If you
want my opinion ......
you've come to the right place.
Welcome
to Ed Lake's web site!
I also have an
interactive blog open for discussions
at this link: http://oldguynewissues.blogspot.com/
(And I have two science-related
Facebook discussion groups, HERE
and HERE.)
My latest comments
are near the bottom of this page.
You can go directly to them by clicking
HERE.
Click HERE
to go to my web site about the anthrax attacks
of 2001.
Click HERE
to go to my interactive blog where the anthrax
attacks of 2001 are discussed.
Click HERE
to read my scientific paper titled "The Reality
of Time Dilation".
Click HERE
to read my scientific paper titled "What is
Time?"
My interests are writing,
books, movies, science, psychology, conspiracy
theorists,
photography,
photographic analysis, TV, travel, mysteries, jazz,
blues, and ...
just trying to figure things out.
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My Latest Comments
Comments for Sunday,
April 15, 2018, thru Saturday, April 21,
2018:
April 20,
2018 (B) - While pulling into my
garage after driving home from the gym this
afternoon, I finished listening to CD #3 in the
3-CD audio book version of "Our
Dumb World" by The Onion
magazine.
It's an hilarious book and exactly what I needed
to listen to after the depressing political book
that I'd heard before this one. "Our Dumb
World" is a satire, which means there is
something in it to offend everyone as it
describes one country after another, and many
individual States in the United States.
For example, it mentions Afghanistan,
"Allah's Cat Box," the Ukraine, "the Bridebasket
of Europe," and the USA's own Nevada, "Where
Everyone's a Loser." One of the last bits
that I heard just before pulling into my garage
was about Australia, which was originally a
British penal colony "because the people of
England evidently couldn't think of a worse
punishment for their criminals than to send them
to a warm and sunny place."
After ejecting the last CD of that book, I
inserted CD #1 in a 17 CD set for
a
book about science and what the future looks
like for mankind. It will probably
take me about a month to get through it.
There seems to be only about 42 minutes of
listening material on each CD, instead of the
normal 70 minutes or so.
April 20,
2018 (A) - I saw something the
other day that keeps nagging at me because I
keep feeling I should have made a note of
it. I saw a Facebook page about the
current state of the art in 3-D printing, where
objects are constructed out of plastic or other
materials by a relatively inexpensive "3-D
printer." The article showed pictures of
some incredibly tiny 3-D objects that had been
3-D printed. When I went looking for that
article today, I couldn't find it, but I found
some even more interesting 3-D sculptures by
doing a
Google image search.
Here's one image I found:
It is about 400 nano-meters long, which means
you could put a thousand of them end to end and
they wouldn't measure a full inch in total.
Here's an interesting sculpture of a woman atop
a human hair.
The hair is real. It is there to show the
size of the sculpture. Here is the same
sculpture inside the eye of a needle:
It doesn't have anything to do with anything
I've been writing or thinking about, but I find
it fascinating and worth remembering. Note
the scale in the picture above. It
measures out 300 microns, which is a little more
than 1/100th of an inch. And you have to
wonder how many sculptures with their fingertips
touching would fit inside that space.
April 19,
2018 - Well, I told the folks on
Google's
Science, Physics & Relativity discussion
forum that I'm going to take a break from
posting there in order to focus on writing a
couple new scientific papers. But I awoke
this morning wondering about what Einstein would
have thought about the
#3 dumbest belief in physics: "all motion
is reciprocal." A lot of mathematicians
seem to argue that that screwball belief comes
from Einstein. After all,
Einstein did write this in his 1905 paper on
Special Relativity:
The introduction of a
“luminiferous ether” will prove to be
superfluous inasmuch as the view here to
be developed will not require an “absolutely
stationary space” provided with special
properties, nor assign a velocity-vector
to a point of the empty space in which
electromagnetic processes take place.
There is nothing "stationary"
about space. It is emptiness. But
Einstein never makes clear why not requiring an
"absolutely stationary space" does not
mean that "all motion is reciprocal." I
can only guess that that particular idiotic idea
never occurred to him. He describes all
motion of an object as being "relative" to some
other object or location, but he seems to say
that experiments
show that one object is truly
moving while the other is not.
Unfortunately, in the English translations he
also seems to to use the word "experience" when
"experiments" would be a more meaningful
term. After all, how can you have an
"experience" in science without an experiment?
It appears that Einstein would argue that it is
simply "true" that the train is moving, not the
embankment. ("True" is a word that
mathematicians hate, and I've probably gotten
into hundreds of arguments because I often use
the term.) How does Einstein define
"true"? On page 6 of the pdf copy I have
of Einstein's book "Relativity:
The Special and General Theory,"
Einstein explains:
Geometry sets out form
certain conceptions such as "plane," "point,"
and "straight line," with which we are
able to associate more or less definite
ideas, and from certain simple propositions
(axioms) which, in virtue of these ideas, we
are inclined to accept as "true." Then,
on the basis of a logical process, the
justification of which we feel ourselves
compelled to admit, all remaining propositions
are shown to follow from those axioms, i.e.
they are proven. A
proposition is then correct ("true") when
it has been derived in the recognised
manner from the axioms.The
question of "truth" of the individual
geometrical propositions is thus reduced to
one of the "truth" of the axioms. Now it
has long been known that the last question is
not only unanswerable by the methods of
geometry, but that it is in itself entirely
without meaning. We cannot ask whether it is
true that only one straight line goes through
two points. We can only say that Euclidean
geometry deals with things called "straight
lines," to each of which is ascribed the
property of being uniquely determined by two
points situated on it. The concept "true" does
not tally with the assertions of pure
geometry, because by the word "true" we are
eventually in the habit of designating always
the correspondence with a "real" object;
geometry, however, is not concerned with the
relation of the ideas involved in it to
objects of experience, but only with the
logical connection of these ideas among
themselves.
It is not difficult to
understand why, in spite of this, we feel
constrained to call the propositions of
geometry "true."
The above is also an example of
the annoying and convoluted way that Einstein
explains things. (And, in the last
sentence, why did his translator use the word
"constrained" when "compelled" would make things
much more clear?) I would reduce
everything that Einstein wrote above to one
sentence:
Something is "true"
if it agrees with the laws of physics and
has been demonstrated to be "true" by
experiments.
The problem then, of course, is
that mathematicians have their own screwball
interpretations of experiments and of Einstein's
postulates. That means that when I say
that something is "true" because experiments
have shown it to be "true," they'll argue that I
do not understand anything and they have
experiments which show their beliefs
to be true.
Sigh. I really need to put all of
this into some scientific papers.
An observer is anyone
who casts a mathematical net over time and
space, establishing conventions to describe
locations in space and points in time.
And then it defines "coordinate
system" this way:
All in all, there is a
plethora of different possible observers -
each with a specific way of imposing
mathematical order onto the world. The
differences lie not only in the different
location of the observers, or their different
motions, but in the infinity of variations
that is possible for conventions of how to
choose space and time coordinates. In fact, in our
definition, the term "observer" is
equivalent to that of
"space-time-coordinate system", or just
"coordinate system".
So, an "observer" is basically
equivalent to a "coordinate system"?
When I did a
Google search for "frame of reference" and
Einstein I got a lot of web locations
where "frame of reference" is described as being
similar to or the same as "coordinate
system." And that made me realize that
while the terms may be similar in
meaning, they are definitelynot
the same thing.
In fact, defining the terms is something that I
will have to do before writing almost anything
else in the book I've been planning. And
it will be a key part of the paper I'm writing
about Einstein's train-embankment thought
experiment.
The train-embankment thought experiment with the
lightning bolts is definitely about "coordinate
systems." It's about one observer on the
moving train and another observer on the
embankment. And they are viewed as
"coordinate systems" when you compute the
differences in what they saw.
When you talk about a "frame of reference,"
however, the key word is "frame." A
frame encloses a given space. You are no longer
talking about an observer.
You are talking about an enclosed area.
So, if you use "frames of reference" in a
train-embankment thought experiment, it becomes
a very different experiment.
First, the "frames" become a laboratory inside a
moving railroad car, and another laboratory
inside an identical railroad car that is parked
on a siding next to the tracks the moving train
is using. If you want, you can have a
dozen observers inside the "frames," since it is
the frame that is key to the
experiment, not the observers.
The point is that you can perform an experiment
inside one of the frames and you will
get the same results you would get if the same
experiment was performed in the other frame.
There would be no difference due to the fact
that one frame is moving and the other is
not.
It is only when an observer opens a window and
looks outside that he would find out which frame
he is in.
That makes me wonder if the word "frame" isn't
much more clear in German than in English.
A quick search through Einstein's book "Relativity:
The Special and General theory" shows that
the word "frame" appears as part of the word "framework"
5 times and only once as "frame" when he
mentions ideas "which have already been fitted
into the frame of the special theory of
relativity." And in that context, "frame"
is a framework of the special theory of
relativity.
In his 1905 paper on Special Relativity,
Einstein only uses the word "frame" once, and it
is in its plural form. It is when
describing his First Postulate: "the same laws
of electrodynamics and optics will be valid for
all frames of reference for which
the equations of mechanics hold good." And
clearly that is not about an observer but about
an enclosed framework.
Some day, I'll have to examine exactly how
Einstein uses "coordinate system" and "frame of
reference" in his other writings, but I feel
fairly confident that he never used them
interchangeably. And when he used the
term, the English translation would more
accurately be "framework."
I've also decided that now is not the right time
to work on a book. I first need to write a
couple scientific papers, one tentatively titled
"The Two Doppler Effects," which would be
about (1) the photon wavelength Doppler effect
and (2) the photon frequency Doppler effect, and
how each works (as opposed to how college text
books claim they work). The other would be
about Einstein's train-embankment "gedanken"
(thought experiment), which I wrote about here
yesterday and the day before.
Today I looked through scientific papers I had
started writing in the past and never
finished. One of them, dated July 27,
2017, is titled "Analyzing Einstein’s
Train/Embankment Thought Experiment."
It's 9 pages long, but it will have to be
totally rewritten, not because it is wrong, but
because it views things from a different angle
than I now view things. I also brings back
to mind some issues I'd basically forgotten
about, such as Einstein in his book "Relativity:
The Special and General Theory" describing
how a man on the train walks from the rear of
the train toward the front at speed w,
while the train moves at speed v.
So, his speed relative to the embankment is w+v.
But, if a light is emitted from the back of the
moving train toward the front, the light will
travel at the speed of light, c, not at
c+v.
He also writes about dropping a stone out of a
window in the moving train and how an observer
on the train will see the stone fall straight
down, while someone on the embankment will see
it travel in a parabola from the window to the
ground. Is there a "correct"
view? I guess it all depends upon what is
meant by "correct." The view from the
embankment is certainly "correct" in some ways,
and the view from the "train" appears to be only
"correct" in that it is what the observer on the
train saw. I can imagine a lawyer in court
asking, "You saw the stone fall straight down,
is that correct?" And the witness would
say, "Yes, that is correct." But is it "correct"
in any other way?
Sigh. Maybe tomorrow I'll
have more time to work on the papers.
April 16,
2018 - Groan! I'm
really feeling overwhelmed. I recently
posted recommendations to my library that they
buy Kindle copies of Scott Decker's book "Recounting
the Anthrax Attacks" and James Comey's
book "A
Higher Loyalty." While I have a
signed hard-cover copy of Scott Decker's book, I
do most of my book reading during breakfast and
lunch, and I like to highlight things. I
don't want to highlight things in the hardcover
copy, nor do I want to accidentally splash salad
dressing or milk on it. I mention this to
someone, and two days ago, that person sent me a
link to a 39 page report titled "A
Report of Investigation of Certain
Allegations Relating to Former FBI Deputy
Director Andrew McCabe." It
was written by the Office of the Inspector
General U.S. Department of Justice. It
looked extremely interesting, but I was
in the middle of arguing with people on Google's
Science, Physics & Relativity discussion
forum, and I didn't want to break my
train of thought. So, I set the article
aside.
Yesterday, I wrote that long comment about
Einstein's train-embankment "gedanken," and then
I argued about it on the Google forum for most
of the day. I awoke this morning with the
idea that I should write a similar comment about
what needs to change in order to make the person
on the train see the lightning bolts strike
simultaneously, while the person on the
embankment sees them strike at different
times. All that has to change is that one
of the simultaneous strikes has to occur at a
different location, a good distance further down
the tracks and farther away from the front of
the train, not immediately in front of it.
I got up anxious to start writing that comment.
Then, in this morning's emails, I found someone
had sent me a link to an article titled "This
Philosopher Helped Ensure There Was No Nobel
for Relativity." It's about a
heated debate in 1922 between Albert Einstein
and philosopher Henri Bergson, which supposedly
caused Einstein to not win a Nobel Prize
for his theory of Special Relativity, but
instead he got one for his theory about the
photoelectric effect. I created a pdf file
of the article so that I could highlight
passages, and I studied it. As I
understand it, Bergson was a philosopher who
felt that time does not exist except as viewed
by humans. Einstein felt that time existed
both psychologically and physically, and time
would pass whether humans were there to observe
it or not. It was an interesting
article.
So, now I need to decide if I should get into
the arguments on the Google forum again or write
a comment about my early morning thoughts.
I'm going to write about my early morning
thoughts. There's nothing very interesting
among the overnight posts to the Google forum
(except that one comment seems to claim that
nothing exists except when viewed by humans).
First of all, I wanted to address the question
of whether or not there is any "frame of
reference" where the guy on the train (me) sees
himself as stationary and the railway embankment
as moving. Yes, of course there is.
That is what my "frame of reference" is all
about. All the seats and the floor and
ceiling of my railroad car are moving at the
same rate and in the same direction I am moving,
so they are all "stationary" relative to
me. And if there was an airplane directly
above me, flying in the same direction and at
the same speed, it would also be "stationary"
relative to me. And as long as the pilot
of the plane was directly above me, we would
both see the lightning bolt hit at the front of
the train before we saw the lightning bolt hit
at the rear of the train. But so what?
That doesn't mean we are really
stationary.
And it certainly does not
mean that the person on the embankment is
moving. The person on the embankment is
stationary relative to the earth. But
some reference frame on Mars or near Alpha
Centauri will see the earth spinning and
moving around the sun, so they will see the
embankment as moving. So what? It
changes nothing. The train and I will
move past the smoking hole where the lightning
hit, but the guy on the embankment
won't. So there's no debate over who is
moving relative to the point where the
lightning bolts hit.
Even the guy on Mars and near Alpha Centauri
will agree that the guy on the embankment does
NOT move relative to where the lightning bolts
hit. He only moves relative to Mars and
Alpha Centauri. But so does the guy on
the train.
Okay, so how can the guy on the train see the
lightning bolts hit simultaneously? As
stated above, all you need is to have the B
lightning bolt hit much further away in front
of the train. So, like yesterday, we
start with a "gedanken" (thought experiment)
with me (M) on the moving train and you (Y) on
the stationary embankment as we approach each
other:
Then, just as you and I pass each other, two
lightning bolts strike the train tracks.
But, unlike yesterday's strikes, although the
A strike occurs in the same spot, the B strike
occurs quite a ways away from the front of the
train.
|-------------M-------------| -> A|-------------Y-------------|
B
The light (a&b) from strikes A & B
moves toward us at the speed of light.
Again, neither of us is yet aware that there
were any strikes, since the light has not yet
reached either of us. The only
difference is that the b light has further to
travel than yesterday.
|---a---------M------------b|
-> A|----a--------Y------------|b
B
The third illustration shows me moving farther
away from you while the light from the A
&B strikes continues to move toward us.
|-------a------M------b-----|
-> A|--------a----Y--------b----|
B
The fourth illustration shows the light
from the A strike reaching you. So, at
that moment you perceive that there was only one
lightning strike. I have not yet seen the
light from either strike.
|----------a----M-----b------|
-> A|------------aY---------b----|
B
The fifth illustration shows the light
from both lightning bolts reaching me at the
same time, which would lead me to conclude that
they occurred at the same time (and they
actually did).
|--------------aMb-----------|
-> A|-------------Y---a
b--------| B
And then, of course, you will encounter the
light from the B strike and conclude that there
were actually two strikes, which where not
synchronous.
|---------b-----M-a----------|
-> A|-------------Yb-------a-----|
B
And thus, you can argue that the lightning
strikes were not simultaneous, while I can argue
that they were. And, of course, if we sit
down and intelligently discuss the situation, we
would realize that the strikes were not really
simultaneous for either of us. I just perceived
the bolts as hitting simultaneously because of
my movement toward one of the lightning
strikes. After our discussions we would
both agree that in your frame of reference, the
lightning bolts actually did hit
simultaneously, but you did not perceive
it that way because the light from the B bolt
had to travel further to get to you than did the
light from the A bolt.
Like yesterday, today's "gedanken" again had the
lightning strikes hitting the earth
simultaneously, but this time they were not at
equal distances from either of us. There's
probably some way that the bolts do not
hit simultaneously, yet one of us still
perceives that they do, only because of how fast
we were traveling in a given direction.
But I don't think I'll have time to examine that
"gedanken." But it poses the question of
who says the strikes were simultaneous.
Answer: Einstein says. Humans do not have
to be there when two lightning bolts strike the
earth simultaneously. It still
happens. We can come around later and
observe the holes in the ground, their
temperature and other remnants that tell us that
the two strikes were simultaneous. And I
doesn't matter if philosophers agree or not.
April 15,
2018 - I'm still heavily involved
in arguments on
Google's Science, Physics & Relativity
discussion forum. A couple days ago,
I used Einstein's train-embankment "gedanken"
(thought experiment) to make a point about an
observer encountering light arriving at c+v
where v is the observer's
velocity. Since there is no way to use
illustrations on that forum, I used typed
characters to create a makeshift illustration to
help argue my point. Even that was a
problem, since the Google software uses variable
width characters, and my point is best made with
fixed width characters.
Anyway, below is one such illustration using
fixed width characters. "M" is Me
on a moving train traveling a very high velocity
(probably around 25% of the speed of
light). "Y" is You standing
on the embankment beside the train tracks.
The first illustration shows me moving
toward you as the train moves past you.
Then, just as we are next to one another, and I
can wave to you as I go by, two lighting bolts
(A & B) strike the train embankment
simultaneously just in front of the train, and
just behind the train. The second
illustration shows this.
Neither of us is yet aware of the lightning
strikes, since it takes time for the light
photons to travel to our positions - even at
299,792,458 meters per second. In the
third illustration I show photons (a & b)
from lightning strikes A & B moving toward
us. Meanwhile, I'm moving toward the
point where lightning bolt B struck the
embankment.
In the fourth illustration below, I encounter
the light photons from lightning bolt B.
Of course, since I am moving toward the source
of light b, I encounter the light at c+v,
even though mathematicians cannot comprehend
such a thing. Meanwhile, you have not yet
seen the light from either
lightning strike.
In the fifth illustration below, you encounter
the light from BOTH lightning bolts
simultaneously and conclude the lightning bolts
hit simultaneously. Meanwhile, I've still
only encountered the light from lightning bolt
B. So, as far as I am concerned, there was
only one lightning strike.
Finally, in the sixth illustration below, I
encounter light from lightning strike A, which I
perceive as arriving at my location at c-v
since I am moving way from the source of the
light from that strike.
This
"gedanken" appears to me to be very simple to
understand and virtually beyond any argument or
doubts. How could anyone not understand or
disagree with what happened in that thought
experiment?
The problem comes from not looking at it from a
scientist's point of view, as was done in the
presentation above. The problem also comes
from having Me and You initially argue about
what we saw without having any understanding of
what actually happened. I would argue that
the first lightning strike (B) hit the
embankment in front of the train, and then, some
time later, the second lightning bolt (A) hit
the embankment at the rear of the train.
You would argue that the two lightning bolts hit
at the same time. In physics, this called
"The
Relativity of Simultaneity."
Of course, by having the scientist explain what
happened, I would nod my head and agree.
Although I saw the lightning bolts hit at
different times, and almost everyone else
who was not in the exact position
you were in would agree with me, in your
specific location (and any other
position equidistant from the points where the
lightning bolts hit) you would have justifiably
thought that the lightning bolts hit
simultaneously. And having the scientist
explain things, you would agree that it was just
your unique perspective that caused
that view.
Only mathematicians would disagree. They
will argue that I could never see light arriving
at c+v or c-v. "Light
must always arrive at c!!!!!!!"
they would declare and insult anyone who
disagrees. And they would somehow declare
that there is some "frame of reference" where I
am stationary and the earth and you are
moving. And they would declare that in
such a frame of reference, I
would see the lightning bolts hit
simultaneously. Then I would argue
that that is not possible, and they
would argue that they can construct a
mathematical model which shows me and the
train standing still and the light from the
lighting bolts reaching me simultaneously while
you on the embankment would see the B lightning
bolt hit first, and then the A lightning bolt
second.
And I would argue that that shows that the
mathematical model they created does not
represent reality. And I would then
explain that I looked outside as I passed the
point on the embankment where lightning bolt B
struck and I saw the charred
earth at that point. Meanwhile, you would
acknowledge never having seen or passed that
point. So, clearly, I am the one who was
moving. And you would nod and agree.
And the mathematicians would start hurling
insults and calling us names, and they would
declare that we must read what they read and
take the college courses they take, so that we
will believe as they believe - because theirs
is the only "true" belief!!!!. Hallelujah!
I'm also seeing that I really need to put this
in book and/or paper form. But, without
that argument on Google's forum I may never have
come up with such a clear and undeniable
illustration of how the Relativity of
Simultaneity works. Even Einstein
never mentioned that charred spot on the
embankment! I've seen arguments
where others did, but they didn't explain things
as clearly.
Comments for Sunday,
April 8, 2018, thru Saturday, April 14,
2018:
April 12,
2018 - I keep planning to write a
comment here about what is going on in my
arguments with mathematicians, but writing
comments here is at the bottom of my daily to-do
list, and before I get to it I get into another
argument, and before I realize it, the day is
over and it is time to shut down my computer.
Sometimes the arguments are very interesting and
educational, and other times they are
exceedingly repetitious and boring.
This morning I see there are 211 posts in the
thread titled "The
#4 Dumbest Belief in Physics" that I
started on April 7, five days ago. Only
three of the 12 posts made overnight require a
response from me. And none seems
particularly interesting. So, I can let
them wait while I write this comment.
In the arguments on the Google forum, I seem to
be arguing with people who have memorized
slogans and terms, and they cannot discuss
anything with anyone who hasn't also memorized
those same slogans and terms.
The question we're debating is simple: When a
stationary radar gun is fired at an oncoming
speeding car, do the radar pulses hit the car at
c (the speed of light) or at c+v
(the speed of light plus the
speed of the oncoming car)? As I see it,
the answer must be c+v.
If the pulses hit the car at c, the gun
would register the speed of the car as being
zero.
But the mathematicians believe the car is a "stationary
frame of reference," which means that the light
will arrive at c in that stationary
frame of reference. Sometimes they seem to
argue that the car is stationary when the light
pulse arrive but moves between the arrival of
each pulse. However, they won't agree to
it being phased that way. At other times
they seem to agree that the light
arrives at a "closing speed" of c+v.
But when I use the term "closing speed" as what
happens when the car meets the pulse from the
radar gun, they disagree. Here is what a
newcomer named "Volney" wrote in one of the
three comments awaiting my response:
Here is another term
you don't understand: "closing speed". Closing speed is defined as
comparing the speed of A with the speed of
B in reference frame C (in
which neither A nor B is stationary). An
observer would NOT use
the term "closing speed" to talk about a
photon hitting the
observer. If you tried to do that, A would be
the photon, B the observer
and this takes place in B's frame where B is
stationary in B's own
frame. So the 'closing speed' would be the
speed of the photon (c) plus the speed of B in B's frame (0
by definition) so we get c+0=c.
As I see it, A is the pulse from
the radar gun, and that pulse is moving at c.
B is the oncoming car which is moving at v.
And reference frame C, in which neither A nor B
is stationary, is the highway. So, I'm in
perfect agreement with his definition. The
misunderstanding seems to be about the term
"observer." I keep telling them that the
atoms in the car are the "observers" who
encounter the oncoming pulses arriving at c+v.
Evidently, for some unknown reason, he's saying
the highway must be the observer. Or is
he? He doesn't relate the terms he's using
to the radar gun argument. It's like he's
just reciting something from memory that he once
read somewhere - or was required to memorize in
school.
This morning's argument from "tjrob137" says
somewhat the same thing:
He is responding to a comment
where I wrote: "The radar gun experiment
SHOWS that light arrives at the oncoming car
at c+v." And his response is:
No, it does NOT.
Because no radar gun actually measures the
speed of the light
arriving at the oncoming car -- how could
it???? -- IT IS NOT AT THE
CAR. It is your FANTASY that this is so, and
your FANTASY is wrong."
I didn't say anything about the
radar gun being at the car. I was talking
about what the experiment showed.
But, how can I explain that to him without
getting into another argument over
terminology? Or maybe he'll argue that I
am using LOGIC and logic is not valid in
physics.
The third post awaiting a response from me is by
"SteveBh" who wrote this:
The closing speed
has been checked in many experiments and is
always c. The closing speed in
Einstein's little scenario is c for both the
man on the train, and the man on the
embankment.
So, he's arguing that Volney's
definition of "closing speed" is wrong.
The rest of his comment is a weird
misinterpretation of Einstein's analogy about
what a man in the middle car of a moving train
sees versus what a man on an embankment next to
the moving train sees when lightning bolts hit
simultaneously in front of the train and behind
the train while both men are momentarily next to
one another. "SteveBh" sees things
this way:
So both the guy ON the
train and the guy ON the embankment/station
next to him (ideally right on top of him) have
the same experience of having the flashes
arrive simultaneously. That has to be true, or
else causality would suffer.
That, of course, cannot be.
It would only be possible if the light from the
lightning bolts arrived instantaneously.
It doesn't. Light travels at 299,792,458
meters per second. So, the guy on the
train moves toward the light while the light is
traveling, and thus he encounters the light at
c+v. Meanwhile, the light from behind the
train arrives later, arriving at c-v. For
the person on the embankment who is not moving,
the lightning bolts would arrive simultaneously.
Here's an illustration of the problem from the
Internet (confirming my interpretation):
The problem is that the illustration doesn't use
the equations "c+v" or "c-v", so
there will undoubtedly be an argument over my
interpretation. The illustration is from HERE, Texas
Christian University's web site. And from
a book. So, now I suspect the people on
the Google forum will argue that those sources
are invalid for some reason.
And now I've written my responses here before
posting them on the Google forum. The
three arguments now seem to be far more
interesting than they were when I first read
them. I think that is because writing
the responses is very interesting
and educational. I'm learning from what
I'm writing in response, not from what the
mathematicians on Google are telling me.
April 9,
2018 - When I turned off my
computer yesterday afternoon at 5:15 p.m., there
were 43 posts in the Google discussion thread I
created titled "The
#4 Dumbest Belief in Physics." This
morning there were 53. And after I wrote 7
responses to (1) rotchm, (2) SteveBh, (3) Lofty
Goat, (4) danco, (5) Edward Prochak, (6) Sylvia
Else and (7) kenseto, there were 73 posts in the
thread. David (Kronos Prime) Fuller was
posting endless insults and personal attacks
while I was posting this very specific question
in 5 of my 7 responses:
The radar gun emits
pulses at a frequency of 1,500,000,000 Hz.
The pulses that come back from the
speeding car are at a frequency of
1,500,000,150 Hz.
The baseball problem is similar,
except that the pulses that come back from the
baseball are at a frequency of say
1,500,000,120 Hz.
The question: What PHYSICALLY
happened to cause the pulses to return at a
higher frequency than the frequency at which
they were emitted?
One of the two overnight posts
that didn't get my copy-and-pasted question was
from Lofty Goat who only asked if I like being
"lost" in my discussions on the forum because I
didn't speak in mathematical equations. I
responded that I didn't feel "lost." I
could decipher enough to understand what was
going on.
The other post that didn't get my copy-and-paste
response was from SteveBh who asked,
Well, Ed, then I guess
it's a good thing that nobody first tried to
develop a "sonar gun" to detect speeders by
aiming a sound chirp at them, since obviously
THAT would not work at all, right?
And I responded,
The problem with sound
waves (sonar) is that they are neither fast
enough nor precise enough to measure
velocities of really fast moving objects.
The whole system fails if an object is
going faster than sound. Nothing can go
faster than light, so (radar) light (radio
frequency) photons are used to measure the
speed of very fast moving objects.
Since sound travels faster
through water than through air, submarines use
sonar to locate objects. I remember a
lot of WWII movies where everyone listens to
sonar pings hitting the hull of the submarine,
and everyone gives a sigh of relief as the
pings get farther and farther apart,
indicating the the enemy ship is moving away
from the submarine.
Then, as I began work on this
comment, I suddenly realized that the question I
had asked of those five other posters was a bad
question to ask. I don't know if anyone
will respond to the question, but what I wrote
about sonar pulses made me realize I could write
the following answer to my own radar gun
question:
The fact that the
radio photons return at a higher frequency
than the frequency at which they were emitted
by the radar gun does not show
that the radio photons arrived at the oncoming
car at c+v. They may have
arrived at c. The first photon may
have arrived at c and was sent back at
c. Then the second photon may have
arrived at c and was also sent back at
c. What changed was the amount of
time between the emission of each pulse
and the re-sending of that pulse. The
pulses were sent back at a faster rate than
they were originally emitted because they were
received at a faster rate.
Of course, if there is less time between
pulses, that means that
the pulses arrived at c+v, but would the
mathematicians think about it that way? Or
would they use the argument I just wrote?
The next question then becomes: Was the wavelength
of each radio photon unchanged when it
returned back to the radar gun? I think it
would be changed, but I don't think the radar
gun measures wavelengths, it only measures
frequency of pulses. If the returned wavelength
was different than the original wavelength, then
that would confirm that the light
arrived at the oncoming car at c+v.
Nuts!! The only good element in this is
that the people on the forum do not seem able to
work things out logically, and if they could,
they wouldn't be able to write out a response in
ordinary English. They'd have to write it
as a mathematical equation. But,
I'll have to wait to see how they respond.
Meanwhile, I'll have to think of a better
question to ask, one that involves changes in
wavelength, not just in frequency.
April 8,
2018 (B) - At 4:06 p.m. yesterday
afternoon I started a new thread on the Google
Science, Physics & Relativity discussion
forum. The thread is titled "The
#4 Dumbest Belief in Physics." In
the message that I used to start the thread I
said much the same thing I said here in my April
5 comment. There were zero responses on
that new Google forum thread when I turned off
my computer at 4:15 p.m. This morning I
see 16 responses.
Looking over the 16 responses, I see 6 are from
people on my "Do Not Reply" list. I'll
study those anyway, just to see if they contain
anything other than the typical personal attacks
and insults. 3 are arguments between other
posters, which I'll have to check to make sure I
understand what they are arguing about.
Three of the responses are from "Paparios" who
wrote nothing, he only posted links to five
YouTube videos. All five videos are about
the Doppler effect. I'll have to try to
figure out what point he is trying to
make.
I'm aware of the Doppler effect, but they are
evidently seeing something in it that I do not
see. I think what they see has to do with
the #3
Dumbest Belief in Physics: "All motion is
reciprocal." I think (and hope) radar guns
may be able to help disprove that belief,
too. If you are in a speeding police car
traveling at 100 mph and use your radar gun to
check the speed of the car you are chasing, if
that car is also traveling at 100 mph, the radar
gun will show its speed as zero.
So, if you had only the radar gun
to use to measure speed, it would confirm dumb
belief #3. But, in that situation in our
real universe, the police would use their speedometer
to measure the speed of the other car. So,
they have a way to disprove dumb
belief #3.
What if the other car is going 90 mph or 110
mph? What would the radar gun show?
It should show that in the first instance, the
speeder's car is traveling at minus
10 mph, which means it is traveling towards
the police car, and in the second
instance it is traveling at plus
10 mph away from the police car.
Again the police can use their speedometer to
disprove dumb belief #3. But, is that the
best argument to use when I respond to the
people on the forum?
I also know that the radar gun is the source
of the radio pulses being used to measure
velocities. And no matter how fast the
police car is moving, the pulses from the radar
gun will always travel at c. The
speed of the source does not affect the rate
of the emitted radio pulses.
So, if the police car is traveling at 100 mph
and the radar gun is pointed at a tree, the gun
will show the tree to be traveling at 100
mph.
Hmm. If the speed of the source was
added to the speed of the light, what would
happen? That's going to take a lot more
thinking than I have time for right now, so I'll
ponder it for awhile. Right now I need to
get onto the Google forum and argue there,
instead on continuing to argue here with myself.
The hardcover version was published in 2003 and
written while George W. Bush was
President. So, there's a lot in it about
"W." As I listened
to the book, I constantly kept thinking about
how similar George W. Bush was to Donald
Trump. I'd forgotten about
many of the similarities. This is from
page 347 of the hardcover edition:
as he became president, Bush
managed to spend [Bill] Clinton’s surplus of
international goodwill in astonishingly short
order. He ditched Kyoto, the anti-ballistic
missile treaty, the germ warfare protocol to
the Biological Weapons Convention, the
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the
International Criminal Court, and the land
mine treaty.
And this is from page 353:
Bush is good at
make-believe. He says what he has to
say. But he gives tax cuts to his
supporters, throws business to his cronies,
quietly guts environmental protections, and
leaves millions of children behind. He
calls himself a compassionate
conservative. That's the biggest lie of
all.
The right-wing media racket let Bush get
away with it. When the mainstream media
dares to tell the truth about Bush, they're
called biased.
Back then, Al Gore was playing the
role that Hilary Clinton plays today on Fox News
and in the right wing media, i.e., they are
being attacked as a way of side-tracking the
discussion whenever the President does something
wrong and/or stupid. The biggest
difference may be that back then Ann Coulter may
have been the most rabid defender of "W," while
today she considers Trump to be a "shallow,
lazy ignoramus."
While listening to the book I also couldn't help
but recall a book I read on my Kindle in
February and March of 2015 titled "Thinking,
Fast and Slow." "Thinking slow" is
thinking logically. "Thinking fast" is
thinking emotionally, as you do when you react
to a sudden unexpected event or to something you
fear or hate. George W. Bush and Donald
Trump never seem to think things through, they
both seem to think emotionally, instead of
logically, and they seem to have been
elected by people who also think emotionally
instead of logically. People who
think emotionally are driven by fear and anger,
but mostly it seems they are driven by ego and a
need to be viewed as the better than their
competitors, whoever their competitors
are. They are out to prove that they (and
their clan or country) are the better and
smarter than any competitor, and they're ready
to go to war with anyone or any country that
disagrees.
Until Donald Trump was elected, I always
considered George W. Bush to have been our
dumbest President. Now, of course, Donald
Trump holds the title of the "all-time dumbest
American President," and hopefully he will hold
that title forever.
I think I was expecting Al Franken's book to be
a lot funnier than it turned out to be, but it
was still a good book to listen to while
driving.
BTW, I half-believed this headline when I first
saw it yesterday:
Mexico
Agrees to Pay for Trump’s Psychiatric Care
But, it turned out to be the title of a
satirical piece in The
New Yorker. When talking about Trump
it is often it is difficult to distinguish
between satire and reality.
Comments for Sunday,
April 1, 2018, thru Saturday, April 7,
2018:
April 5,
2018 - I'd like to try to discuss
a specific experiment with the
people on Google's Science,
Physics & Relativity discussion forum,
instead of arguing general physics, which is
mostly what I've been doing in the past.
So, I've been doing some heavy thinking about
which experiment would best demonstrate that
light can arrive at c+v
when an observer is moving at velocity v
toward the light source or at or c-v
when the observer is moving from the
source. The problem is, no scientific
paper (except my own) ever seems to describe
things that way, and virtually every
mathematician believes light is always measured
as traveling at c regardless of the
motion of the observer or emitter.
The "Annual Doppler Shift" discovered by Hermann Carl Vogel and Julius Scheiner
says that light from a star located along the
ecliptic arrives at c+v when the
earth is
moving toward the star in its orbit
around the sun, and it arrives at c-v
when the earth is moving away from the
star. But I can't find a copy of the paper
they wrote, and the comments about it in other
books and papers are too general.
The fact that pulses from pulsars along the
ecliptic arrive at a faster rate when the earth
is moving toward the pulsar and at a slower rate
when the earth his moving away from the pulsar
as the earth orbits the sun says that the pulses
must be arriving at c+v and c-v.
However, none of the many papers on the subject
ever uses the terms c+v and c-v,
and the authors generally avoid the entire issue
by doing all their measurements from the center
of the sun.
Daniel
Gezari's paper on lunar laser ranging
implies c+v when he writes about how
light from a mirror on the moon arrives at the
earth observatory at c+v due to the
rotation of the earth toward the mirror, but
Gezari doesn't accept what his own calculations
confirmed.
So, the best "experiment" demonstrating that
light arrives at c+v seems to be what
happens when police radar guns are used to
measure the speed of an oncoming car. The
best web page I could find on the subject is
titled "Police
Radar and How it Works." It
explains,
First, there is a
transmitter, which creates a signal (called a
carrier wave) at a
specific frequency (of
whichever band the radar is designed for). We
will use as an example 1.5
Ghz, which means that one and a half
billion sine wave pulses are created every
second. This signal is not
modulated like a signal from a radio station
would be.
That last sentence means that the
1.5 billion pulses each second are evenly spaced
in time and are all of the same strength.
A radio station modulates its signal so that
you'll hear voice and music instead of just a
single endless tone. "FM" means "frequency
modulation," which says they vary the frequency
to cause the different sounds. "AM" means
"amplitude modulation," which says the pulses
vary in strength or loudness to cause the
different sounds.
And then the web page about police radar says
This
signal is radiated out toward your car.
As the signal spreads out, its strength gets
weaker and weaker. ... Various radar guns have
different spread patterns, but a block away,
the pattern may be about 30 feet in diameter.
... If your car
passes through any part of the 30-foot
diameter circle (actually, cone), the
signal will hit it.
And then
A
tiny fraction of this energy
that is
reflected in all directions, happens to be reflected back in the
exact direction of the originating radar
gun.
The article also says
There is a
phenomenon called the Doppler shift, which
causes the frequency of any signal radiated
from an object (including a reflected
signal) to be shifted by a very specific
amount.The
size of this frequency shift is dependent
on the speed of the moving vehicle, and on
almost nothing else.
Also
For a car going 100
mph (toward the radar gun), this only
represents a frequency shift (increase) of our
original signal to 1.500000150 Ghz, a VERY
tiny change. ... So we get an resulting
output (difference) signal of about 150 Hz for
the 100 mph car. Lower speeds give lower
(difference) frequency. Every frequency
corresponds uniquely with a specific speed,
virtually exactly proportional to vehicle
speed.
In summary, radio photons are sent
out as evenly spaced pulses at the frequency
rate of 1.5 billion pulses per second. The
pulses travel at c, the speed of
light. However, because the target car is
moving toward the source of the photons, the
radio photons hit the car at c+v, which
means the pulses hit the car at a higher
frequency rate than the rate at which they were
sent. They hit at a frequency of 1.500000150 billion
pulses per second.
The atoms in the vehicle that were hit by
the photons then emit new radio photons back to
the radar gun at the speed of light, c.
However, the new photons are emitted at the
frequency rate received, i.e., 1.500000150 billion
pulses per second.
The radar gun subtracts the return frequency
rate from the transmitted frequency rate and
gets the difference in frequency rate:
The web page
describes the final results this way:
Since the difference
frequency is virtually directly proportional
to the target vehicle speed, a simple circuit
converts the 150 Hz signal into a readout of
100 mph.
And the web page also uses c+v
and c-v like so:
The equation is
f(reflected)=f(source) * Sqr.Rt((c+v)/(c-v)), where c is
the velocity of light, and v is the velocity
of your car.
But I don't know how to use that
equation in my arguments. I'd need someone
else to use it in a meaningful argument first.
I also found a
web site explaining how radar guns are
also used by baseball fans to measure how fast
the pitcher is throwing his "fast ball."
The principles are exactly the same as for
police radar guns.
I've mentioned police radar in discussions with
the people on the Google forum before.
Their typical argument is that, for all we know,
the on-coming car could be motionless in space
and the radar gun could be moving, since the
earth is spinning on it axis, and it's also
orbiting the sun and the Milky Way galaxy.
But that's where Relativity comes in. In
the frame of reference of the stationary radar
gun, the oncoming car is traveling at 100
mph. In the reference frame of the
stationary point where the Big Bang occurred,
the radar gun may be moving at tens of thousands
of miles per hour along with the earth as the
earth moves through space, but the car is still
moving toward the gun at 100 mph plus or minus
the speed of the earth. There is no
reference frame where the car is stationary
relative to the gun or moving away from the
gun. And motion is definitely not
reciprocal - except in the fantasies of
mathematicians.
This all makes perfect sense to me. I can
probably find other situations where regularly
spaced pulses are transmitted at the speed of
light and the pulse rate received is different
from the pulse rate of transmission, indicating
that the photons were received at c+v or
c-v rates, which the mathematicians all
say is impossible, and so do the textbooks they
read in college.
But how can I get an intelligent conversation
going on this topic? If I'm wrong, I'd
like someone to explain to me where I'm
wrong. The fact that what I say disagrees
with what is in textbooks doesn't change
anything if it is clear that the textbooks are
wrong.
April
3, 2018 - Hmm. This
morning, I was about to search for something via
Google when I noticed the
Google home page had this illustration:
Obviously, the image had something
to do with time -- or clocks. But
what? A little detective work found that
it is a
cartoon about John Harrison, who was born
on April 3, 1693. So, today is his 325th
birthday. Harrison is
best known for his work on clocks used on
ships. His first invention was the H1, a
chronological tool used for determining
longitude at sea. After testing the H1 in 1735,
Harrison worked on later iterations, the H2 and
H3, that improved on the original's
accuracy.
So, it's a good day for me to delve deeper into
the question of how time actually works.
And that is what I was doing when I noticed the
illustration.
April 2,
2018 - I'm still mostly thinking
about Relativity and Time Dilation, but I
decided I should add something about Scott
Decker's new book to my
blog about the anthrax case. So,
this morning I created a new blog page titled "Recounting
the Anthrax Attacks." The previous
page was added almost three years ago, on April
8, 2015.
I was very surprised while
researching how Scott's book is being promoted
to find a
YouTube video promoting the book.
The video is very professionally done, and it
clearly implies that the book will soon become a
TV documentary series or a major motion picture.
However, the video was evidently created by
Hollywood agent looking to make such a
deal. I hope it happens. It
would definitely be a movie (or TV series) that
I'd watch. (It evidently has nothing to do
with the TV company that contacted me last July
and August about making a TV series or a movie
about the anthrax attacks. That company
was evidently never able to find the funding to
proceed.)
Hmmm.
The idea of making a movie or TV series that
depicts Ivins committing the
crime poses a very interesting question: How
would they depict him writing the letters and
addressing the envelopes?
Meanwhile, I found a
web source that says this about measuring
the speed of light
received from stars while the earth orbits the
sun:
He [Hermann Carl Vogel] then went to the
Polytechnical School in the city of Dresden,
before he enrolled in natural science at the
Universit of Leipzig in 1863. By 1865, he was
an astronomical assistant at the Leipzig
Observatory before he went for his Ph.D. at
the University of Jena which he graduated in
1870 when he was the director of the Bothkamp
Observatory by recommendation from astronomer
Karl Christian Bruhns to whom he was an
assistant and his professor Johann Karl
Friedrich Zoellner. Here he and his school
chum Wilhelm Oswald Lohse (1845 - 1915) began
taking photographic images of the spectrum of
stars by 1871 when they also found the Sun's
rotational period by the Doppler effect of
shifted wavelength. To a person who doesn't
know what those lines on the spectrum means,
it's of no use, but to a person who knows what
elements those lines represent, seeing those
familiar lines shifted even slightly to the
blue or the red side of the spectrum is
noticeable. By 1874, he was working at the new
Astrophysical Observatory in Potsdam. (AOP) By
1882, he was the director of AOP till his
retirement in 1907. By 1888, he and Julius
Scheiner were producing such accurate
spectral wavelength shift readings that it
was made into a paper, "The Determination of
Radial Velocities of Stars by
Spectrographic Observation".
Many others had tried photographic
spectroscopy, but he was the first to
determine how to do so accurate-enough that he
can determine the radial velocities of stars.
I've tried everything I can think
of to find that paper I highlighted in
red. I've even translated the title into
German and searched for a German version.
No luck.
It seems like the paper should show that light
from a star along the ecliptic should arrive at
c+v when the earth is moving toward the star,
and at c-v when the earth is moving away from
the star six months later. But why can't I
find the paper? Is there some kind of
conspiracy to hide such papers? If so, how
did the author of that web page find the
paper? And why do many of the sources that
mention the Vogel-Scheiner findings do so
without providing any sources,
not even the name of the paper? I might
turn into a conspiracy theorist if I can't find
it.
April 1,
2018 - I'm really beginning to
feel overwhelmed by all the things I want and
need to do. Once again I have nothing
prepared for this Sunday comment, so I'm going
to have to write it from scratch.
I thought I'd have time to work on writing this
comment yesterday, since there was only one post
on the Google
Science, Physics & Relativity discussion
forum that I felt needed a response from
me. The post was from "rotchm."
"Kenseto" had evidently stopped posting.
So, I spent nearly all morning working on a
reply to the post from "rotchm." That
included time to do research to find quotes from
Einstein which I used in my response.
Then, when I was nearly done with my response to
"rotchm," suddenly a very long post addressed to
me from "tjrob137" appeared in the thread.
And it was filled with bizarre arguments about
how easy it is to measure the speed of oncoming
light from distant stars, and how light is always
measured to be c, regardless of the
motion of the observer. It appears
all you have to do is start with a belief that
light always arrives at c, then you
build a mathematical equation to support that
belief. And you call the process of
creating that equation "an experiment."
So, after I posted my response to "rotchm," I
spent nearly all yesterday afternoon writing a
response to "tjrob137." That also included
doing a lot of research - research that mostly
involves finding things I wanted to quote.
Then, when I was nearly finished with my reply
to "tjrob137," I received an email from retired
FBI scientist Scott Decker. The email
included as an attachment the final version of
his book "Recounting
the Anthrax Attacks" in pdf
format. He says he'll send me a hardcover
copy as soon as it comes out.
The book will be officially released in hard
cover on April 8, a week from today. I was
planning to write a comment here about it next
Sunday, but it looks like I'm writing about it
today. I can't believe I began
proof-reading it back on December 22, 2016,
when he emailed me the first three chapters he
had written. And I finished proof-reading
Chapter 23 on March 12, 2017, just after he
finished writing that chapter. It
wasn't until December
17, 2017, that I learned that I'm
mentioned on the first page of the book.
And it wasn't until yesterday that I was able to
read Chapter 24, the Epilogue I had recommended
he write after he sent me Chapter 23. The
Epilogue begins with this:
By November, the
Frederick City Police Department made it
official: Dr. Bruce
Edwards Ivins had deliberately killed himself.
With Ivins’s death, proving
his guilt before a court of law would not be
possible, and we realized that doubt would always linger in
some minds. But the totality of evidence could not be ignored: Ivins was the
anthrax mailer and a serial killer. His motive? For those who investigated
the attacks, we are in agreement: the troubled anthrax vaccine and the
looming potential of shutting down anthrax research at USAMRIID, bringing an
end to his professional life’s work, coupled with an increasingly
troubled mind pushed him to murder, using the
weapon he understood
best. But personally, I do not think he
anticipated killing postal
workers, and when he did, he stopped mailing
his deadly letters.
That's going to enrage all the
True Believers who still have their own theories
about who sent the anthrax letters.
I keep wanting to relate this endless
disagreement to the science arguments I'm
currently having with mathematicians. When
I talk with the mathematicians it seems that
each one has his own unique understanding of
Relativity and how light works. That's
what makes it so difficult to resolve the
arguments. I'll be arguing with "rotchm"
or "tjrob137" and a half dozen others will join
in with their own bizarre arguments.
But, it's going to be interesting to see how
well Scott Decker's book sells. Is anyone
(other than the True Believers and conspiracy
theorists) still interested in the case?
While there have been lots of other books about
the case (including 2 by me), Scott's book is
the first book written by an insider in
the investigation. I hope it does
well. I certainly found it to be a
fascinating read.
I wrote a review for it on the Amazon
site. Of course, I screwed it up.
The first line of the review was:
This is the first book
about the biggest FBI investigation in
history, written by someone on the inside,
Scott Decker, who was in charge of the
scientific investigation.
Then I saw that it could
be read as saying that it is the first book
about the case. It's not of course.
So, I had to go back and remove the comma
between "history" and "written." It's the
first book about the case written by an insider.
There are probably other changes I should make,
too. That's what takes me hours to write a
comment for the Google forum. I constantly
rewrite and revise what I've written until I'm
satisfied. And then, as soon as I hit
"SUBMIT," I see other things I should have
written in a different way. Writing is
easy. It's the revising and re-thinking
that takes so much time.
Comments for Sunday,
March 25, 2018, thru Saturday, March 31,
2018:
March 30,
2018 - Wow! I've really
been extremely busy
for the past few days. I kept thinking I
should write a comment about it, but then I'd
get busy again and there would be no time to
write a comment. Basically, all I've been
doing is arguing on Google's
Science, Physics and Relativity Discussion
forum, but the arguments have been extremely
interesting.
I've only been arguing with two people, but each
exchange sometimes seems to be fifty arguments
at once. I started by describing three
experiments from
one of my papers which proved that an
outside observer can measure light arriving at c+v
or c-v, where v is the observer's
speed toward or away from the light
source. Then "rotchm" and "kenseto" picked
my comment apart and started arguments about
each paragraph, and some sentences within the
paragraphs. I responded to most of the
arguments. Then "kenseto" dropped out and
only "rotchm" continued to pick apart my
responses and start new arguments about
virtually every sentence I wrote. My last
comment yesterday took about 2½ hours to
write. If I make a copy of it (including
many quotes from prior exchanges) and paste it
into a WORD file, it is 8 pages long.
"Rotchm's" response this morning has
deleted big sections of the argument, but it is
still 5 pages long if I copy and paste it into a
WORD file.
Interestingly, after I referred to him as a
"mathematician," in his new post, "rotchm"
wrote: "I'm also a
psychopathologist & work in med labs. But
here in this NG, yes, I'm a
mathematician." (Psychopathology is the
study of mental disorders. And I seem to be having a problem
getting him to understand
reality.)
He is constantly referring to reference
frames. A couple days ago, he asked,
Is not the speed of
any observer zero (wrt his frame)?
And I responded,
It depends upon what
you are measuring. If you are in a lab
with the windows closed, then yes, your speed
is THEORETICALLY zero.
And the next day he asked,
Are you saying that if
you then open the windows, your speed
magically changes from zero to some
other value????
And the next day I responded,
No, I'm saying that
before you opened the window you had NOTHING
to use to determine if you were moving or not.
You had no capability of determining
if you were moving or not. It's
Einstein's First Postulate.
When you opened the window, you
HAD ways to determine if you were moving or
not.
Evidently, this cannot be stated
in mathematics. In mathematics, a
formula is a formula, and what can be done in
the real world is irrelevant. That is why we
cannot agree. You are talking
mathematics. I am talking about reality.
And "rotchm's" response this
morning was ("RF" = reference frame):
Yes
I did have something to use to determine
my speed: MY RF.
Speed (as position) is ALWAYS
relative to a given RF.
Speed is contingent to an RF,
else 'speed' doesnt make sense (and
undefined). This is basic stuff ed, which you
should know. In experimental physics, we
always use RF's (coordinates, coordination
procedures)
I cannot make sense of his
answer, which seems to be mindless mathematical
dogma. He seems to be saying he has
something to use to determine his speed, he
has his reference frame.
And I think he's saying that his
speed is always zero, and
therefore everything else is always moving
relative to him.
In science no one can assume their speed is
always zero. It is virtually never
zero. But in a mathematical model
you can assume your speed
is zero. And if you mindlessly believe the
dogma, you can also believe it is true.
I had also created a hypothetical situation
where he was heading back toward the sun and
earth as he returned from a trip to Alpha
Centauri, and my question was whether the sun
was moving toward him or was he moving toward
the sun? His answer,
In my (constricted)
RF, the Sun is getting closer & closer to
me.
So, his speed is zero and the sun
is somehow moving closer to him. Here are
a bunch of his other answers with my questions
removed:
Yes, my speed is v wrt
the sun's RF (syn: as measured by the sun)
In *my* RF, my position is
always x'=0, thus my speed wrt my RF is always
0.
But the
sun is coming towards *me*, so I will "get
home".
In my frame, when I measure the
SoL, I still get c. In the
frame of the Sun, the *closing speed*
between the light & me is c +
v. Closing speed is not the
speed of "something"; it refers to the rate of
change of the distance between the "two
things"; its NOT the SoL.
So, he acknowledges that light is
arriving at c+v, but he calls it the "closing
speed," which he says is not the speed of
anything, it is the rate of change of the
distance between two things. He doesn't
explain why the "closing speed" is in the
reference frame of the sun. And why can't
he measure the "closing speed"
in his reference frame? Is it because his
speed is always zero and there can be no
"closing speed" unless you have two
moving objects?
And my question is: Do I really want to ask him
and continue the debate?
Hmm. Looking at this morning's post
from "rotchm," it appears he deleted all of the
comments I made yesterday about measuring light
frequency. It seems I may have won
that debate. (The way to tell if you have
won a debate with a mathematician is if
they stop answering or change the
question.) I'd argued that there is no
"red- or blue-shift" in frequency of
light from a star. There is only red- or
blue-shift in wavelength. If a
star is coming toward you, you will receive more
photons per unit of time than if it was
going away from you, and receiving more photons
means the star seems brighter
than it really is, but there is no blue-shifting
in the light. If you are stationary, the wavelength
of the photons you receive will be the same as
when they were emitted. That is because of
Einstein's Second Postulate. The speed of
the emitter does not change the speed of the
light emitted. It is always emitted at c.
If you are moving toward the star,
however, you will again get more photons per
unit of time, making the star appear brighter, plus
the wavelength of the photons will be
blue-shifted. The photons will be arriving
at c+v, where v is your
velocity. So, you know that you
are moving and your speed is not
zero. But "rotchm" will never accept that.
Meanwhile, last night I watched the rerun of the
April 15, 2015, PBS "NOVA" episode titled "The
Great Math Mystery" which was subtitled
"Is math invented by humans, or is it the
language of the universe?" The
program turned out to be fairly neutral on the
answer, pointing out that there are a lot of
things in nature that have not yet been
reduced to mathematical formulas, a prime
example being the weather, which involves too
many variables and unknowns to turn into a
formula. There as also a moment in the
show where they mentioned something that I
still do not understand: how the
magnetic and electric fields cause a photon to
act like a wave:
I just cannot visualize that even though there
is an image before me. I cannot
visualize how it works. I
visualize a photon as a particle that
vibrates, moving up and down, and when it
travels at the speed of light, that up-down
motion turns into a wave-like pattern with the
"wavelength" being one up and one down.
That is somewhat like what the image above
shows, but there is no particle.
Sigh. It's now lunch time and
time for me to head to the gym. All I
did all morning was work on this
comment. So much to do, so few hours in
a day.
I'd started reading it eight days ago after
finishing a very very depressing book
about Donald Trump. I needed to read
something humorous after that. While the
book certainly has funny comments and contains
some funny jokes, it is more of a psychology
book than a humor book. It analyzes why we
need humor in our lives. Here's one
passage I underlined;
Joking about a “deep
topic” or “dangerous topic” is a way of
talking about it, examining it in a way that
doesn’t scare us, numb us, and rob us of our
joy in life. Jokes allow us to dwell on the
incomprehensible without dying from fear or
going mad. Laughter and joke telling are a way
to speak of the unspeakable.
That probably explains why so many
comedians are joking about and poking fun at
Donald Trump. It's a way of coping with
our fear of what dangers Trump might get us into
and what horrors he might commit.
As the great American
philosopher Joan Rivers succinctly put it, “If
you can laugh at it, you can live with it.”
The book also has some interesting
historical information. For example:
Historical evidence
indicates that the ancient Greeks had been
collecting jokes and putting them into
“jokebooks” or “jestbooks” since the time of
Philip II of Macedon (382–336 BCE). Like all
good things that originated in Greece, the
tradition of jokebooks migrated to Italy in
the time of Caesar Augustus (63 BC–14 CE), and
it is said that a scholar named Melissus
compiled approximately 150 joke anthologies.
Unfortunately, only one book of humor from
ancient Roman times has survived. The
Philogelos, or Laughter-Lover is a collection
of 264 jokes put together in the fourth or
fifth century CE. The jokes in the collection
are brief and to the point, but happily they
still have a certain cachet. For example: “How
shall I cut your hair?” a barber asked a
customer. “In silence!” replied the wag. And:
How does a man with bad breath commit suicide?
He puts a bag over his head and asphyxiates
himself!
I only highlighted a few of the
longer jokes from the book. Here's one
that addresses a favorite subject of mine:
Logic: The Art of
Reasoning (Inductive Reasoning: Moving from a
Particular to a General)
Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are on a
camping trip. In the middle of the night
Holmes wakes up and gives Watson a nudge.
“Watson,” he says, “look up in the sky and
tell me what you see.”
“I see millions of stars, Holmes,” says
Watson.
“And what do you conclude from that, Watson?”
Watson thinks for a moment. “Well,” he says,
“astronomically, it tells me that there are
millions of galaxies and potentially billions
of planets. Astrologically, I observe that
Saturn is in Leo. Homologically, I deduce that
the time is approximately a quarter past
three. Meteorologically, I suspect that we
will have a beautiful day tomorrow.
Theologically, I see that God is all powerful,
and we are small and insignificant. Uh, what
does it tell you, Holmes?”
“Watson, you idiot! Someone has stolen our
tent!”
During lunch I'll start on a
science book, which might actually be
more of an adventure book. Either way, it
looks like a good one. (It's definitely
not a mathematics book.)
March 26,
2018 - This morning I had another
little "epiphany,"
a Eureka! moment when it
seemed like the last piece in a puzzle might
have suddenly fallen into place. It began
yesterday when "danco" posted this to the
Google forum:
In physics, &
"higher' science, 'understanding' relates to
the capacity of applying the models and
*calculating*, predicting, the outcome of
exps. [experiments]
We 'understand the math' or we
can work out the implications of the model.
Thats whats meant by
'understanding'.
Then, there is the word
'interpretation', which is more what YOU call
'understanding'. Interpretations in
physics is irrelevant and obsolete; "shut
up & calculate" as the famous quote
from Mermin. This
is because, 'interpretations' wont
change the model, wont change the math.
Therefore,
interpretations' are useless *in
physics*. Yes, in early years
of physics, or for the lay,
interpretations can help them develop an
'understanding' and mental image of the
situations. But further down the line,
the lay gets to understand that
'interpretations' are irrelevant, and
drops such options.
You havent crossed that line and are still
stuck at 16th century science so to speak.
Thinking about
foundations pays off in the long run. David Mermin once
summarized a popular attitude towards quantum
theory as “Shut up and calculate!”. We suggest
an alternative slogan: “Shut
up and contemplate!”
Lucien Hardy and Robert Spekkens, "Why
Physics Needs Quantum Foundations" (2010)
Then, this morning as I lay in bed waiting for
it to be time to get up, it suddenly occurred to
me that for the past 4 years I haven't been
studying a conflict between mathematicians and
scientists, the conflict is actually a 3-way
battle:
mathematicians
versus scientists versus philosophers
The battle cry of mathematicians
is "Shut up and calculate!"
The battle cry of philosophers is "Shut up and
contemplate!"
And, meanwhile, the scientists are saying,
"Let's talk about this! Let's work
together, exchange ideas, explore, do some
experiments, and let's try to figure out how
this complex universe works!"
The mathematicians are like a cult that sees
mathematics as the word of God, and they battle
against all non-believers who disagree with
their beliefs. The philosophers are like a
cult that believes nothing is real, everything
we see is just illusions in our minds, and they
battle against all non-believers who disagree
with their beliefs. Meanwhile, most
scientists have probably long understood that
they are being criticized from two sides, from
the mathematicians and from the
philosophers. I just hadn't realized that
before. And it is something that
definitely belongs at the beginning of my book.
Coincidentally, last night I was watching the
most recent episode of the PBS show "NOVA" from
my DVR, and they mentioned that this Wednesday's
episode of "NOVA" is going to be a rerun of an
April 25, 2015, program titled "The
Great Math Mystery," subtitled "Is math
invented by humans, or is it the language of
the universe?"
Hmm. I'm afraid of what their answer might
be. But, I'll watch it anyway.
March 25,
2018 - I recently received
a bunch of happy birthday wishes from people on
Facebook. And, as I did last year, I had
to tell them that the date Facebook had as my
birthday wasn't correct. When I sighed up
to get on Facebook I gave them a somewhat
incorrect birth date. I gave them the
right month, but the day was off by a few days
and the year was off by a few years. I'd
used an incorrect birthday when signing up for
Facebook because I didn't see any reason to give
them my true birthday, although I could
understand why they might need to know if I was
over 21 or not. I was concerned that
identity thieves might steal the information
from them.
But, I didn't actually sign up for Facebook
until after the "data breach" that is in
the news these days. That breach occurred
in "early 2014." Searching for the term
"Facebook" on this web site, I find that that
the first time I used it was in a comment I
wrote on May
5, 2015. On that day I wrote:
It's possible that if I were on Facebook,
I could find some true experts on the anthrax
attacks of 2001 and Time
Dilation to talk with. But, I
tend to think that such people also have
"better things to do." My primary
interest is in writing, and writing is mostly
a solitary activity. Facebook looks like
a trap where you wander around in a crowded
world looking for someone with the same
interests as you have. I have to
allocate my time to fit my current mood and
interests. I don't have much time left
for wandering the world to find someone to
exchange small talk and gossip with. And
that also means I very rarely encounter
Trolls.
So, I wasn't yet on Facebook at that
time. Note, too, that the comment
indicates I was already heavily into arguing
about Time Dilation, even though I was still
very much interested in learning more details
about the anthrax attacks of 2001 and all the
screwball conspiracy theories about that case.
So, when did I first mention "Time Dilation" on
a web site? It turns out the first mention
was on my old web site,
anthraxinvestigation.com, and it was on March
16, 2014. In my (B) comment on that
day I wrote:
I completed
the course on Space,
Time
& Einstein at the WorldScienceU.com
site. The basic principles of time
dilation and the constancy of the speed
of light are very familiar to me and
required learning nothing new. I
think I fully understand them.
Here's one of the comments I wrote
explaining my view of time dilation:
I think I
understand time dilation okay. If I'm on a
rocket ship traveling near the speed of light,
where time is slowed down to 1/10th what it is
back on earth, everything will still SEEM
normal aboard the ship. The clock will seem to
keep normal time. I'll still need a haircut
every month (more or less). If a woman aboard
gets pregnant, she'll still have a 9 month
gestation period.
AND, if I had a
magical "simultaneous viewer" device aboard
that could show me the eastern horizon back on
earth as it was happening at MY time rate, I'd
see the sun rise every 2 hours and 24 minutes.
AND, if the people
back on earth also had a magical "simultaneous
viewer," the parents of the pregnant woman
aboard would have to wait 90 months for the
child to gestate and be born. And, if they
could see the clock we have aboard the
spaceship, they'd see it was moving at 1/10th
the rate of the clocks they have.
However,
there was one video (Module #8) that
contained a section that was really
puzzling for me, and, evidently, also very
puzzling for a lot of other
students. So, I played it over and
over until I could spot the exact sentence
where Professor Greene lost me. Then
I looked at all the comments by the other
students to see if any of them could
clarify anything. (My outdated
computer software prevents me from getting
any direct feedback from Professor
Greene.) Eventually, I realized the
problem was all the result of a confusing
choice of words used by Prof.
Greene. Am I right? I
dunno. But, I've finished the only
course I see of interest. I'll just
check the student comments from time to
time to see if anyone clarifies anything
further for me.
Hmm.
I'd forgotten that I became interested in
researching conflicting arguments about Time
Dilation as a result of taking
Professor Greene's course. I'd been
thinking it was the other way around: that I
took the course because I was
interested in Time Dilation. Thinking back
on it, I now recall that I had watched Professor
Greene talk about his on-line courses on either
Jon Stewart's or Stephen Colbert's TV show, and
that was how I knew about it and became
interested in taking a course. That moment in
time was also right after Malaysian Airlines
Flight MH370 had disappeared, and I was also
heavily into arguing with conspiracy theorists
about that mystery.
My comment for March 23, 2014, includes this
additional information:
Another
area of very heavy thinking last week
involved me trying to figure out exactly
what Professor Greene was talking about
in the on-line course
about Space,
Time
& Einstein on the WorldScienceU.com
web site.I understand time
dilation, okay, I think. To confirm
it, I created a new web page about it HERE.
The
idea is that if I can explain it to others
and get them to understand, that means I
also understand it. I think just about
anyone should be able to understand my
explanation. I may add some drawings,
if I can find the time.
What was the "confusing choice of words used
by Prof. Greene" that caused me to spend much of
the next couple years doing research about Time
Dilation? It turns out I took the course a
second time a couple years later and
found those words no longer confused me,
they just irritated me,
since I saw them as "mathematical
nonsense." I wrote a blog page about it
titled "Physics
teachers are teaching mathematical nonsense,
not science." In that blog page I
wrote:
I want to make it
clear before continuing that Professor
Greene is not teaching anything that other
physics professors aren't also teaching.
The only difference is the Professor Greene's
course and lectures are on-line where I can
easily access them.
I soon realized what bothered
me about "Module #8" back then. Prof.
Greene was breaking Time down into "quanta,"
i.e., into moments, like the individual frames
of a movie. And he was viewing time as a
mathematician would view time. Plus, the
lecture concludes with Professor Greene saying
that, "What this
collectively tells us is that the
traditional way we think about reality -
the present is real, the past is gone, the
future is yet to be - that is without any
real basis in physics.What
we are really learning from these ideas is
that the past, the present and the future
are all equally real."
If you believe that, then you
can also argue that everything we see may be
equally unreal - from a mathematician's point
of view.
And I rambled on and on about the absolute
nonsense being taught in that
course. Interestingly, the comments I
received about that post are still relevant
today. The first comment was from "Science
Guy" who wrote:
It's unbelievable how many wrong
conclusions you have here.
To which I responded,
It's unbelievable that someone
would write such a comment without specifying
which "conclusions" are "wrong" and what the
FACTS and EVIDENCE say are the CORRECT
"conclusions." Do you have only PERSONAL
OPINIONS?
And "Science Guy" responded:
Since all of your conclusions
were only personal opinions, you wouldn't want
anything else.
And that basically ended the
discussion. It had become nothing by an
opinion versus opinion argument, which I
consider to be a total waste of time. And
that was like a model for today's
arguments. I want to discuss facts and
evidence, and all the mathematicians want to
discuss is opinions.
And today I am still looking for someone - anyone
- who can explain where I'm wrong, but
all I'm getting is opinions that
I'm wrong, with no explanations of specifically
what is wrong and how facts and
evidence show I am wrong. The facts and
evidence show that I am right. That is why
I cite the experiments.
And that is also why I write in this web
site. It's a record of how my thinking
changed over the years and how and why I became
interested in writing books and scientific
papers about my findings. And now I'm
working on another book.
Comments for Sunday,
March 18, 2018, thru Saturday, March 24,
2018:
March 23,
2018 - Yesterday, I actually
started writing a book I have tentatively titled
"Logical Relativity." It was a
totally disorganized attempt. I just sat
down and started writing about how logical
Relativity is - if you
understand it. What I wrote looks pretty
good, but, like so many other things I've
started to write without first getting
organized, I kept adding new and different
things before what I'd already
written. If I was organized, the new stuff
would go at the end. When I'm
disorganized, I realize that before I wrote what
I had already written I should have explained
something, and I add the explanation at the
beginning. Sometimes in the middle.
Note that the image is named "doppler_source_blue.gif."
Here it is again:
It occurred to me that the name of the gif is
a misnomer. The light would NOT be blue
shifted in that situation, where the emitter
is moving toward the observer. The
photons would be arriving faster, thus the
frequency would be higher, but that just means
the light would be brighter
than when the emitter was stationary.
The observer is receiving more photons per
unit of time. So, the light is
brighter. There would be no
shift in color. Light is only blue
shifted when the observer
is moving toward the emitter. That is
depicted in the animated gif with the name
"doppler_detector_blue.gif:
In the above situation, the light encountered
by the observer/detector would be both
brighter and blue-shifted. It
would be brighter than if the observer was
stationary, because the observer would be
receiving more photons per unit of time than
if it was stationary, and the light would be
blue-shifted because each photon would be
traveling faster when it arrives than when it
was emitted. The photon would arrive at
c+v, where v is the observer's
speed. That, of course, is not
how things are taught in most colleges and
universities, and it is the point of my
paper on Einstein's Second Postulate.
I had to track down the source of the first
gif above to find the second gif. The
source is http://www.einstein-online.info/images/spotlights/doppler/.
That source also has animated gifs showing how
waves "bunch up" when the emitter is moving,
versus when the emitter is stationary:
Stationary
Emitter
Moving
Emitter
The problem is, of course, that there are no
actual waves. Light does NOT travel in
waves. Light consists of photons,
not waves. And the photons are emitted
in random directions. They just spread
out somewhat in the way that is
shown in the two images. The further two
individual photons get from the point where
they were emitted, the farther apart they
become - unless, of course, the two photons
just happened to be emitted one after the
other in the exact same direction.
And now I'm wondering if I should go back to
that now-inactive Google discussion thread
where Pentcho Valev used the animated gifs to
illustrate his mistaken point, so I can show
him the two gifs directly above. But
that would probably mean restarting the
arguments and insults from the others who were
posting. And Pentcho Valev is unlikely
to respond anyway.
Hmm. While Pentcho Valev did not respond
to my comment to him, he did post again in
that same thread. The post
provided a link to the actual web site where
the animated gifs are used as illustrations: http://www.einstein-online.info/spotlights/doppler.html
That web page contains this rhetorical
question:
Is the
Doppler effect for light different,
depending on whether the source is moving or
the receiver?
and this answer:
If it
were, we would have a way to define absolute
motion - we could define, using only the
laws of physics (more concretely, of light
propagation) whether or not the source, or
the receiver, or any other object is at rest
or not. This is in
sharp contrast with the basic tenets of
special relativity, which state that there
is no absolute motion, and that the
physical laws do not allow us to determine
a state of absolute rest.
Groan.
Yes, BUT, decades after
special relativity was developed, others
realized that astronomical observations
together with Special and General Relativity
indicated the universe started with a "Big
Bang." And if there was
a "Big Bang," the point where the Big Bang
occurred is a stationary point (i.e., "a
state of absolute rest") from where
all movement in the universe can
be measured.
The web page also mentions "the relativistic
Doppler effect." If you are moving
toward the source of light, the pulses will
arrive at a faster rate, PLUS because you
are moving time slows down for
you. That means a second is longer for
you. And that means that even more pulses will
arrive per your
second. That's a complication I hadn't
thought about before. It's also
something that wouldn't work unless all
movement is relative to the point where the
Big Bang occurred.
And time dilation also says that if the source
of light is moving relative to the point where
the Big Bang occurred, time slows down for
the source. That means all of its
processes slow down. Therefore, if it
emits one pulse per second, that will be a longer
second than for a stationary observer.
Photons are emitted instantaneously, so there
is no effect on an individual photon due to
the speed of the emitter, but photons will be
emitted at a different rate.
It also makes me think I need to explain
something about this near the beginning of my
new book - before most of what I've already
written. And I think I should forget
about responding to Pentcho Valev's post,
since what I learned from it has nothing to do
with what he wrote in his post.
Sigh.
March 21, 2018 -
Ah! There was an email in my inbox this
morning informing me that my state income tax
forms were accepted by my state. So, I am
all done with my income taxes and can focus on
writing either a book or some papers.
The problem is that when I think about writing a
book, I think about telling the story of how I
got to the place where I am, i.e., how did I (a
non-scientist) arrive at the point where I want
to write a book about Relativity?
I find that topic very interesting, but would
anyone else care? I suspect not. So,
I need to re-think the book, maybe turning it
into a collection of my scientific papers, with
maybe some info between the papers about how I
came to write each paper.
But that may require that I "fix" at least one
of my papers. I keep thinking I definitely
need to removed the word "illusion" from my
paper Relativity:The Theory vs The Principle.
I only use the word 4 times in the paper, but there
is no "illusion," there is just a definition
of "the speed of light" that is valid inside
different frames of reference but it is not
valid when frames are compared.
Light pulses don't bunch up - bunching
up obviously violates the principle of
relativity. The speed of light VARIES
with the speed of the source, in
violation of Einstein's relativity.
Here are the two animated gifs he
used:
Note how the lower gif shows the
photons are much closer together ("bunched up"),
yet the photons move at the same rate between
emitter and observer.
And here is my entire response to Mr. Valev:
Pentcho, if I am
stationary and the source of light is
stationary and emits one light photon toward
me every second at 299,792 kilometers per
second (kps), that means there will be 299,792
kilometers between each photon that I detect
and I will detect one photon arriving every
second.
If, however, the source is
traveling at 100,000 kilometers per second
(kps) toward me and away from you (and we are
both stationary), then there will be 199,792
kilometers between each photon that I detect
(the photons "bunch up" and I detect more than
one per second), and there will be 399,792
kilometers between each photon that you detect
(the photons are "spread out" and you detect
fewer than one per second). But each
photon still travels at 299,792 kps.
That is depicted in the two
illustrations you provided. The blue.gif
shows that the photons are closer together
than in the static.gif. But the photons
still travel at c.
The speed of light does NOT
vary with the speed of the source, the
FREQUENCY at which the photons arrive at the
observer varies with the speed of the source
AND the direction in which it is
traveling.
So, now I'm waiting to see if he
will respond. I don't recall ever seeing
him respond to a post. He just posts
something else in support of his beliefs,
usually something that in no way responds to any
questions asked.
I wonder if there is something in this that is
going to set off the mathematicians. The
first response was a personal attack from David
(Kronos Prime) Fuller. Then came a post
from "rotchm" telling me it was "impolite" to
move to a new thread without finishing the
argument on the previous thread.
Sigh. I'll just have to wait and see if
anything worthwhile comes of this.
Meanwhile, I'll continue to think about working
on a paper or a book.
March 20,
2018 - This morning I did my
income taxes, so I don't have to worry about
that chore anymore. And, I see that all
the people on Google's
Science, Physics & Reality discussion
forum are doing today is arguing personal
beliefs and theories among themselves.
There has been no response from "trjrob137"
regarding my dissection and debunking of his
March 17 comment and email to me. He
hasn't responded via email, and it appears he
hasn't posted anything at all since then to the
Google forum. Maybe he spent the past
three days digesting what I wrote. But,
until he does reply, I'm going to assume that
that argument has ended, and so have all the
debates I was involved with there.
So, I'm free to work on some scientific paper or
a book. I think about writing a paper when
I am in the middle of an argument, but I think
about writing a book when the arguments are
over. I'll have to wait to see which
direction I will take, but it appears I cannot
think about it until I get the confirmations
that my tax forms were accepted by the IRS and
by my state. Until then, I'll probably
just stare at the computer screen and think
about where to begin.
Ah! I was just notified that the IRS
accepted my federal forms.
I was also thinking I should show this image:
It's a shot of Upper Wacker Drive
in Chicago, taken during the autumn equinox last
September. On NASA's
Astronomy Picture of the Day website they
say, "Sometimes, in a
way, Chicago is like a modern Stonehenge.
The way is east to west, and the time is
today." In other words, there should have
been a similar view this morning. As I
write this, spring began about 15 minutes ago.
Wow. What a depressing book!
Here's one quote from early in the book:
Viewed properly in the
context of their times, the last forty-four
presidents all pursued policies that they
believed would make for a better America
tomorrow. The Trump presidency is about
Trump. Period. Full stop. He says so
himself all the time, but because he mixes it
in with lines about how he loves everyone and
what a terrific job he will do, millions of
Americans believe he is at one with them even
though he is not even at one with himself.
Another:
Trump has also lived a
life of thumbing his nose at conventions and
law enforcement, learning lessons as a boy
from his father, Fred, whose business
partner was an associate of the Gambino and
Genovese crime families. He has long
been in deep with mobsters, domestic and
foreign, along with corrupt union bosses and
assorted swindlers.
Here's a another quote about
Trump's father:
Not many people go so
far as to support the Ku Klux Klan, as Trump’s
father, Fred, was doing in 1927 when New York
City police arrested him during a violent
demonstration.
But mostly the book is about
Donald Trump himself. Another quote:
Trump
himself has reduced his life philosophy to
a single word—revenge.
Another:
“I love getting
even,” Trump advised in one of his
books, adding “go for the jugular, attack them
in spades!” Repeatedly
he has said in talks and in his books that
destroying the lives of people he
considers disloyal gives him pleasure.
And another:
His entire life Trump
has been a con artist. In The Art of the Deal
he brags about deceptions that enriched him. He has boasted about not
paying banks that loaned him billions of
dollars. He conned thousands of people
desperate to learn what Trump said were
the secrets of his success into paying up
to $35,000 to attend Trump University.
In a promotional video, Trump said his
university would provide a better education
than the finest business schools with a
faculty he personally picked. Lawsuits forced
Trump’s testimony and documents that showed
that there were no secrets he shared with the
“students.” The faculty never met Trump. These
professors turned out to be fast-food managers
and others with no experience in real estate,
the focus of the “university.” Because of
the lawsuits, Trump paid back $25 million to
the people he conned so the scam would not
follow him into the White House.
Near the end of the book I
highlighted this question:
How can it be that
millions of people do not see Trump for what
he is—a narcissistic, ill-informed, thieving
old blowhard?
And the last passage I highlighted
in the book was this:
Donald Trump is not
the political disease afflicting America, he
is a symptom. That
millions of people voted for a
narcissistic, know-nothing con artist who
has spent his entire life swindling others
while repeatedly urging followers to
commit criminal acts of violence against
his critics reveals more about America
than about Trump.
I have family members who voted
for Trump. They no longer see him as being
whatever it was they thought he was when they
voted for him, but I doubt that they now view
Trump the way I view Trump. If the 2016
election were to be repeated, I think just they
might vote for Trump again. And the book
makes it clear that about a third of the
American voters would also vote for Trump again.
I have several other books about Trump on my
Kindle. But I'm not in the mood to read
more about him - or about why anyone
would vote for him. When I think about
what I've already read about why people voted
for him, it's really chilling.
So, this morning at breakfast I started reading
a book from the "Humor" section at the
library. And the next book in the queue
after that is half humor and half science.
Then I'll probably shift to only science for
awhile. Science generally provides a
hopeful view of the future. Current
political books certainly don't.
The audio book I'm currently listening to while
driving here and there about town is a
humor book about politics. That one
is getting a bit depressing, too. But
learning how people like Trump and other far
right wingers routinely lie and justify their
lying with more lies is also both educational
and funny. It's only depressing because
there isn't anything I can do about it -- unless
a lot of other voters also
want to do something about it.
On Saturday mornings I have all kinds of chores
to do, so I didn't check the Google forum.
But, later in the morning I checked my email
inboxes, and in the email inbox that gets all my
junk mail I was surprised to find an email from
"tjrob137" giving his response to my question
about the three experiments. I spent the
next two hours writing my answer to his
response, using a lot of bold and red highlighting, plus
underlining, to emphasize things.
You can't do any of that on the forum.
Then, after sending the email, I checked the
forum and found that "tjrob137" had posted the
same message there with a carbon copy to my
email account. So, I copied and pasted my
email message to the forum, then modified parts
of it before posting.
I'd really hoped "tjrob137" would not
respond. I'd really gotten tired of
arguing on that forum, even though it is
occasionally very
interesting. But, in response to my
question about the purpose of the three
experiments, "tjrob137" wrote:
They don't really
demonstrate anything about "time", because
that is NOT what they are measuring.
And then he added:
They did not measure
"the rate of time", they measured FREQUENCY
DIFFERENCES of SIGNALS BETWEEN THE CLOCKS."
And about the Italian experiment
specifically, he wrote:
Had you bothered to
actually READ THEIR REPORT (in Nature Physics,
linked to the LA Times article), you would
KNOW that the authors never mentioned
"difference in time" or "difference in clock
tick rates". For instance, in the caption to
Fig. 1 they specifically mention "Frequency of
the transportable Sr clock as seen by the INRIM
Cs fountain clock" --
they are using words in precisely the way I
advocate. That figure explicitly
shows the fiber-optic link between them, so it
is QUITE CLEAR that they are comparing SIGNALS
BETWEEN THE CLOCKS."
Yes, "tjrob137" constantly writes
about one clock "seeing"
another clock, which makes no sense at
all. And he found a sentence in the
Italian article which uses a clock "as seen by"
another clock to justify all his claims.
As best as I can figure, he believes the clocks
tick at the same rate at the top of the mountain
as at the bottom (see #5 in my list of The
10 Dumbest Beliefs in Physics), and it is
the speeding up (the blue-shifting) of the
"signal" that is sent down the mountain for
comparison that accounts for the difference in
clock rates. But, I'd already explained to
him that the "signals" can have no affect
on the experiment. So, evidently I needed
to explain that to him again - in
some different way.
The more I thought about it, the more it seemed
like this needs to be the subject of a
scientific paper. And I also needed to
create some illustrations to help me explain the
situation.
According to what I read in the articles about
the Italian experiment, time ticks at a faster
rate at the top of the mountain than at the
bottom. In other words, seven ticks of an
atomic clock at the top of a mountain when
compared to seven ticks of an identical atomic
clock at the bottom of the mountain can be
depicted as seen in Illustration #1 below.
Illustration #1
According to "tjrob137," however,
a clock at the top of a mountain ticks at the
same rate as a clock at the bottom of the
mountain. So, in Illustration #2 below we
have 7 ticks of the clock at the bottom of the
mountain and at the top of the mountain
with equal intervals between the 7 ticks.
Illustration
#2
"Tjrob137" evidently believes that the signals
sent down the mountain are affected by gravity
and speed up as they descend, so when someone at
the bottom of the mountain compares the two
clock tick rates it merely appears
that there is a shorter interval between ticks
atop the mountain. It simply looks
like Illustration #1 above while the
clocks actually tick like Illustration #2.
The problem with that belief is that it is not
logical. If the signal for
each tick speeds up as it descends, the amount
of time that is removed from between ticks will
always be the same. The same amount of
gravity is applied to each signal, and the same
amount of time is required for each tick to
descend. So, if the clocks are ticking at
the same rates as in Illustration #2 above, the
only actual difference will be how long it takes
for the signals to travel from the top of the
mountain to the bottom at the speed of
light. After that, all signals will arrive
with the same intervals as observed at the top
of the mountain. Illustration #3 below
shows in red
the travel time interval of time being observed
at the bottom of the mountain for the first tick
signal to arrive due to the speed of
light. Plus the illustration shows that
although the signals are delayed, the interval
between signals once they arrive are the same
duration they were at time of
transmission.
Illustration
#3
IF some speeding up of signal
times could somehow magically cause the results
seen in Illustration #1, we'd get the situation
shown in Illustration #4 below:
Illustration #4
There is the viewing delay caused
by the time it takes for a signal to get down to
the bottom of the mountain at the speed of
light, and then the signals are somehow
perceived as being closer together. While
there wouldn't be any serious problem with the
first few signals, as Illustration #4 shows,
that would mean that signal #5 would have to
arrive at the same instant it was transmitted,
and signal #6 would have to arrive before
it was emitted at the top of the mountain.
Even more so for signal #7. That is
simply NOT LOGICAL. But, of
course, mathematicians do not believe in
logic. To them, math is the only real
logic, (See #6 in my list of The
10 DUMBEST Beliefs in Physics), and all
other forms of logic are equal to "common
sense," and as even their text books will tell
you, there are things about physics that run counter
to common sense. But you must
believe it anyway.
Near the end of his post and email, "tjrob137"
added this tidbit of information:
In
physics, "time is what clocks measure"
[[according to] Einstein and others], for
the simple reason that in any experiment
that involves time, a clock is used to
measure it. No experiment measures
time, they all measure clocks or signals
between clocks.
I'm not positive that I know what
he means by that. However, 'tjrob137"
seems to disagree with Einstein. Perhaps
he believes, as many others do, that "time is
just a concept," therefore no experiment can
actually measure time.
If "time is just a concept," then how can it run
at different rates under different circumstances
of gravity and velocity? I imagine
'tjrob137" would simply say "It can't and it
doesn't, " adding, "That is just what 'Einstein
and others' believe."
I really feel I should put all this in a
scientific paper. There are a lot of other
fascinating angles to it, some angles that are
probably more important than those mentioned
above. Specifically, the fact that the
Italian experiment can be viewed as a
repeat of the Pound-Rebka
experiment. In my explanation
above, I make it clear that there can be no
difference in the frequency of
light signals between emission at
the top of the mountain and receipt at the
bottom of the mountain. However, I have
not argued that there is no difference in wavelength.
#8 in my list of The
10 DUMBEST Beliefs in Physics is:
#8.
Light
travels as waves.
There can be no difference in frequency
for light emitted at the top of a mountain (or
at the top of a building at Harvard) when it is
received at the bottom of the mountain (or the
bottom of the building), but can there be a
"blue shifting" in the wavelength?
Either Pound-Rebka was wrong about frequency
shifting, or it was wrong about both
frequency shifting and wavelength
shifting. I think I can make a good case
for the "both" idea. (As I see it, the
differences in frequency and wavelength did not
occur as the light traveled, they occurred at
time of emission.) Differences in photon
frequency and photon wavelength result from the
velocity of a receiving body moving toward or
away from the body that emitted the photons.
I should probably add that, before I received
"tjrob137's" response to my question about the
three experiments, I had been thinking of
writing my Sunday comment to be about the
blue-shifting and red-shifting of the Cosmic
Microwave Background Radiation (CMBR) as the
earth, sun and the Milky Way galaxy head toward
the Constellation Hydra. That red- and
blue-shifting must relate to the
fact that radiation from the CMB is arriving at
c+v, where v is our velocity as
we head toward Hydra and the CMBR ahead of us,
and at c-v as we head away from the
CMBR behind us. And that of course is an
argument against #4 on my list of The
10 DUMBEST Beliefs in Physics:
#4.
The speed of light is always measured
to be the same by the emitter and all
outside observers, regardless of their
own velocity.
Sigh. Now I have to
work on a paper about all this. And
somehow I also have to find time to do my income
taxes.
Comments for Sunday,
March 11, 2018, thru Saturday, March 17,
2018:
March 15,
2018 - Groan! Twenty new
messages were posted to the "Those
LYING Scientists" discussion thread
overnight. Most are arguments between
others on the forum, one is by someone on my "Do
Not Reply" list, but there are six messages
addressed to me that seem to be genuine attempts
to communicate, which means I feel I should try
to respond to the posts from
rotchm
JanPB
tjrob137 (his first post in this
thread)
danco
Paparios and
Paul B. Anderson
Plus, while I was typing the list
above, kenseto posted a message addressed to
JanPB recommending that JanPB should read Ken
Seto's book "Model
Mechanics: The Final Theory," which
is available on-line at that link for
free. Ken Seto (kenseto) was responding to
a response to a statement from me. I
posted this question:
What is the CAUSE of
clocks ticking at different rates when the
velocity is different and/or when gravity is
different?
JanPB had answered with this
example of lunacy:
In physics the CAUSE
of ANYTHING is unknown.
And Ken Seto replied,
That’s because you
mathematicians took over physical development
and invented all sorts of non-existing
mathematical objects (such as: virtual
particles (force messengers), extra
dimensions, spacetime, curvature in
spacetime, length contraction, time
dilation....etc) to explain the physical
universe. Once you done that there is no way
to go back to find the CAUSE of ANYTHING.
Fortunately I think I found the
PHYSICAL CAUSE OF EVERYTHING in my book in the
following link: http://www.modelmechanics.org/2016ibook.pdf
Except for the "time dilation"
part and the recommendation to read his
book, Ken Seto and I seem to be mostly in
agreement. There are others who also seem
to agree with me sometimes, but then they say
something that I totally disagree
with. It reminds me of the cartoon I
created a long time ago:
Everyone agrees that something or someone is
wrong, but they totally disagree on what is
right. Each has his own theory. And,
of course, so do I. But I do not fit into
the cartoon because I would be arguing that
"mainstream scientists are RIGHT
in what they believe. They are correct
when they do experiments which confirm that time
ticks at different rates in different locations
where gravity and velocity are different.
And the people I am arguing with disagree, but
we cannot find the right words to define our
disagreement because they only understand
mathematics and cannot discuss anything except
in mathematical terms.
And, two more messages just appeared in the
"Those LYING Scientists" thread.
Fortunately, neither was addressed to me.
I've got an hour and a half to reply to the six
messages addressed to me before it will be
lunchtime and time for me to head to the gym for
a workout. Sigh. I really
need to get out of this situation so that I can
do my taxes and maybe start writing a book.
March 14,
2018 - Hmm. Stephen
Hawking died in
Cambridge, England, in the "early hours"
of this morning, which could have been late last
night where I am in Midwest America. This
morning as I was doing my morning "chores," one
"chore" is to look through my web site visitors
log to see who visited during the previous
day. I noticed that at 16:08:01 (4:08
p.m.) yesterday afternoon, someone from
Cambridge University visited my
Time Dilation page. It's probably
just a coincidence, but I think it's been months
since I've noticed any visitors from Cambridge
University.
To me, all movement is
relative to the point where the Big Bang
occurred.
Danco wrote this:
Making allowances for
your unfamiliarity with the relevant concepts
from cosmology, it's
true that one can define a cosmological time
in a way that corresponds to what you said,
but it would be expressed by saying that we
can define all movement in terms of the
local frames of reference at any given point
in which the radiation reaching that point
from the big bang is the same frequency in
all directions. This gives an
unambiguous definition of motion, and indeed
this is used for some astronomical and
cosmological studies. However, it
remains true that local inertial coordinate
systems are perfectly reciprocal.
And I responded with this:
You just demonstrated
your lack of understanding of cosmology.
The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) is
the same in all directions because it formed
about 378,000 years AFTER the Big Bang.
It is from the time when hydrogen atoms
first formed. Photons emitted when an
atom forms do not go in any specific
direction, they are emitted RANDOMLY in EVERY
direction. So, the CMB tells us NOTHING
about the direction to the point where the Big
Bang occurred.
Wow. I hadn't even thought
about that before. I'd read a lot about
the CMB, but I never wondered how it could be
the same in all directions if the Big Bang
occurred off in some direction outside of the
visible universe.
Before responding to danco's
comment, I had to do some more research. I
found a
very interesting article on space.com from
five years ago that I've probably read several
times before, but this time I paid particular
attention to the part about how the CMB seems
"redder" or "hotter" when viewed from the
southern hemisphere versus the view from the
northern hemisphere. That poses the
question: Is it "redder" meaning "hotter," or
does it indicate that the earth is moving toward
the CMB as viewed from the northern hemisphere
and away from the CMB as viewed from the
southern hemisphere, resulting in a "red-shift"
in the radiation? But that should mean the
view from the northern hemisphere should contain
"blue-shifted" radiation. However, only
noticeable spot of "blue-shifted" radiation is also
in the view from the southern hemisphere.
Groan! Does anyone actually care
about any of this except me? It sometimes
seems to me that the Quantum Theorists know what
they know and they are ready to argue with
anyone who disagrees, while the Relativists know
what they know and they don't have the time
to argue with anyone who disagrees. So, if
I was looking for support, I would be looking
for it from Relativists who do not have the time
to provide support for people arguing with
Quantum Theorists.
Sigh.
March 13,
2018 - I think it may be time for
me to stop posting arguments to Google's
Science, Physics & Relativity discussion
forum for awhile. I see 7 new posts
were addressed to me overnight. There were
many more yesterday morning, so many that I
spent all day responding to them and didn't have
time to write a comment here. This
morning's comments are a bit different,
though. All are just statements of
opinions, personal attacks and insults.
None seems worthy of a response.
I tried 3 or 4 times to get someone on the forum
to tell me what the scientists who performed the
NIST,
Italian
and Hafele-Keating
experiments demonstrated with their
experiments. No one would answer the
question. They do not believe
that time ticks at different rates at different
speeds and different altitudes, which is what
the experiments demonstrated, so the people on
the forum just obfuscate, change the subject and
hurl insults.
One of last night's responses was from Gary
Harnagel, who is on my "Do Not Reply"
list. He ridiculed me for having such a
list. If I respond, he'll ridicule me for
violating the rules for my "Do Not Reply" list
by replying to someone who is on the list.
It's tempting to respond anyway, since this post
last night shows how he thinks.
I had written a comment about Person-1 waking up
in a closed room with a golf ball in his lap and
knowing from previous discussions that he is
part of an experiment and he is supposed to toss
the ball into the air and catch it again.
He does so, and, as expected, the ball goes
straight up and comes straight down again.
Then the experiment rules say he is supposed to
raise the curtain on the window in a nearby
wall. He does so, and he sees that he is
aboard an airplane traveling at about 500
mph. So, he now knows that
the ball did not actually go straight up and
down, due to his velocity it actually came down
hundreds of feet from where he tossed it
upwards.
And Person-2 on the ground who set up the
experiment also knows this.
So, no one still believes the
ball actually went straight up and down.
Gary Harnagel's response this morning was:
And a person in a
[reference] frame where the sun is stationary
sees the plane moving at
66000 mph and the ball comes down many
THOUSANDS of feet from where it went up, so he
knows that Person-2 is wrong :-)
So, Harnagel is saying that
Person-2 is "wrong" because the ball came down thousands
of feet from where it was tossed upwards, not
merely hundreds of feet as I
stated. So, Harnagel changed the
argument. My point was - and still is -
that no one believes that the ball
went straight up and came straight down.
Gary Harnagel then added a further comment:
But since he knows
astronomy, he knows that the earth is moving
around the sun at 30
km/second. And since he also knows
the First Postulate, he understands that motion is
purely relative, as Galileo proclaimed
centuries ago.
I'd like to ask him what does the
First Postulate (i.e., the laws of physics are
the same in all reference frames) have to do
with the idea that "motion is purely
relative"? Later in his post he actually
states,
the velocity of an
object is NOT a law of physics.
So, what was he trying to
say? I suspect it has something to do with
what I list as the
#3 dumbest belief in physics: "All Motion
is Reciprocal." If you corner a
mathematician, he will explain that "all motion
is relative" means that "all motion is
reciprocal," since mathematicians believe there
is no "preferred frame of reference."
Therefore, if a child gets on his tricycle and
starts peddling around on the sidewalk, it is
just as "possible" that the child is actually
stationary and somehow his peddling is causing
the sidewalk, the earth (and the universe) to
move around under him. All motion is
relative. All motion is
reciprocal. There's no way to tell
(mathematically) who is moving and who is not.
If you want to separate the idiocy of "all
motion is reciprocal" from the idea that "all
motion is relative," you have find something
that all motion is relative TO.
Einstein helped to confirm that there is no
"ether" (or "aether") to use as a "preferred
frame of reference," but he seems to have left
open the question of "What is all motion
relative to if it is not
relative to the stationary ether?" Einstein
didn't believe in the Big Bang theory, so
he didn't believe (as I do) that all motion is
relative to the stationary point where the Big
Bang occurred. It seems he went in the
other direction and believed that all motion is
relative to the maximum speed of light.
But that just pertains to velocity, not to a
location. According to
one source:
He
came to realize that since all the laws of
physics remain the same whether you’re at
rest or in steady motion, the speed of light
has to be constant as well. No one can catch
up with a light beam. But if the speed of
light is identical for all observers,
something else has to give: absolute time
and space. Einstein concluded that the
cosmos has no universal clock or common
reference frame. Space and time are
“relative,” flowing differently for each of
us depending on our motion.
Hmm. I've concluded that the
cosmos does have a
universal clock and a
common reference frame. It is the point
where the Big Bang occurred. At that
point, time ticks at its maximum rate, and
all motion in the universe is relative to that
point.
It greatly simplifies and helps make sense of
everything. But nothing can be
accomplished by arguing about it with the people
on the Google forum. I just need to write
more papers about it - maybe a book. And,
if someone can explain to me where I'm wrong,
I'd like them to do so. Just don't argue
that I'm wrong because I do not understand the
mathematics, and do not argue that I'm wrong
because I appear to disagree with
Einstein. If I'm wrong, only experiments
can show that I'm wrong.
And, as far as I know, all experiments say I'm
right, although there are definitely a lot of
people who will claim that that
there are experiments which show I am wrong, but
they have never actually cited any such
experiments much less tried to explain how
the experiment shows I'm wrong.
Hmm. This isn't the comment I set out to
write. It's more like a demonstration of
the famous quote from Flannery
O'Connor: "I
write because I don’t know what I think until
I read what I say.” I tried
tracking down that quote, too, to make
sure it wasn't a misquote, but I just found it
repeated in dozen of places without anyone
identifying what book or short story or article
or interview it was quoted from.
I spent all morning writing this comment.
Then it was time for lunch and then it was time
for me to head to the gym for a workout.
Now I'm back and revising the comment I wrote
this morning. I still haven't replied to
the overnight posts on Google. And looking
at the four posts that were made while I was at
lunch and at the gym, I see one that is
worthy of a response. So, I'm going to
write a response. And, while doing that
I'll think about telling everyone that I'm going
to stop responding to posts and stop writing new
post on that forum for awhile. I need time
to think. And I need to do my taxes.
March
11, 2018 - Once again I was too
busy to write my Sunday comment ahead of time,
so I'll have to write it from scratch this
morning. Here goes:
While the arguments I've been having on Google's
Science, Physics & Relativity discussion
forum have been intense and heated, they
also seem to be running out of steam. And
I've been thinking I need to break away from
those arguments and get to work on a book - or
at least on a scientific paper or two - or
three. I keep thinking of writing a book
titled "How I Understand Relativity."
I've always been a science-buff. I never
really took any college physics courses. I
just learned to understand Time and Time
Dilation by reading about the subject and by
watching TV documentaries on the subject.
There was never anything difficult to understand
about it. I saw nothing that went "against
common sense." There was nothing that was
'counter-intuitive." And now I'm wondering
WHY, for me, was there never anything difficult
to understand about it?
The answer seems to be that there was nothing
that I ever had to unlearn. There
was never anything that I understood clearly
that turned out to be totally false. At
least not as far as I can recall. I never
had to learn other theories which I then would
be told were incorrect and were replaced by new
theories which turned out to also be incorrect
and had to be replaced by new theories. I
started with the theories of Einstein, and I was
only vaguely aware of the previous theories that
Einstein had debunked. And I was only
vaguely aware of the workings of Quantum
Mechanics, which fundamentally conflicts with
Einstein's theories. Science was just an
interest of mine, not a "field of study" or a
vocation. If I started reading a science
book that turned out to contain some theories
that conflicted with what I understood, I would
just shrug and toss the book aside.
Then "social media" and Facebook entered my
life.
Since I was interested in science, and I was
curious about this thing called "Facebook," I
thought it would be interesting to discuss
science subjects with people on Facebook.
And that was when I learned that there were many
many many people out there who had totally
different views of science and Relativity than I
had. And I started arguing with
them.
The first group I encountered was a science cult
led by Bill
Gaede and a couple others. That was
early in 2015, or maybe late in 2014. The
first comment on this site where I mentioned Mr.
Gaede is dated May
14, 2015. According to Google, I
mentioned his name 22 times that May. I
also learned that Gaede was one of the
organizers of "Rational Physics," a group/cult
that holds conventions every year just like the
"Flat Earthers." My first blog
page about Gaede is dated July 8,
2015. Gaede believes that all the atoms in
the universe are bound together by tiny
"ropes." His logic can easily be shown to
be illogical, but doing that just gets him and
his followers very angry.
The arguments got so heated that Gaede's
followers actually sabotaged my Facebook
page. I could go on and on about that, and
maybe I'll do so in the book. But for this
comment, I'm just saying that was the
beginning.
I'd have to research exactly what I did after I
stopped arguing with Gaede and his followers,
but eventually I learned that college physics
teachers, books, and courses were teaching
things that I considered to be total
nonsense. Not only that, but countless experiments
showed that what they were
teaching was total nonsense. And I started
writing scientific
papers about what I was discovering.
And now, more than three years after the first
arguments, I find I am arguing with
mathematicians and Quantum Theorists who seem to
have no understanding of science at all.
They just understand math. They cannot
discuss anything but math. And they attack
anyone who attempts to discuss science without
talking purely in mathematical terms. This
is no small group. It appears to be a huge
portion of the physicists in the world.
It's just difficult to gauge just how big the
group is. It probably also consists of
lots of factions who do not
believe exactly what the others believe, but
have their own unique central argument.
The most dumbfounding argument I've ever been in
is the one I am in now where the mathematicians
are arguing that no intelligent scientist really
believes that time ticks at different rates in
different frames of reference. The
mathematicians believe that time ticks at the
same rate everywhere - evidently in accordance
with Quantum Mechanics. So, when
scientific articles are published about experiments
which demonstrate and confirm Time
Dilation and the fact that time ticks at
different rates in different frames of
references, the mathematicians argue that that
is not what the scientists really
believe, that is just a "dumbing down" or a
"vulgarization" of what they really
believe. If it were
what the scientist really believe, of course,
that would mean the scientists are actually totally
incompetent.
Yesterday, just before turning off my computer
for the day, I posed this question to the
mathematicians on the
Google forum:
The
NIST experiment involved building atomic
clocks that could detect the difference in the
rate of time at one level versus 1 foot above
that level. The experiment was
successful.
The
Italian experiment involved building
portable atomic clocks that could be used to
measure the height of an object by measuring
the difference in the rate of time at the base
of the object versus the rate of time at some
higher point on the object. The
experiment was successful.
The
Hafele-Keating experiments involved
using atomic clocks to measure the difference
in the passage of time between a relatively
stationary atomic clock at the US Naval
Observatory and four clocks that were moved by
transporting them around the world on
commercial aircraft. The experiment was
successful.
All three experiments were
designed to confirm Einstein's theories that
time runs at different rates in different
frames of reference.
The question: If the
above sentence is NOT true, what WERE the
experiments designed to do?
The first response was from
"rotchm" who wrote:
They are neither true
nor untrue because they are meaningless.
This is because the expressions
"time runs at different rates" are not
defined; we cant know the meaning of something
if we haven't given it a definition. And
relativity does NOT say "time runs at
different rates". Relativity says, for
instance, t' = (t - xv/c²)g. Then
*authors* personally voice this as "time
runs at different rates".
I haven't yet responded, but if I
try to define words and terms, "rotchm" will
just argue that my definitions are not correct
because they do not match the definitions used
by mathematicians.
"David (Kronos Prime) Fuller" responded in his
typical way:
Stupid Stupid Ed.
"Koobee Wublee," who tends to
agree with me on some things, wrote:
These experiments
indicate either of the following.
<shrug>
1) Time ticks at different
rates at different altitudes while measuring
the same value in the speed of light.
<shrug>
Or
2) Measurement of time
ticking rate depends on the local value of the
speed of light which can be different at
different altitudes. In reality,
time does not dilates, but the speed of
light varies while satisfying the null
results of the MMX that show the speed of
light is isotropic in constancy locally.
<shrug>
The self-styled scientists bet
on the first case, and all subsequent
experiments never looked for latter case.
After all, the calibration reference of
these experiments is the Cs atomic clock which
depends on temperature and the local value of
the speed of light itself. <shrug>
I'm not sure how I'm going to
respond to that, but I think Time does
dilate, and that causes
the speed of light to be variable.
And "Kenseto" replied,
Clock time ticks at
different rates but all the processes of
nature do no operate of clock time--they
operate of absolute time. However there is no
clock time unit (including a clock second)
that represents the same amount of absolute
time in different frame and that’s why we
invented the LT to predict the tick rate
of a moving clock.
I think "the LT" means the "Lorentz
Transformation."
Kenseto uses the abbreviation LT constantly, but
he never explains what it means. It could
also have something to do with "IRT" which is
the "Improved Relativity
Theory" that Ken Seto dreamed
up. It will take me awhile to decipher
that response, too.
No one, of course, simply answered my
question. And I'll have to tell them
that. But, they'll probably just argue
over the definition of "answered."
Sigh.
I should really get to work on a book or on some
scientific papers.