Light Speed, Are We Talking Relativity?

[Dubbelosix]

While you guys struggle with your religious views discounting math as but a misleading tool, I came across this

 

https://www.physicsforums.com/insights/relativity-using-bondi-k-calculus/?utm_source=ReviveOldPost&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=ReviveOldPost

 

this morning. I only read the first few sentences and can already recognize my math has already been discovered. Of course none of you have the math literacy to recognize this but since you only believe anything a high priest tells you to, maybe you can now begin to understand my writings and maybe come up with some intelligent counter arguments.

 

You think so highly of yourself, don't you troll? None of us have the ability to understand your math? Maybe that's because it is completely unintelligible.

[sluggo]

Mattzy;

 

We see in humanity a strong desire for a sense of the past, in folklore, culture, tradition etc and some liking for future fantasy. I think this is the source of time.

 

 

The idea of a physical entity labeled as 'time' is difficult to remove because to the mind it perpetuates a continuation of life. Most people don't want to run out of 'time'.
After enough years of debate, I conclude it's not about physics but psychology.

History has shown, any periodic process can be used for timekeeping which imposes an order to events. It is also a convenience, with many benefits for most aspects of life.
 

What lies between the beats of a clock? That is the question.

 

More events.
 

What is slowing of the clock? Will you say time is slowing?

 

No. A clock process might be slowing because of loss of power, battery, spring, solar panel, ...
A burning candle, hour glass, clepshydra, sundial, Big Ben, NIST atomic clock,... are processes, not time. They function per the laws of physics, which is the fundamental source of change.

[Amplituhedron]

How can you make sense of motion at all without time?    

 

It could be that motion and change are illusions.

 

Light moves at c. But everything moves at c, in spacetime. The only difference between light and everything else is that all of light’s motion is through space, and none of it is through time. Everything else travels through both space and time.

 

Vesselin Petkov argues that light does not move at all. Nor does anything else. Everything is a worldtube in Minkowski spacetime. No motion, no change.

 

People ask what time is. But what is a rose? Is it red? No, that is in the mind. Is it shapely? No, that is in the mind. Do its thorns prick? No, that is in the mind. Does it smell sweet? No, that is in the mind.

 

Ask yourself, what would the universe be like, if no one were around to observe it?

 

To ask what the universe would be like, in the absence of an observer, is to underscore the point. The universe could only be like something, if there were an observer to liken it to something.

 

No observers, no universe.

 

Berkeley may have had it right: Esse est percipi.

[Dubbelosix]

Though I may not agree with Vesselin about the nature of time, at least we agree on one thing, gravity isn't a physical field.

 

''If Einstein had examined Minkowski's idea thoroughly he would have most probably considered and carefully analyzed this possibility. Had he lived longer, Minkowski himself would have almost certainly arrived at this radical possibility.
   In 1921 Eddington even mentioned it explicitly - "gravitation as a separate agency becomes unnecessary" [A. S. Eddington, The Relativity of Time, Nature 106, 802-804 (17 February 1921); reprinted in: A. S. Eddington, The Theory of Relativity and its Influence on Scientific Thought: Selected Works on the Implications of Relativity (Minkowski Institute Press, Montreal 2015)].
   Two years later, in his fundamental work on the mathematical foundations of general relativity The Mathematical Theory of Relativity (Minkowski Institute Press, Montreal 2016) Eddington stated it even more explicitly (p. 233): "An electromagnetic field is a "thing;" gravitational field is not, Einstein's theory having shown that it is nothing more than the manifestation of the metric.''

 

 

http://www.spacetimecentre.org/vpetkov/

Edited June 24, 2019 by Dubbelosix

[Mattzy]

 

Mattzy;

 

The idea of a physical entity labeled as 'time' is difficult to remove because to the mind it perpetuates a continuation of life. Most people don't want to run out of 'time'.

After enough years of debate, I conclude it's not about physics but psychology.

History has shown, any periodic process can be used for timekeeping which imposes an order to events. It is also a convenience, with many benefits for most aspects of life.

 

More events.

 

No. A clock process might be slowing because of loss of power, battery, spring, solar panel, ...

A burning candle, hour glass, clepshydra, sundial, Big Ben, NIST atomic clock,... are processes, not time. They function per the laws of physics, which is the fundamental source of change.

 

Yes. I agree with all of this. But I'm still sure enough or not brave enough to make the statement that time does not exist. I suspect that I'm trapped in a thought process that is unable to get out of its own limitations - as Newton said.

Re. the clock slowing, I was referring to those atomic clocks of the space journey that have slowed in comparison to the others. This is my problem - as I can't conceive time but I must concede their de-synchronization.

[Mattzy]

It could be that motion and change are illusions.

 

Light moves at c. But everything moves at c, in spacetime. The only difference between light and everything else is that all of light’s motion is through space, and none of it is through time. Everything else travels through both space and time.

 

Vesselin Petkov argues that light does not move at all. Nor does anything else. Everything is a worldtube in Minkowski spacetime. No motion, no change.

 

People ask what time is. But what is a rose? Is it red? No, that is in the mind. Is it shapely? No, that is in the mind. Do its thorns prick? No, that is in the mind. Does it smell sweet? No, that is in the mind.

 

Ask yourself, what would the universe be like, if no one were around to observe it?

 

To ask what the universe would be like, in the absence of an observer, is to underscore the point. The universe could only be like something, if there were an observer to liken it to something.

 

No observers, no universe.

 

Berkeley may have had it right: Esse est percipi.

I accept that there is human interpretation and perspective, but geology and astronomy prove a long history of the this planet and much more beyond that existed long before humanity. We don't discover things into existence. Unless of course you argue that we are all completely deluded - but even then something must cause the illusion and perceive it.

[exchemist]

It could be that motion and change are illusions.

 

Light moves at c. But everything moves at c, in spacetime. The only difference between light and everything else is that all of light’s motion is through space, and none of it is through time. Everything else travels through both space and time.

 

Vesselin Petkov argues that light does not move at all. Nor does anything else. Everything is a worldtube in Minkowski spacetime. No motion, no change.

 

People ask what time is. But what is a rose? Is it red? No, that is in the mind. Is it shapely? No, that is in the mind. Do its thorns prick? No, that is in the mind. Does it smell sweet? No, that is in the mind.

 

Ask yourself, what would the universe be like, if no one were around to observe it?

 

To ask what the universe would be like, in the absence of an observer, is to underscore the point. The universe could only be like something, if there were an observer to liken it to something.

 

No observers, no universe.

 

Berkeley may have had it right: Esse est percipi.

It seems to me that once you get to this level, everything is "in the mind", so one might just as well redefine reality to be what is "in the mind", since otherwise we cannot function in the world at all.

 

I think the notion that motion and change are illusions is a useless idea, leading to absurd results.  

[Mattzy]

The effects are not linear (red) but exponential, insignificant at common speeds and significant at near light speed.

The H-K experiment used the earth center as the origin.

 

The last question is the same as asking what is the value of the interval between the +ve and -ve numbers, the answer to which is obviously zero, since the present has zero duration. But I don't see what you are deducing from that.

 

I don't think you are right that change is another word for an event. Things can change with no events occurring. If you watch a car moving past you, what event, or events, can you point to? It is a continuous process, surely? How can you make sense of motion at all without time?    

Yes, between positive and negative numbers we deduce zero, I'm saying (until I think otherwise) that means that time does not exist. Because the past is only human history and the future has not happened yet. The only thing we have left to analyse is the present which we deduce as zero.

 

Re: The moving car. The mind creates significance. Here I can use sluggo's history of positions. You perceive the event as being drawn out and therefore not an event. But it is no different from your previous example of a planet in orbit or wave in motion. We can conceive existence of a moving object only by imagining it or remembering it. We can only see movement with memory. We can shorten the event with our memory, or freeze it or slow or speed it up. All with the mind. But it's existence was infinitely short at any stage.

A stick of dynamite shelved for a year suddenly explodes. The human mind finds the explosion to be a significant event but the shelf-life to be time. But the chemist knows that chemical events were happening during the shelf time and during the explosion.

[exchemist]

Yes, between positive and negative numbers we deduce zero, I'm saying (until I think otherwise) that means that time does not exist. Because the past is only human history and the future has not happened yet. The only thing we have left to analyse is the present which we deduce as zero.

 

Re: The moving car. The mind creates significance. Here I can use sluggo's history of positions. You perceive the event as being drawn out and therefore not an event. But it is no different from your previous example of a planet in orbit or wave in motion. We can conceive existence of a moving object only by imagining it or remembering it. We can only see movement with memory. We can shorten the event with our memory, or freeze it or slow or speed it up. All with the mind. But it's existence was infinitely short at any stage.

A stick of dynamite shelved for a year suddenly explodes. The human mind finds the explosion to be a significant event but the shelf-life to be time. But the chemist knows that chemical events were happening during the shelf time and during the explosion.

If you use a history of positions, you are employing a concept of time. 

[Mattzy]

It is not just a mental concept - there is far more to it than that. We have internal clocks inside the nucleus of the suprachiarasmatic gene. This internal clock works very similar to the watch on the wriste. So it is more than just a mental concept, it is something biology has adapted to use.

Genetic evolution is a wonderful chemical accident. Anything which has developed genetically has occurred by random mutation and persisted through generations by being useful to the species (or by chance get carried along with other successful mutations - like hair colour or eye colour etc.). The clock that you speak of is an advantage to the human species as it gives us great organisational powers. It is probably instrumental in creating the very concept of time that we are discussing. I have said that time is the human condition. You are introducing an explanation of how it works as a clock (a frequency counter) in the human brain. You are not proving that time exists. Humans probably make clocks consciously as a manifestation of their internal clocks. We are created by chemical accident and subsequently have by the same evolutionary process, lived with the concept of time (I postulate).

 

This is also very interesting from the point of view of music. I have often wondered how we (and only we) can so magnificently separate sound frequencies in astonishingly short intervals, at high frequencies too - this means amazing electro chemistry. we have the capacity to keep musical time, harmonise, sing notes from memory etc. etc. This can't possibly have been any advantage to our survival, it must have been one of those genetic piggy-back effects that have been carried along with the clock system. Nature gives many examples of sound recognition and communication but not the time based music of the human.

[Dubbelosix]

No time is not just a human conception, all animals run with chronological cycles. This gene is not specific to us alone.

[Dubbelosix]

Even plants.

[exchemist]

Genetic evolution is a wonderful chemical accident. Anything which has developed genetically has occurred by random mutation and persisted through generations by being useful to the species (or by chance get carried along with other successful mutations - like hair colour or eye colour etc.). The clock that you speak of is an advantage to the human species as it gives us great organisational powers. It is probably instrumental in creating the very concept of time that we are discussing. I have said that time is the human condition. You are introducing an explanation of how it works as a clock (a frequency counter) in the human brain. You are not proving that time exists. Humans probably make clocks consciously as a manifestation of their internal clocks. We are created by chemical accident and subsequently have by the same evolutionary process, lived with the concept of time (I postulate).

 

This is also very interesting from the point of view of music. I have often wondered how we (and only we) can so magnificently separate sound frequencies in astonishingly short intervals, at high frequencies too - this means amazing electro chemistry. we have the capacity to keep musical time, harmonise, sing notes from memory etc. etc. This can't possibly have been any advantage to our survival, it must have been one of those genetic piggy-back effects that have been carried along with the clock system. Nature gives many examples of sound recognition and communication but not the time based music of the human.

Without time there could not be such a thing as musical pitch. 

[Amplituhedron]

I accept that there is human interpretation and perspective, but geology and astronomy prove a long history of the this planet and much more beyond that existed long before humanity. We don't discover things into existence. 

 

That isn’t the argument. The argument is that the past, present and future all exist — are on equal ontological footing. The aforementioned Petkov has taken great pains to argue (demonstrate?) that this is the explanation of the phenomenon of length contraction alone. The rod could not be length contracted, he purports to show, unless it existed in all its stages — past, present, and future. From this it follows that nothing actually moves or changes — the rod, you, me, everything, exist timelessly in 4D, world tubes whose boundary conditions, for humans, are birth and death. 

 

Socrates, for example, exists — it is just that, from the perspective of the present, he is temporally distant from us — in this case, “earlier than,” from our point of view. “Later than” stuff also exists relative to us, only those things, too, are temporally distant, ever farther away in the farther future. This means that what we conventionally label “the present” is an indexical.

 

As to the mind, I challenge anyone to describe a mind-independent rose. Surely it is obvious that a rose’s color, sensation, shape, odor, and all other properties you could ascribe to it are in the mind? A rose is nothing but a collection of qualia. If you were to argue that the real rose is a collection of atoms, for quantum fields, or whatever, I’d say those things are also mental constructs. This is called metaphysical idealism, in contrast to metaphysical naturalism.

[Dubbelosix]

Yes, well... the past, present and future cannot just exist side by side, without believing the past and future are misnomers for just other present moments. While this could be true, I would never look too deep into it because sometimes physics can chase idea's like ghosts to over-simplify the dynamic structure around us.

[ralfcis]

Bwahahahaha. Now I know where Moronium went, he's taken over and posting under everybody's profile names.

[Dubbelosix]

For all I know, you're all the same person. Certainly ''Daniel'' was an extremely suspicious poster to me, his wording, his lack of effort, did not go unnoticed.