenomena,
however obviously true, still doesn't suffice as a complete picture
for me until I've distilled it out into some sort of consistent
"practical mechanical" form. And I know Paul will laugh about this
being all about "cogs and levers", but really the approach is a lot
more flexible than that.

> If your argument is that there are some people who will never be
> convinced, I completely agree with that. There are also some people
> who will never be convinced of evolution. And you could make the same
> argument "the only people who believe in evolution are the people who
> believe in evolution." It's a circular argument and it means nothing.

It does mean something. It's basically another restatement of
Einstein's "it's the theory that decides what you observe". The point
is that people have axioms quite often because they work in one way or
another (i.e. work for that individual), and for as long as they
continue to work people generally refuse to give them up.

From: PD on 18 Feb 2010 16:48

On Feb 18, 3:12 pm, Ste <ste_ro...(a)hotmail.com> wrote:
> On 18 Feb, 16:35, mpalenik <markpale...(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > On Feb 18, 9:43 am, Ste <ste_ro...(a)hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > I'm confused Mark.
>
> > > My position is that someone must hold a priori that alternate
> > > dimensions are a real possibility, in order to hold that any theory
> > > that employs alternate dimensions is credible. Some here do hold that
> > > alternate dimensions are a real possibility, so of course they hold
> > > theories that employ them as credible.
>
> > > I don't hold that alternate dimensions are a real possibility, so of
> > > course I don't accept that theories that employ them are credible.
>
> > The problem is, you act like everybody in this group went into physics
> > classes knowing and believing everything that was taught in the
> > physics classes.
>
> No, I'm basically saying that the only people who came *out* of those
> classes, and went into theoretical or experimental physics, are the
> people who by the end believed any of that nonsense.

Hmmm. So there appears to be two models for what has happened in such
cases:
1) the student who went through those classes had reason and good
sense *stripped* of them to the point where they would believe
nonsense, and this result is inherent to the process undergone.
2) the student who went through those classes learned something new,
including how to test unambiguously for extra dimensions (regardless
whether it has been yet determined by test) and what the motivations
for even considering them might be, so that what seems like nonsense
to the novice no longer seems like nonsense.

Now, how might one test which of these two claims is what has really
happened?

Let me suggest one. If (1) were the case, then because of the inherent
flaw in the process, then it would have likely been observed up to
this point that there is a whole class of former students who have
come to believe some principle that is objectively falsifiable. It
would be falsifiable perhaps by the construction of a whole class of
devices whose design is based on that principle and which (because the
principle is false) obviously don't work in practice. Perhaps you can
point to some cases like that where devices with designs based on
relativity or quantum mechanics simply do not work because the
principles are wrong. Or is it your claim that all such devices happen
to work by accident, even though the design principles are wrong?

>
> > The point is, your argument boils down to "the only people I see
> > convinced of alternate dimensions are the people who believe in
> > alternate dimensions," but that's a circular argument.
>
> It's not circular. It's a simple statement that there is, to a certain
> degree, a self-selection process, wherein the people who have a
> susceptibility to these sorts of arguments are precisely the ones who
> adopt and build on them.

Or, to couch this in terms of the second option listed above, this
selection process happens to find those who are susceptible to
learning something new and which is in conflict with their incoming
presuppositions?

>
> > The only way
> > for that to hold water would be if the people who believe in them had
> > always believed in them. Nobody is born knowing these things. We all
> > had to learn and change our opinions at some point.
>
> It doesn't require that a person always believed something in
> particular. It can be as simple as, say, having a preference for
> mathematics and working with numbers in a very abstract sense.

And by this do you mean "detached from reality"? What do you think the
role of experimental testing of the quantitative predictions of
abstract models plays, then?

>
> Whereas I have a preference for what might be called "practical
> mechanics" (and actually I think I'm going to adopt this phrase from
> now on to describe what I mean by a "physical explanation"), where
> there are mechanical relationships, moving parts, cause and effect,
> etc. And that's not to say I don't understand abstract mathematics or
> can't work with it, but in some sense I don't consider it synonymous
> with reality, so a mathematical explanation of physical phenomena,
> however obviously true, still doesn't suffice as a complete picture
> for me until I've distilled it out into some sort of consistent
> "practical mechanical" form. And I know Paul will laugh about this
> being all about "cogs and levers", but really the approach is a lot
> more flexible than that.

Herein is the presumption that for every abstract and mathematically-
rich model that makes testable predictions that can be checked with
experiment, you have faith that there is an equally viable alternative
model that is not so abstract and is full of cogs-and-levers
concreteness that is just as successful in making the same
quantitative testable predictions in the same class of experiments.
What's amusing about this claim is that if pressed on demonstrating
the same success in making quantitative testable predictions, I've
gotten the following responses:
* "Oh, the math is fine. It's just the underlying concept that needs
to be swapped out." (Never mind that the math is *derived from* the
underlying concept.)
* "But I don't have the mathematical skill to demonstrate that the
cogs-and-lever model does in fact have the same quantitative testable
predictions. Some techno-drone should be asked to do that grunt
work." (This is the Of-course-it-will-work-just-let-worker-bees-show-
it defense.)
* "Why do I have to demonstrate that it makes accurate and testable
predictions of experimentally measurable phenomena at all? That's a
requirement of the self-serving scientific community. For my purposes,
it's sufficient to have a qualitative picture, and because that
qualitative picture involves cogs-and-levers and not abstract
concepts, then it's automatically better, at least in my eyes." (This
is the take-your-scientific-method-and-shove-it argument.)

>
> > If your argument is that there are some people who will never be
> > convinced, I completely agree with that. There are also some people
> > who will never be convinced of evolution. And you could make the same
> > argument "the only people who believe in evolution are the people who
> > believe in evolution." It's a circular argument and it means nothing..
>
> It does mean something. It's basically another restatement of
> Einstein's "it's the theory that decides what you observe". The point
> is that people have axioms quite often because they work in one way or
> another (i.e. work for that individual), and for as long as they
> continue to work people generally refuse to give them up.

From: Paul Stowe on 18 Feb 2010 17:59

On Feb 18, 7:18 am, Vern <vthod...(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> On Feb 15, 11:21 am, PaulStowe<theaether...(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>
> <snip>
>
>
>
>
>
> > A perfectly systematic way is to observe theCMBR, determine your
> > Doppler shift. This tells you both your speed and direction relative
> > to the aether. This of course takes as a base assumption that such EM
> > radiation is a manifestation the background 'noise' of such a medium.
> > Thus you conclude that, if c is 'measured' as a constant the wave
> > speed c' is c -v(Cos z) where angle z is the angle relative to the
> > direction of motion. You allow for the fact that the Lorentz
> > contraction affects all moving fields and accept that time dilation is
> > exactly as it was expect if the MMX type apparatus would have seen IF
> > the Lorentz contraction didn't occur.
>
> > Since every material system is held together by fields, and these
> > fields undergo the Lorentz contraction when in motion, the mathematics
> > 'conspire' to make it impossible to take a measurement of changes in
> > wave speed by round trip signaling in material systems. This method
> > does however give you the baseline speed.
>
> > As both LET and SR demonstrate, one can take advantage of this fact to
> > establish a system of measurements that take advantage of the quirk of
> > mathematics and use wave speed c as an invariant.
>
> > Both ways of looking at it doesn't change actual physical reality.
>
> Paul, I wanted to get your perspective on motion relative to the
> ether. If you use the CMBR, the Earth is moving at approx. 640 km/s
> around the galactic center as opposed to approx. 30 km/s around the
> Sun. The Lorentz contraction can't account for both for MMXs done on
> the Earth's surface and as the 640 km/s is more of the actual
> velocity, that is the figure that should be used. Obviously, Lorentz
> was not aware of the motion of the solar system wrt the galactic
> center. Given the results of Sagnac-type experiments and the above
> reasoning, I think the evidence indicates that there are circulatory
> (and inflow) ether patterns around all celestial objects superimposed
> upon the stationary ether assumed in the luminferous aether days (the
> CMBR). This obviously would account for the null of the MMX without
> the need for the Lorentz contraction but doesn't nullify the Lorentz
> contraction concept for any motion wrt the ether, such as in GPS. I
> wondered though, how this jives with your concepts of shadowing models
> (Le Sage) for gravity.
>
> Vern

Actually it can Vern. Mathematically, differential speed yields
differential contraction, that why SR/LET works. Nature must, 'to its
own self, be true'. Internal consistency is a requirement.

From: JT on 18 Feb 2010 19:14

On 13 Feb, 14:29, Ste <ste_ro...(a)hotmail.com> wrote:
> I've been absolutely racking my brain (to the point of getting a
> headache) for the last few days about this issue, and it's clear that
> the speed of light (where light is either considered in the form of a
> ballistic photon, or a wave-cycle) cannot, physically, be constant in
> all relative frames, and at the same time be constant when travelling
> between two objects in two different frames. It's a physical and
> logical impossibility.
>
> It's also clear that velocities cannot be additive (in the form of
> speed of bullet+speed of gun), and nor can they be subtractive
> relative to a background medium (in the form of speed of propagation
> in medium-speed of source).
>
> Take an illustration:
>
> A C
> B
>
> Where A and B are atoms that pass infinitely close to each other. In
> the illustration, A and B are separated from C by a distance L. A and
> C are stationary relative to each other. B is moving, and approaching
> C at a speed S. A pulse is emitted from both A and B simultaneously
> towards C, at the point when A and B are equidistant from C.
>
> Now, clearly, if velocities were additive, then light from B would
> reach C much quicker than light from A. We don't see that, so we can
> dismiss that immediately.
>
> Next, if velocities were subtractive, like sound, well that seems like
> a compelling explanation for what we see, which is that light from
> both A and B travel towards C at the same speed. But the presence of
> an absolute medium seems to fall down when one considers that, to be
> consistent with observation, the speed of propagation orthogonal to
> the direction of travel must be the same as the speed in the direction
> of travel.
>
> A speed (i.e. a mesure of distance traversed within a period of time)
> cannot possibly be measured constant in all directions within a frame,
> *and* constant between frames, where the frames themselves are moving
> at a speed relative to each other. So how the hell does one reconcile
> this physically?

Imagine this...
Imagine object A and B travelling parallell vectors in space, A
travels 0.1 c and B travel 0.9 c.

For some reason the both pass lined up between sensor C and D at same
moment x, when the sensor beams reach their front both ships emit one
puls forward and one puls backward.

The four lightpulses can not possible travel invariant thru the space
of C and D, for them to travel invariant in C and D space the two
backward pulses must travel aligned and parallell forever and so must
the two front pulses.

And if they do there something weird going on within A and B,
especially the light do not spread uniform around B the light puls
infront is contracted and expands at c-v=0.1 c relative restframe B
in
the space and the lightfront at back expands at 1.9 c relative B.

The expansion of the two lightpulses is not uniform and invariant in
frame B unless there is shorter meters at the front then at the back.
At even higher velocities like 0.999... c the deformation is even
clearer.

For example consider that the two light pulses have been travelling
for a year after B passed between C and D and emitted the two pulses
now B suddenly come to halt/stop. Now anyone must surely realise that
the pulses never traveled invariant at B and at speed c to begin
with.
One pulse is a lightyear away the other one is just in front off B.

The assertions of SR is ridculous i would go so far to say they are a
deliberate hoax.

JT

From: Peter Webb on 18 Feb 2010 19:40

"mpc755" <mpc755(a)gmail.com> wrote in message
news:5183f2b9-c790-40f3-a5eb-b86a72816f2f(a)y17g2000yqd.googlegroups.com...
On Feb 18, 2:30 am, "Peter Webb"
<webbfam...(a)DIESPAMDIEoptusnet.com.au> wrote:
> "mpc755" <mpc...(a)gmail.com> wrote in message
>
> news:8e724cb5-1db0-47c2-aa3d-5ed7150295ea(a)f15g2000yqe.googlegroups.com...
> On Feb 18, 12:40 am, "Peter Webb"
>
>
>
> <webbfam...(a)DIESPAMDIEoptusnet.com.au> wrote:
> > "mpc755" <mpc...(a)gmail.com> wrote in message
>
> >news:c7b417f4-cdc4-414a-a24c-3f2e7fc4c67d(a)t42g2000vbt.googlegroups.com...
> > On Feb 16, 11:55 pm, "Peter Webb"
>
> > <webbfam...(a)DIESPAMDIEoptusnet.com.au> wrote:
> > > "mpc755" <mpc...(a)gmail.com> wrote in message
>
> > >news:3c8112b0-e86e-4fdb-a9f6-6c390200aa01(a)b2g2000yqi.googlegroups.com...
> > > On Feb 16, 9:26 pm, "Peter Webb"
>
> > > <webbfam...(a)DIESPAMDIEoptusnet.com.au> wrote:
> > > > > > __________________________________
> > > > > > My tabletop is not in a spaceship, and there is no train on the
> > > > > > spaceship.
>
> > > > > > Here is my question. Lets just take the first half this time:
>
> > > > > > 1. We place two atomic clocks on a tabletop at the centre of a 1
> > > > > > metre
> > > > > > ruler. We separate them very slowly so they are at either end of
> > > > > > the
> > > > > > one
> > > > > > metre ruler. We record the time taken (according to the clocks)
> > > > > > for
> > > > > > light
> > > > > > to
> > > > > > travel 1 metre in a vacuum. Will the speed of light measured in
> > > > > > this
> > > > > > manner
> > > > > > be c or some other value?
>
> > > > > Is the aether at rest with respect to the table top?
>
> > > > > _________________________________
> > > > > No. The tabletop is moving at speed of v relative to the ether.
>
> > > > The the tabletop is the train.
>
> > > > __________________________________
> > > > No, a tabletop is a tabletop. Its not a train. And you haven't
> > > > answered
> > > > my
> > > > question. Will the speed of light measured in this manner be c or
> > > > some
> > > > other
> > > > value? It is a pretty simple question. Why won't you answer it?
>
> > > I have answered it several times. If you want to understand how the
> > > clocks on the tabletop behave read my posts and replaced 'train' with
> > > 'tabletop'.
>
> > > _______________________________________
> > > Or, you could simply answer my question. Its pretty simple. Will the
> > > speed
> > > be measured as c, or some different value.
>
> > > I will make it easy for you:
>
> > > If the earth is moving at velocity v with respect to the ether, and we
> > > perform the very simple experiment above, then will the measured speed
> > > of
> > > light in a vacuum be measured as c in a laboratory on earth?
>
> > > Well?
>
> > Replace 'earth' with 'train' and read my responses if you want to know
> > the answer.
>
> > ____________________________
> > So you refuse to answer (again). Shows how much confidence you have in
> > your
> > own theories.
>
> I have a great deal of confidence in my theory but why am I going to
> waste my time having to go back through my posts and replace 'train'
> with 'tabletop', or replace 'train' with 'Earth'?
>
> __________________________________
> Nobody is asking you to. I am asking you a very simple question about your
> theory. Say the earth is moving at speed v relative to the ether. The
> speed
> of light in the direction the earth is travelling is measured in a
> laboratory on earth. What is its measured speed?
>
> If you think the clocks being moved on a moving tabletop or the clocks
> being moved on the flat bed cars of a moving train makes a difference
> then this 'conversation' is pointless.
>
> _________________________________
> There are in fact 4 possibilities:
>
> a) c
> b) c+v
> c) c-v
> d) something else.
>
> You could just answer 'a', 'b', 'c' or 'd'. That is only typing a single
> character; that's not too much work for you, is it?

d) Something else. In order to understand the something else read my
posts discussing the simultaneity of lightning strikes as determined
by Observers on the train and on the embankment.

_______________________________
If the earth is travelling at v relative to the ether, and we measure the
speed of light of earth in the direction we are travelling, what value do we
get? Its some equation linking c and v, right? What is it?