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Comments for Sunday,
April 11, 2021, thru Sat., April 17, 2021:
April 16, 2021 - Hmm.
When I woke up this morning, my subconscious
mind presented me with the solution to a
problem I hadn't realized existed. It
relates to the thought experiment where a
pulsar is used to measure time
dilation. Here's the illustration I
used in the thought experiment described in
my May 31, 2015, paper "Time
Dilation Re-Visualized":

The pulsar rotates, sending a beam of light
out like a lighthouse, hitting the earth
once per second. Using that beam as a
clock that can be seen from both the earth
and from a space ship traveling at 99.5% of
the speed of light toward Alpha Centauri,
because a second will be 10 times longer on
the space ship, it will see the pulsar
pulsing 10 times per second.
Yet, in the
sci.physics.relativity UseNet/Google
Discussion thread I started about this
topic on March 16 someone named "Mitchell
Raemisch" kept posting messages saying the
clock would run slow and therefore be
inaccurate. When I asked several times
what he meant, getting no answer, people on
the forum told me "Mitchell Raemisch" was
actually a robot. I thought
that was interesting, but it was also time
for me to stop responding to posts in the
thread, so I did. Then, this morning,
I realized the "robot" was right - sort of.
The pulsar rotates counter-clockwise once
per Earth second. The space ship
heading to Alpha Centauri is moving at a
right angle to the light from the
pulsar. That means that every
revolution of the pulsar the light will hit
the moving space ship a very tiny fraction
of a second later than on the previous
revolution. If the distance from Earth
to Alpha Centauri is one degree of
revolution for the pulsar, and if the pulsar
flashes 31,536,000 times during the ten year
experiment, during the entire trip from
Earth to Alpha Centauri, the pulsar clock
will run about a billionth of a second
slow. But on the return trip from
Alpha Centauri back to Earth, the pulsar
clock will run about a billionth of a second
fast. So, it has absolutely no effect
on the experiment. However, if you are
a mathematician, it might be a serious
problem to incorporate that change in clock
times into an equation.
This morning I posted a message to "Mitchell
Raemisch," addressing him as "Mr. Robot,"
and thanking him for bringing the issue to
my attention. Then "Odds Bodkin"
immediately responded, advising me that
"Mitchell Raemisch" is NOT a robot, he's a
"homeless drifter, living in the Pacific
Northwest, sometimes in other people’s
unlocked cars." Either way, I'm glad
he brought the issue to my attention.
And I stated so in the 706th message in the
thread.
April 15, 2021 -
Two days ago, while working on my new book,
tentatively titled "Logical Relativity,"
I began working on a chapter about
Einstein's Second Postulate. I did
some research and found a couple dozen
different versions of that Postulate in
textbooks and science books, some of them
referring to "the constancy of the speed of
light." Then I started studying what
Einstein wrote about "the constancy of the
speed of light." BOOM!
It blew my mind! What Einstein wrote
didn't stun me, it was my analysis
of what he wrote and the implications I
hadn't thought about before.
I immediately stopped working on the book
and copied everything I had written in that
chapter into science paper format, titling
the paper "Analyzing 'Constancy of the
Speed of Light'." Yesterday
evening it seemed like I was about 80%
finished with the paper, but, when I woke
this morning, my mind was racing on about
things I hadn't previously thought
about. So, I'm probably more like 50%
done. But I still hope to have it
on-line sometime next week.
One idea that never occurred to me before
relates to the
pulsar experiment, where one twin
travels at extremely high speeds to Alpha
Centauri while the other twin stays at home
on earth, and they use a pulsar as a clock
to measure time in both locations. If
you are moving toward a star at high speeds,
the photons from that star are going to hit
you the same way photons from a radar gun
hit an oncoming car -- at c+v.
And when the car receives those photons, it
receives them as if they were oscillating at
a higher rate. Atoms in the car then
emit NEW photons that have the higher
oscillation rate back to the radar
gun. The gun measures the difference
in oscillation rates between what it emitted
and what it received back and computes the
speed of the car.
Now, suppose that instead of moving at earth
traffic speeds, you are in a space ship
heading for Alpha Centauri at speeds
approaching the speed of light. Alpha
Centauri is now the "radar gun" emitting
photons at you. It is emitting photons in
the visible light range, but as you increase
speed toward Alpha Centauri, the photons
will start hitting you as if they had
shorter and shorter wavelengths and higher
and higher energy levels.

As you can see in the chart above, very
quickly the visible light photons will hit
you as if they were ultra-violet light
photons. Then as if they were X-ray
photons. Then as if they were stronger
and stronger Gamma ray photons.
I haven't done the math, but if you travel
toward Alpha Centauri at 298,290 kilometers
per second, which is the speed you need to
reach in order to make 1 second on your
space ship equal to 10 seconds back on
Earth, your space ship is going to be hit
with ever-increasing numbers of extremely
energetic Gamma ray photons that will blast
apart every atom in your space ship.
Meanwhile, of course, if there are any
mathematicians aboard your ship, they will
all be arguing that it doesn't matter how
fast you go, the light photons from Alpha
Centauri will still only hit you at c,
never at c+v, which is their
screwball interpretation of "the constancy
of the speed of light."
April 12, 2021 -
I've finally managed to get started on my
book "Logical Relativity." It's
currently 7 pages long, all of which require
a lot of revising. I decided to begin
with the conflict over Einstein's Second
Postulate. All other problems and
conflicts I plan to write about seem to stem
from there.
I suppose I should be spending my time
promoting my sci-fi novel, "Time
Work," but I just cannot resist
working on "Logical Relativity."
I didn't write "Time Work" to make
money, and I certainly do not expect "Logical
Relativity" to be a "runaway
bestseller." I'll probably be lucky if
it sells 10 copies. I write because I
like writing. That's why I have this
web site, too. The biggest problem I
have is: Which should I work on? You
cannot write two different things at
once. So, to write this comment I had
to stop working on "Logical Relativity"
for awhile. And I think I've done
enough to qualify as a "comment," so now
I'll get back to work on "Logical
Relativity."
April 11, 2021 - I
finally managed to stop arguing on the
sci.physics.relativity discussion forum.
But that doesn't mean the arguments have
ended. As of this morning there are 682 messages in the
thread I started back on March 16.
The arguments now almost entirely just consist
of some angry guys hurling insults at other
angry guys and getting insults hurled
back. The conversations in which I took
part, however, were generally (and surprisingly)
without insults. And they were very
interesting. When you explain something to
someone in 20 different ways, you will
understand it much better yourself, and it helps
you see which way is the best way
to explain something.
I still do not have a single word written for my
new book "Logical Relativity." However,
that is only because I've been doing some
critical research. About five years ago, I
got into studying Time Dilation and Relativity
because I was seeing endless arguments over
Einstein's Second Postulate, and I was also
seeing that nearly every book and textbook seems
to include a slightly different version of that
postulate. That made no sense to me at
all, since there can be no doubt about what
Einstein wrote and meant. It seemed to me
the only reason for using a different
Second Postulate is to argue against what
Einstein wrote and meant by claiming that is not
what Einstein actually meant.
A few days ago, I started researching the
different versions, going through one textbook
after another to see which version they
use. I classified the first 27 of them
into Good Versions (4), Helpful Versions (4),
Unhelpful Versions (7) and Bad Versions
(12). Plus discovered I have 3 different
translations of Einstein's paper from 1905 that
started it all, each with a slightly different
version of the Second Postulate. Here are
those three versions:
1) light is always
propagated in empty space with a definite
velocity c which is independent of the
state of motion of the emitting body.
2) in empty space light
is always propagated with a definite velocity
v which is independent of the state of
motion of the emitting body.
3) light is propagated in
vacant space, with a velocity c which
is independent of the nature of motion of
the emitting body.
Compare them to these 3 "bad"
versions:
1) Light propagates
through empty space with a definite speed c
independent of the speed of the source or
observer.
2) The speed of light in free space has the
same value for all observers,
regardless of their state of motion.
3) The speed of light in vacuum has the
same value, c = 3.00 x 108
m/s in all inertial frames, regardless of the
velocity of the observer or the
velocity of the source emitting the light.”
Einstein's Second Postulate is
only about the speed of light relative to the emitter.
The "bad" versions say the speed of light is the
same for an observer as it is for the
emitter. As I see it, that is totally
untrue and is demonstrated to
be wrong every day. Radar guns require
that the target (the observer) receive light at
c+v or c-v. That's how
radar guns measure v, which is the speed
of the target. Under some very
specific circumstances, a moving observer
can - in theory - observe a
passing photon to be traveling at c, but
Einstein clearly just described those
circumstances to help people better understand
how time dilation works, not to provide anyone
with a different Second Postulate.
Meanwhile, as I was driving around doing some
chores yesterday, I was listening to an audio
book titled "At
the Edge of Time" by Dan Hooper, and
I heard something else I consider to be total
nonsense:
And just as there is
no center of the surface of the Earth, there
is no center of the expanding universe. Any
observer, located anywhere in our universe,
will observe the same recession of galaxies
that Hubble discovered.
When I’m explaining this idea in a classroom
or in a public lecture, it’s usually around
this time that someone asks, “But what is
space expanding into?” Most people picture
expanding space as a process of space growing
into, or gradually taking up, some other
region of space—like the volume of an
inflating balloon. But this misses the point
of what we mean when we say “space.” Space
can’t expand into other space. When we
say that space is expanding, we mean all of
space, not just some of it. There is
nothing for space to grow or expand into.
If there were, we would call that thing space.
The space of our universe is getting larger,
but without moving into anything else.
To me, that is just mumbo jumbo
obfuscation. When looking at things logically,
there is absolutely no reason why
the Big Bang universe cannot be expanding into
an "infinite universe" that we can also call
"space." I illustrated that concept in a
drawing I created about a year ago:

This view of the universe, which I describe in
detail in my paper "Logical
vs Mathematical Universes" is
perfectly logical, but mathematicians simply
cannot cope with it. They cannot cope with
an "infinite universe" because there is no way
to measure where it ends. If they cannot
measure it, then it cannot exist!
This will go into my book somewhere, as will a
discussion of using a pulsar as a clock to
measure time dilation, and a detailed
description of the crazy arguments about which
Second Postulate is the one Einstein used and why
the version used in many many textbooks is wrong.
My biggest problem right now just seems to be:
where to start? What do I write about
first? I'm leaning toward writing about
measuring time dilation with a pulsar
first. It's a good "lead in" that won't
scare people off, as a lengthy analysis of all
the different versions of Einstein's Second
Postulate might. That analysis might cause
mathematicians to rise up and view me as a
warlock or sorcerer.
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Comments for Thursday,
April 1, 2021, thru Sat., April 10, 2021:
April 8,
2021 - This
morning I finally ended my
participation in the
discussion thread titled "Using
a pulsar as a clock to
measure time dilation"
that I started on March 16 on
the
sci.physics.relativity forum.
The thread currently
contains 608
messages. I doubt that
that is a record, but it is
certainly the longest thread I
ever started.
It ended with another argument
over Einstein's Second
Postulate, probably close to
the thousandth
argument I've had on that
topic. I had written:
If photons are emitted
at 299,792.458 kilometers PER SECOND in a
stationary system, and 299,792.458 kilometers
PER SECOND in a moving system, the photons
from the stationary system will travel FASTER
than photons from the moving system, BECAUSE A
SECOND IS SHORTER IN THE STATIONARY SYSTEM.
Einstein didn't spell things out
in his 1905 paper the way I just did.
To which Rob Acraman replied:
In fact, not just his
1905 paper, but Einstein didn't spell things
out the way just just did EVER. Not once, in
any of his papers or books. That should tell
you something.
And, as part of my final post in
that thread I responded:
It tells me that YOU
need to do more research. Here is what
Einstein said in his book "Autobiographical
Notes," which is also part of a book
titled "Einstein:
Philosopher-Scientist" by Paul Arthur
Schilpp. It's on page 61:
"The speed of light c: is one
of the quantities which occurs as 'universal
constant' in physical equations. If,
however, one introduces as unit of time -
instead of the second - the time in which
light travels 1 cm, c no longer occurs in
the equations. In this sense one could say
that the constant c is only an apparently
universal constant."
So, c is a "universal constant"
ONLY in the sense that light always travels at
c. However, c is NOT a universal constant when
you understand that c varies depending upon
the length of a second at the point of
emission.
I'd come across that quote from
Einstein only the day before. I'd never
heard of the book "Autobiographical
Notes" before.
The previous day I'd had a similar
argument. The same guy, Rob Acraman, had
argued that Einstein never said, wrote nor
implied that light from a sun would travel
faster than light from an object moving away
from the sun at 1,000 kilometers per
second. And I found a quote from his
paper "The Principle Ideas of the Theory of
Relativity" which said exactly the same
thing I had just said.
If I were to continue the argument, Rob Acraman
would just argue the same things, just phrasing
things differently and arguing that my wording
is somewhat different than Einstein's
wording. So, I dropped out of the
discussion. And I started working on a book
titled "Logical Relativity." So
far, I just have a blank first page. I really
need to find the time to work on it.
But I have so many other things going on!
I just spent an hour writing this
comment! There just aren't enough
hours in a day!
April 4, 2021 - Every
morning when I turn on my computer,
one of the first things I do is
check Amazon's web site to see if I
sold any books in the past 24
hours. This morning the chart
showed I sold a paperback
book. Here's what the chart
looks like, but you'll have to click
on it and on "view image" to see a
larger, more easily readable
version:

What it shows is that in the past
month I sold 2 copies of "A
Crime Unlike Any Other,"
one copy of "Clipper"
and one copy of "Analyzing
the Anthrax Attacks: The First
Three Years". The
copy of "A Crime Unlike Any Other"
that I sold yesterday was in
paperback format. The one sold
on March 15 was a Kindle copy, and
so was the copy of "Analyzing the
Anthrax Attacks" that I sold
on March 9. I only have "Clipper"
in Kindle format, so, of course, it
was a Kindle book, too.
The last time I sold a copy of my
newest book, "Time Work," was
on March 3, over a month ago.
I can explain the lack of sales for
that book: I haven't been promoting
it. Almost no one knows about
it. But, I haven't been
promoting any of my books, so how do
I explain the sales of "A Crime
Unlike Any Other"? I
think it may be because the
conspiracy theorists are still
arguing about the anthrax attacks of
2001, we're nearing the 20-year
anniversary of the attacks, and
there is at least one new TV show
about it in the works. So,
people are looking for information
about the attacks. Almost any
search will take them to my
anthaxinvestigation web site
where my book is advertised. I
can't explain the sale of "Clipper,"
nor the sale of "Analyzing the
Anthrax Attacks: The First Three
Years." Even more odd is
the fact that that book about the
early days of the anthrax
investigation was paid for in Indian
Rupees.
I really need to try to promote "Time
Work." I really
want to know what people think of
it. If I can get people to buy
it, maybe they will also write a
review for Amazon's site.
But, it seems like the only thing I
can think about these days is the
arguments I'm having on the
sci.physics.relativity forum.
There are now 538 messages in the
thread I started on March 16 about "Using
a Pulsar to Measure Time Dilation."
That probably isn't a record, but
it's more messages than there are in
any other discussion thread accessed
by anyone so far this year, and it's
undoubtedly more than 20 times the
average number of messages in a
typical thread.
I'm looking for a way to end the
thread. It seems I now have
two experiments which can end
countless arguments about time
dilation and special
relativity. The
Pulsar experiment is one, and
the
truck experiment is the
other. I can't get anyone to
discuss the Pulsar experiment -
anyone except the "robot" that
evidently cannot understand how a
pulsar can be used as a clock.
But virtually everyone on the
sci.physics.relativity forum argues
that my truck experiment will not
work. They simply cannot
believe that it is possible to
measure the speed of a truck from
inside the close back of the
truck. My experiments with
radar guns, and my research into how
radar guns work, tells me that there
is no doubt that my
proposed experiment will work.
I just don't have the resources to
perform the experiment. I can
only hope that someone who reads
that thread will be able to acquire
the necessary equipment to do the
experiment.
Meanwhile, I want to start working
on a paper titled "Two
argument-ending experiments,"
or something like that. The
two experiments would put an end to
at least a hundred
different arguments about physics,
relativity and time dilation.
One person on the
sci.physics.relativity forum keeps
saying that I'd win the Nobel Prize
if the truck experiment works.
I tend to think that there are
countless scientists who already
know it would work, but they just
don't want to get into arguments
with mathematicians about it.
Or, there may be no way to precisely
control radar gun emission
frequencies. But, if that were
true, I would think someone would
have stated so by now.
It's all very
fascinating stuff for me. I
apologize if it is of no interest at
all to most readers of this web
site.
April 2, 2021
- Yesterday afternoon, while driving
home from the gym, I finished
listening to CD #7 of the 7-CD,
8-hour, 49 minute audio book version
of "Incognito:
The Secret Lives of the Brain"
by David Eagleman.
Wow! What a terrific and
fascinating book! I probably
should have read it on my Kindle
instead of listening to the audio book
version, since there are many many
passages in the book I would have
wanted to underline and save as
notes. Instead, I had to try to
remember to make notes when I got
home, copying and pasting from a
digital copy. Here are a couple
passages from early in the book:
The
first thing we learn from studying
our own [brain] circuitry is a
simple lesson: most of what we do
and think and feel is not under our
conscious control. The vast jungles
of neurons operate their own
programs. The conscious you—the I
that flickers to life when you wake
up in the morning—is the smallest
bit of what’s transpiring in your
brain. Although we are dependent on
the functioning of the brain for our
inner lives, it runs its own show.
Most of its operations are above the
security clearance of the conscious
mind.
Your
consciousness is like a tiny
stowaway on a transatlantic
steamship, taking credit for the
journey without acknowledging the
massive engineering underfoot.
That
is essentially what the book is about:
How our brain is like a large
corporation where different
departments handle different functions
that the chief officer of the
corporation is almost unaware
of. Here are two more passages
from early in the book:
Brains
are in the business of gathering
information and steering behavior
appropriately. It doesn’t matter
whether consciousness is involved in
the decision making. And most of the
time, it’s not. Whether we’re
talking about dilated eyes,
jealousy, attraction, the love of
fatty foods, or the great idea you
had last week, consciousness is the
smallest player in the operations of
the brain. Our brains run mostly on
autopilot, and the conscious mind
has little access to the giant and
mysterious factory that runs below
it.
You
see evidence of this when your foot
gets halfway to the brake before you
consciously realize that a red
Toyota is backing out of a driveway
on the road ahead of you. You see it
when you notice your name spoken in
a conversation across the room that
you thought you weren’t listening
to, when you find someone attractive
without knowing why, or when your
nervous system gives you a “hunch”
about which choice you should make.
I've
many written comments here about how I
wake up in the morning with some new
idea or new realization because my
unconscious brain was working on it
all night long while my conscious mind
was asleep. What the author of "Incognito"
says is that the "unconscious brain"
is actually many many little pockets
of my brain that each handle certain
kinds of puzzles. If something
doesn't quite make sense to me, parts
of my brain will work on it until it
does make sense. Then that part
of my brain will notify my conscious
mind. And I'll think "Ah!
Okay. That makes sense!"
Or maybe, "Hmm. I need to find
more information about that before it
can make any sense."
About one third of our brain is
devoted to vision. Little parts
of your brain know that things in the
distance only appear smaller than
things nearby. Another part
knows about how shadows can hide
things. Another part knows about
motion and how to figure out
trajectories. Another part knows
about colors. All these parts
are figuring things out while you
conscious mind just enjoys the
scenery. If something strange
happens, the part that notices it will
notify your conscious mind.
Fascinating stuff, particularly when
the author talks about people who had
some kind of injury that affects one
of those minor departments in the
brain. Suddenly you cannot see
motion, you only see a stationary car
in one place, then in another place,
then another. A blind person
understands a room only in three
dimensions. A blueprint of the
room makes no sense at all.
And then, of course, there are the
battles between the
"departments." One part wants
sugar, another knows too much sugar is
not good for me.
It was a fascinating book that I can
highly recommend.
Maybe it will help me in the seemingly
endless arguments I've been having
with mathematicians about Time, Time
Dilation and Relativity. Our
conscious minds are just not getting
the same information from our
unconscious minds. We see the
same things very
differently.
April 1, 2021
- While eating lunch
yesterday, I finished reading another
library book on my Kindle. The book
was "Think
Again: The Power of Knowing What You
Don't Know" by Adam Grant.
While I started out enjoying the book very
much, it became very repetitive, tedious
and boring as I neared the end. To
my pleasant surprise, the "end" occurred
about 50% of the way through the Kindle
book. After that it is all notes and
references.
The book is mainly about rethinking
what we "know" and believe" to see if it
fits with the facts. Here's a quote
from early in the book:
I can’t
think of a more vital time for
rethinking. As the coronavirus pandemic
unfolded, many leaders around the world
were slow to rethink their
assumptions—first that the virus
wouldn’t affect their countries, next
that it would be no deadlier than the
flu, and then that it could only be
transmitted by people with visible
symptoms. The cost in human life is
still being tallied.
And here's
another paragraph from early in the book
which explains the basic idea behind the
book:
As we
think and talk, we often slip into the
mindsets of three different professions:
preachers, prosecutors, and politicians.
In each of these modes, we take on a
particular identity and use a distinct
set of tools. We go into preacher mode
when our sacred beliefs are in jeopardy:
we deliver sermons to protect and
promote our ideals. We enter prosecutor
mode when we recognize flaws in other
people’s reasoning: we marshal arguments
to prove them wrong and win our case. We
shift into politician mode when we’re
seeking to win over an audience: we
campaign and lobby for the approval of
our constituents. The risk is that we
become so wrapped up in preaching that
we’re right, prosecuting others who are
wrong, and politicking for support that
we don’t bother to rethink our own
views.
The book
promotes scientific thinking. Here's
a quote about that:
Scientific
thinking favors humility over pride,
doubt over certainty, curiosity over
closure. When we shift out of scientist
mode, the rethinking cycle breaks down,
giving way to an overconfidence cycle.
If we’re preaching, we can’t see gaps in
our knowledge: we believe we’ve already
found the truth.
And here's
one final quote which I noted because it
reminds me of the arguments I have I on the
sci.physics.relativity discussion forum:
In the
hierarchy of disagreement created by
computer scientist Paul Graham, the
highest form of argument is refuting the
central point, and the lowest is
name-calling.
I've been
trying to refute their central argument
about what is Einstein's Second Postulate,
but the main counter argument they seem to
have is name calling. I wish I had
the time to go through
the 443 messages in the thread I started
on March 16 to see how many include
name calling. Mostly it is just name
calling between the others on the forum,
but from time to time they call me an
"idiot" or worse. The last three
messages in the thread as of this moment
involve calling one another "Stupid Ken,"
"Stupid Mike" and "moron."
Fortunately, the last message addressed to
me includes no name calling, it's just an
argument about what constitutes an
"inertial system. I wrote:
A truck is
a PROPELLED SYSTEM, even when it is
moving at a constant speed. It is NOT an
"inertial system" and if used as a
"frame of reference" it will give
unexpected results.
To which
"Michael Moroney" responded:
Wrong. If
it is moving at a constant speed it is
inertial BY DEFINITION. Since it is
inertial, it can be used as an inertial
frame of reference. "Propelled system"
is bogus, since the propulsion exists
ONLY to overcome air resistance and
friction.
As I see it,
he is totally wrong on a FUNDAMENTAL
concept in physics. Here's the
definition of "inertial system" from Dictionary.com:
a frame of
reference in which a body remains at
rest or moves with constant linear
velocity unless acted upon by
forces: any frame of
reference that moves with constant
velocity relative to an inertial system
is itself an inertial system.
A moving
truck is NOT an inertial system, because
it is being "acted upon by forces" which
make the truck move. It has an engine
that creates force to propel
the truck at some given speed.
Remove that force and the truck will slow
to a stop due to "air resistance and
friction" and will them become part of the
system that is the surface of the earth.
Is that system "inertial"? It does
NOT involve "linear" motion. Here's
what Encyclopedia Britannica says about
that:
Strictly
speaking, Newton's laws of motion are
valid only in a coordinate system at
rest with respect to the “fixed” stars.
... A coordinate system attached to
the Earth is not an inertial reference
frame because the Earth rotates and is
accelerated with respect to the Sun.
This is
about as fundamental as you can get in
physics. Yet, somehow nearly
everyone on that forum thinks that a truck
moving at a constant speed is an "inertial
system." I'll try explaining why a
truck is not an inertial system,
but I doubt I'll be able to change any
minds. More likely, they will just
start calling me names.
|
Comments for Sunday,
March 28, 2021, thru Wed., March 31, 2021:
March
29, 2021 - This
morning I received an email from that
relative who is reading my sci-fi novel "Time
Work." She wrote:
I was just watching a
program on TV. The program was talking
about Ron Mallett. Ron Mallett is working
on time travel like in your book. What a
strange coincidence.
What is a "coincidence" for her is
clearly not a coincidence for me, since I'm
involved in discussions about time and time
travel nearly every day. Strangely, however, I
never heard of Ron Mallett before.
According
to Wikipedia, Professor Mallett is
currently working on building a time
machine. Or he is working on getting
funding to build a time machine. The
Wikipedia article also includes comments from
other scientists who feel that Mallet's
paper about his time travel idea contains
some fundamental flaws. In 2006, Mallet
wrote a book titled "Time
Traveler: A Scientist's Personal Mission to
Make Time Travel a Reality."
Spike Lee announced in 2008 that he was going to
make a movie based on the film. The movie
still seems to be "in the works," and the book
seems to be mostly an autobiography. I'm
not sure what to make of any of this.
Meanwhile, overnight there was a flood of about
two dozen new messages in the thread I started
on the sci.physics.relativity
forum on March 16. I'd mentioned my
sci-fi novel on the forum, and one of the guys
who attacks everything I write there complained
that it was "spam." I also mentioned the
book in a comment on the Science
Fiction & Fantasy Chronicles forum,
and the mention was deleted from the rest of the
comment for a similar reason: I haven't been a
member long enough to use the forum to promote
something.
I'd certainly like to get more people to buy "Time
Work," but I'm also very interested in
what people think of the anti-time time travel
idea.
March 28, 2021 - Groan! If I
previously couldn't find enough time to do
all the things I want to do in a day,
returning to my regular gym routine has made
things even worse. For the past year I
was just going for a walk each day (when
snow or freezing cold winds didn't prevent
it), and I could go when there was time to
go. It could be anywhere from 12:30,
just after lunch, to 4:30 p.m, just before
supper. Going to the gym means going
right after lunch. Period. And
it takes a bit over an hour, while my daily
walks just took half that - and I could
often get some grocery shopping done while
doing the walks. Now, grocery shopping
has to be done after going to
the gym.
Meanwhile, I've received another "book
review" for "Time
Work." This one was from a
relative who I don't think has read a novel
in a long long time, and she's only just
begun reading "Time Work." She said
that she was enjoying "the story line" but
wondered why I say the TV on the wall in the
gizmo truck is a "55-inch flat-screen TV,"
instead of just saying its an "extra large
TV."
I replied that it was just a personal
preference, plus there is a mention of a
75-inch flat-screen TV later in the
book. If I called the first one an
"extra large TV," I'd have to call the
second one an "extra extra large
TV." And everyone would be wondering
what the hell that is.
Actually, while doing my final revisions, I
wondered about calling it a "flat screen
TV," since all TVs these days are "flat
screen" TVs. So, why not just say it's
"a 55 inch TV"? I decided that calling
it "a 55 inch TV" seems kind of odd and
insufficiently descriptive.
Researching it yesterday, I find that the
Internet ads call them "55-inch class
TVs" or "55-inch LED TVs" or "55-inch HD
LED TVs" or "55-inch FHD TVs." It
seems like no one ever uses the term "flat
screen" anymore. But what would novelists
use? Doesn't "55 inch flat screen TV"
make it easier to visualize? I don't
know, but I don't think it's worth
changing. And calling it an "HD LED
TV" just makes the reader think those
details will be important later, otherwise
why would I mention them?
Meanwhile, the arguments on the
sci.physics.relativity forum continue
to rage. Some are pretty interesting.
Someone named "Mitchell Raemsch" kept
asking odd questions about pulsars slowing
down, and I kept telling him that pulsars
are extremely constant and only slow down a
few microseconds in a billion years.
Then someone named "Rotchm" wrote me:
Ed, do you realize that
"Raemsch" is not a real person? Its a
troll/bot.
Everyone here knows this,
since its so obvious.
"Raemsch" is a robot?
No, I didn't realize that. I don't
argue on that forum that often. I
replied,
Nothing I've seen
indicates that it is a robot. And if it IS
a robot,
then arguing with it could
be interesting. Can you educate a robot?
It might be interesting to
find out.
The reply from "Rotchm" was,
But not here. There are
sites for that and this NG is not such a
site/place.
There are sites for arguing
with robots? I suppose there could
be. Researching it yesterday, I found
there certainly seem to be such sites,
although it seems you might have to pay a
fee to do it. In addition, of course,
that would just be another way of wasting
time that I don't have. Instead, I'm
waiting for "Raemsch" to post something
else, but he/she/it hasn't done so
yet. I keep thinking I want to ask it:
"Raemsch, what is a clock?" If it
responds like an Alexa robot, that would be
interesting. If it doesn't, that could
be interesting, too.
This morning there are 328 messages in that
thread I started on March 16, twelve more
than when I turned off my computer yesterday
evening. And I hadn't had the time to
respond to most of the messages addressed to
me at that time. The messages are
mostly repetitive. I'm going to have
to figure a way to respond that won't get me
into an endless argument. I've learned
a lot about how the people on that forum
view things. So, I need to write a
response that addresses all of them and
shows how they distort arguments in order to
justify their beliefs. But, most of
all I need to think about writing new
versions of some of my papers, or a totally
new paper, that really examines the idea of
using a pulsar as a clock when doing a time
dilation experiment. Such an
experiment really addresses some key issues
in Relativity and Time Dilation in a new
way, eliminating about 90% of the causes of
most disputes.
Yet, I only mentioned pulsars in the first
three versions of "Time Dilation Re-Visualized,"
which I initially uploaded on May 31,
2015. It appears is was my FIRST
science paper. It was a version of my
web page "Time
Dilation - as I Understand It," that I
created over a year earlier. Then, for
some long forgotten reason, in October 2016
I revised the paper, eliminating the pulsar
illustration and re-titling the paper "Time
Dilation Without Relativity." A
month later, I rewrote and renamed the paper
"Understanding
Time Dilation." And in
May 2017, I rewrote it again, changed
the title again, and eliminated all
mention of pulsars.
I'm going to have to fix that. The
idea of using a pulsar to measure Time
Dilation may be the best idea I've ever had
in the area of Time Dilation and
Relativity.
|
Comments for Sunday,
March 21, 2021, thru Sat., March 27, 2021:
March 27,
2021 - Last
night, instead of watching
TV, I decided to finish
listening to an audio book
I'd obtained from my local
library months ago.
I'd been listening to it
off and on ever
since. It's a
16-part, 16 hour, 18
minute audio book titled "The
Daily Show (The Book):
An Oral History as
Told by Jon Stewart,
the Correspondents,
Staff and Guests"
by Chris Smith.
The book is not only an
interesting history of The
Daily Show from
around 1999 to 2015, when
Jon Stewart was the host,
it's also an interesting
history of those
times. I think I was
a regular viewer for
Stewart's entire
run. I certainly
remember the show he did
after 9/11. They'd
been off the air for a few
days, and I think everyone
was waiting for them to
return to the airwaves so
that we could see and hear
what Stewart had to say
about the events of
9/11. In those days,
Stewart was considered by
many to be the best source
of news on TV, better than
all the evening news shows
put together. Plus,
of course, the show
introduced as "news
correspondents" and
"commentators" such people
as Samantha Bee, Stephen
Colbert, John Oliver,
Steve Carell, Lewis Black,
Jessica Williams, John
Hodgman, and Larry
Wilmore.
Eventually, Stewart left
the show and Trevor Noah
took over. I still
watch every episode.
According to the book and
to the IMDB, Craig Kilborn
was the host from 1996 to
1998. I don't recall
watching him at all.
The book was not only
interesting and
occasionally funny, its
also a good history book,
showing how Right Wing nut
jobs started openly
running for office,
eventually creating the
situation we have today,
where a total idiot like
Donald Trump can be
elected President, be
admired by millions, and
those same millions
actually believe
preposterous conspiracy
theories and preach them
on TV. Facts and
evidence mean absolutely
nothing to them, and they
say so openly.
It was an interesting and
enjoyable book, which I
can recommend to anyone
who also enjoyed and
enjoys The Daily Show.
Most others, I think, will
have a hard time hearing
the views of dozens of
different people whose
names mean nothing at all
to the listener.
March 25, 2021 - Groan!
As I write this comment,
there are 237 messages in
the
sci.physics.relativity
discussion thread I
started just over a week
ago, 29 more than
yesterday at this
time. And it looks
like about 9 of them might
be worthy of a
response. I just
need to gather the
will-power to write the
responses.
Yesterday, I posted a
message informing everyone
of an article that had
appeared on
Forbes magazine's web
site. The
article was titled "Does
Time Really Run Faster
At Your Head Than Your
Feet?"
The response from "Ken
Seto" was that the article
is wrong, and Seto's
beliefs are correct.
The same answer holds when
I tell Ken Seto he is
wrong, and I explain how
and where he is
wrong. His response
is that he is correct and
I am wrong. Is it
worth my time to write
another response? I
dunno. Right now I'm
reading a psychology book
on my Kindle, and I'm
listening to another
psychology book while
driving. Those books
say that instead of
arguing that Seto is wrong
and I am right, I should
ask Seto a question that
pinpoints the error in his
logic. I just need
to figure out how to
phrase the question.
All the questions require
a lot of thinking to
produce an answer.
It is not because they are
complex questions, it is
only because if I do not
phrase every word
correctly, they will begin
opinion vs opinion
arguments over word
definitions.
The discussions, however,
have been very
productive. As I've
state in previous comments
here, it has become clear
that most of the people on
that forum do not
understand science, they
only understand
mathematics. And if
you do not respond with an
answer that includes
mathematical equations,
their response is that I
need to start taking
college courses so that I
can discuss the
mathematics
intelligently.
Actually, the problem is
that I need to get them to
see where using math gets
them into situations where
Relativity becomes
incomprehensible if they
do not understand the science
behind the situation.
It is as simple as
this:
In "Reference Frame #1,"
which is stationary, light
is measured to travel at
300,000 kilometers per
second.
In "Reference Frame #2,"
which is moving at 1,000
kilometers per second away
from Reference Frame #1,"
light is also measured to
travel at 300,000
kilometers per second.
To a typical
mathematician, light is
traveling at the same
speed in those two
reference frames.
Period.
However, Relativity says
that light is traveling at
different speeds
in those two "Reference
Frames" because, due to
time dilation, a clock
SECOND is longer in
"Reference Frame #2."
To see the difference you
have to look from one
"Reference Frame" into the
other "Reference
Frame." OR, both
reference frames can use a
pulsar as a clock, a clock
that is inside neither
"Reference Frame," and
then compare
results.
It seems many
mathematicians cannot do
that. They simply
cannot comprehend a
reference frame that does
not include everything
they need to make correct
computations.
They won't believe
anything I tell them, so,
I'm trying to ask
questions that will enable
them to see the problem
and the solution for
themselves. I think
that kind of questioning
is called
"psychoanalysis."
Meanwhile, I went to a gym
yesterday, for the first
time in just over a
year. It's a
different gym with
different equipment, so I
have to find the right
machines and figure out
how to work them.
That's simple enough,
except when there is a TV
set fixed to the
machine. Then I had
to figure out what TV
channel I want to watch
while walking on a
treadmill or riding an
Exercycle. I made
the mistake of trying to
figure out the TV while
exercising. It is a
lot easier to just
walk at 3.2 miles per hour
than to walk at that speed
while fiddling around with
a TV.
Live and learn.
March 24, 2021 - As I write this
comment, there are 208 messages
in that
sci.physics.relativity
discussion thread I
started on March 16. I've
only been responding to "Rob
Acraman's" posts. He asked
a question, I answered it
yesterday, and this morning he
asked a new question.
While I was writing an answer,
at least a dozen message
appeared in thread, nearly all
just arguments between
others. I also posted a
message informing everyone of an
article that appeared today on
Forbes magazine's web site.
The article is titled "Does
Time Really Run Faster At
Your Head Than Your Feet?"
Here are the first two
paragraphs from that article:
There’s no such thing as
absolute time. No matter where you are,
how fast you’re moving, or how strong the
gravitational field is around you, any
clock you have on you will always record
time as passing at the same rate: one
second per second. For any solitary
observer, time simply flows.
But if
you have two different clocks, you can
compare how time flows under different
conditions. If one clock remains
stationary while the other travels
quickly, the fast-moving clock will
experience a smaller amount of time
passing than the stationary clock: that’s
the rule of time dilation in special
relativity.
The article supports what
I've been arguing, so it will be interesting
to see how the forum members react to
it. The question "Rob Acraman" asked
me is also addressed in the second
paragraph. His question was about what
is "really" happening. What is
"really" happening is that time is ticking
at different rates for different
people. Which is the real
rate of time? They are both real for
their locations. Does that
mean the other location has the "wrong" time
rate? No, it means the other location
has a different time rate.
The more I read the arguments on that forum,
the more certain I am that there are some people
who can only understand science in
mathematical terms. And, of
course, they want me to talk in mathematical
terms. But I understand science in
logical terms and concepts. So, my
pulsar experiment makes perfect sense to
me. But those who only
understand mathematics cannot deal with
it. Firstly, as stated in
my March 22 comment, they cannot understand
an experiment where a "right angle" can vary
from 90 degrees, even if it varies only by a
billionth of a degree. Nor can they
understand using a pulsar as a clock if the
pulsar gradually slows down, even if it only
slows down by a billionth of second in a
billion years.
And they also cannot understand a universe
that is expanding into nothing.
They can only understand a universe made of
stars, where the furthest star is the end of
the universe. What is beyond the
furthest star? That is an invalid
question! The universe ends at the
furthest star, so there can be
nothing beyond it.
This is also evidently why Relativity and
Quantum Mechanics are irreconcilable and
have generated arguments for over 100
years. One is based on science,
observations, concepts and experiments, and
the other is just mathematics.
I could probably write a lot more about
this, but it would be best put into the form
of a science paper or book. Plus, I
joined a gym yesterday, and it's time for me
to eat lunch and head to the gym.
While I've been doing a lot of exercising
and walking during the past year, it will be
my first official "gym workout" since the
gym I'd been using for about a decade closed
last March.
March 22, 2021 - There were 10 new
messages in that
sci.physics.relativity discussion
thread this morning.
Message #163, the last one I posted
yesterday, was my message stating that
I wasn't going to respond to any
further posts, since they were all
just a waste of my time.
Unfortunately, I didn't say I would
respond if someone posted a message
that would NOT be a waste of my time
to answer. Among the 10 new
messages this morning was one from "Rob Acraman," a name
totally new to me. And he asked
an intelligent
question!!!!!
One of the other new messages said:
"You need the attention. It makes you
feel relevant. You'll always be
back." Another said I'd be back
because I "need the
recognition." That made it more
difficult for me to respond to
Acraman's post, but I did so anyway.
My feeling when I stopped posting
yesterday was that no one on the forum
could ask a question that didn't
involve mathematical equations,
because they only understood
relativity in mathematical
terms. I was talking about a
space ship moving away from earth at a
right angle to a pulsar, and it was
like no one could comprehend that,
since technically the angle to the
pulsar would change as the space ship
moved farther and farther away from
earth.
|____________________________________________________________O
If the space ship is moving upward at
95% of the speed of light along the
vertical line on the left in the
illustration above, and if the O on
the right is the pulsar, the angle does
change as the space ship moves.
But it has no meaningful effect on the
experiment. As long as the space
ship continues at 95% of the speed of
light, the space ship will still
encounter 10 pulses every second from
the pulsar. It might change from
10 pulses per second to
9.99999999999999999999998 pulses per
second, but it's not going to change
to 7 or 5 or 2 pulses per second.
But, if you are a mathematician, and
all you understand is mathematics,
then the thought experiment makes no
sense, because the angle between the
ship and the pulsar is not
a constant 90 degrees. It can
change to 90.0000000000000000001
degrees at some point.
I hadn't viewed things quite that way
before. It explains a lot.
Meanwhile, the questions Rob Acraman
asked did not use mathematics, and he
asked nothing requiring a mathematical
equation to answer. His
questions had to do with how
Einstein's First and Second Postulates
seem to be in conflict or be
"irreconcilable," even though Einstein
stated that they are only "apparently
irreconcilable." To answer
Acraman's question I had to explain
how the two postulates might initially
appear to be
irreconcilable, but once you
understand how time dilation works,
they reconcile perfectly. And I
explained everything as thoroughly as
I could.
Now, I'm waiting to see how many
people on the forum attack me for
responding when I said I wasn't going
to respond any further.
Also, I notice that I am getting a lot
more reads of my
science papers as a result of
posting to that forum. I don't
think there's been a day in the past
two months where someone with a
"Unique IP" hasn't read at least one
paper of mine. An average day
gets about 5 new readers. Plus, one
guy on the sci.physics.relativity
forum started a new thread that used
one of my arguments as if it was
something he'd dreamed up. Plus,
I seem to get at least one person a
day asking to join my "Time
and Time Dilation" Facebook
group, even though discussions in that
group are few and far between. I
makes me feel that someone is
agreeing with what I say about
Relativity, and apparently more than
just one someone.
March 21, 2021
- Wow! Have I
been busy!!
I think the past week was the first time
since I created this web site that I only
had time to write my regular Sunday comment
and just one other comment during the
week. The reason I was so busy was
because I was in heated debates on the
sci.physics.relativity discussion forum.
On Tuesday, March 16, I started a new
discussion thread titled "Using
a pulsar as a clock to measure Time
Dilation." As of yesterday
morning, it had 133 messages in the
thread. And since most messages were
addressed to me, that means 45 of the
messages (about 34%) are my replies. A lot
of my time was also spent making a copy of
the entire discussion.
In my March 16 comment on this web site, I
wrote about starting that thread, but I
failed to show the illustration I used in my
paper and on
my web page that was the basis for the
discussion. Here's that illustration:

The "thought experiment" described in the
paper uses a pulsar instead of man-made
clocks to measure time dilation as a space
ship from Earth travels at 95% of the speed
of light toward Alpha Centauri and
back. Because of time dilation, the
trip takes only one year for
the people on the space ship, but it takes ten
years for the people waiting back on
Earth. And people on the space ship
can see that time is slowing down for them,
because they will count the pulses from the
pulsar as increasing to ten times the number
they counted per second when they were on
earth.
As is usual in arguments on the
sci.physics.relativity forum, very few
comments actually addressed the "thought
experiment" I wanted to discuss. Most
were quibbles over words, statements of
personal beliefs and personal attacks
against me. The first response that
wasn't a personal attack stated:
A pulsar's rotation will
slow its time and give it more energy.
By moving in space there
will be the same... more time slow and
energy.
Neutron stars are end
state matter not a BH.
I couldn't make any sense of
that at all, and I just ignored it.
Later, "Odd Bodkin" argued that, because I'm
not a mathematician and do not use complex
math equations in my paper, my paper is
worthless and just shows my ignorance.
Then "Cliff Hallston" argued that my paper
was too ambiguous, since I don't explain
what I mean by saying "No one is ever behind
or ahead of the other in time." (They
merely experience time pass
at different rates.) And I don't
explain what "feelings" I'm talking about
when I say the two parties didn't feel any
effects of time dilation during the
experiment. Then "Paul B. Anderson"
simply re-stated what I said in my paper,
only he used mathematical equations.
Then "Ken Seto" began arguing that the
experiment demonstrated that "absolute time"
represented one second on the space ship
when it also represented ten seconds on
earth, generating a long and still
unresolved debate over what constituted
"absolute time." Then "Silvia Else" argued
that a space ship moving away from the earth
couldn't always be at a right angle from a
pulsar, since the angle must change. I
informed her that the change in angle is too
small to be of concern when the pulsar is
15,000 light years away from the earth and
the space ship and the ship is only
traveling 4.3 light years away from
earth. But they cannot mathematically
accept that. And lastly, "Mitchr"
argued that pulsars are too unreliable to
use as a clock, even though it is known that
pulsars are EXTREMELY reliable in their
rotation rates.
Near the end of the debate yesterday, I
complained:
Why is everyone trying to
find fault with the experiment instead of
discussing what the experiment
demonstrates? It demonstrates that time
dilation can be discussed without any need
for Traveler and Homebody being able to
see each other's clocks during the
experiment while they are BILLIONS of
miles apart. It demonstrates that time
dilation can be discussed without any
concern for the speed of light
affecting how clocks are viewed when going
toward the light source and away from
the light source. It demonstrates that
time dilation is NOT reciprocal. It
demonstrates that you can have a time
dilation experiment without endless arguments
over what is viewed in each "frame of
reference."
Then "Burt Schwartzkopf"
posted his first message to the
thread. It said simply:
Your point is?
To which I replied:
My point is that by using
a pulsar to measure time, you can
eliminate 99% of the arguments over how
time dilation works when one twin travels
to a nearby star and the other twin stays
at home on earth.
And it makes clear that
TIME is something that can be affected by
motion and gravity, so time is not just a
concept or idea. It is something PHYSICAL.
That was message #149, and
my last message for the day.
When I turned on my computer this morning, I
saw there were 162 messages in the
thread. Scanning through the 13 new
messages, I don't see a single one that
seems worthy of a response, since I would
just be repeating what I've already repeated
over and over and over.
But I'll definitely add those 13 new
messages to my saved copy of the entire
thread. As I see it, the discussion
was worthwhile because it demonstrated once
again that no one has an intelligent
argument against the thought experiment or
against my understanding of time
dilation. Their arguments are all the
same: If I change my mind and believe what
they believe, then I will see that I was
wrong.
But if I am wrong, WHERE am I wrong?
Their answer to that seems to be that I am
wrong because I didn't explain things by
using mathematical equations. And the
only thing they understand is mathematical
equations.
It seems clear that I need to stop arguing
and just put my ideas into a book.
Maybe no one will read the book, but just
organizing the book and writing everything
down will help clear my mind. And
there are a lot of personal matters that I
need to start focusing on, anyway. I'm
going to move sometime in the next year or
so, and I've got 30 years worth of
accumulated stuff to sort through.
|
Comments for Sunday,
March 14, 2021, thru Sat., March 20, 2021:
March
16, 2021
- I just started a
new thread on the
sci.physics.relativity discussion
forum. The topic is "Using
a Pulsar as a Clock to Measure Time
Dilation." It's an idea
that occurred to me some time in
2013. I created
a web page about it on March 23,
2014, and I created a
science paper about it on May
31, 2015. But, as far as can
recall, I never discussed
it with anyone.
A few days ago, I mentioned it on my Time
and Time Dilation Facebook
group, and that same day I got 30
unique IP reads of the May 2015 paper,
probably a daily record. But no
discussion. Just 3 "likes."
And the first response on the
sci.physics.relativity forum was what
appears to be a personal attack.
I asked if anyone saw any fault in the
thought experiment, and "Dirk Van de
moortel" (who is on my "Do Not Reply"
list) responded:
I do see a fault in the
assumptions you make about your relevance.
Needless to say, I'm not
going to respond to that.
Using pulsars to measure time dilation seems
like an obvious idea that should have
occurred to a lot of people. When I research
pulsars and time dilation, however,
the only papers I find are about pulsars and
gravitational time
dilation. The experiments I describe are
about velocity time
dilation. And the papers I find seem
to be about "gravitational radiation" or
"gravitation waves."
Of course, measuring velocity time dilation
using a pulsar may be very difficult if you
do not have a rocket ship that can travel at
95% of the speed of light, which is what I
use in my paper. But, it should be
interesting to see what arguments there are
against it, or if anyone can create an
argument against it.
As I see it, if the experiment can be
performed in any way, it should put an
end to debates that have raged for over
110 years. It would eliminate
any argument that time dilation is just an
illusion.
March 14, 2021
- I had hoped that mentioning my
sci-fi novel "Time
Work" on the Science
Fiction Facebook forum would draw some
attention, but my announcement seems to have
gone into some area where no one
visits. I didn't even get a comment or
question. In response to my post on Imgur.com, I
got a couple congratulations, but there's no
evidence that it prompted anyone to actually
buy the book. And what is really
strange is that my attempts to promote "Time
Work" somehow prompted a couple people
to buy copies of "Clipper."
I'm going to have to try to think of some
better ways to promote the book.
Instead, however, it seems all I can think
about is an idea that occurred to me on
Friday afternoon. The idea may have
been prompted by thoughts about "anti-time"
as depicted in "Time Work" combined
with some recent arguments on my Time
and Time Dilation Facebook forum about
Time Dilation, but suddenly all I could
think about was "Time Contraction."
Time Dilation is the slowing
of time as you gain speed. Time
Contraction is the speeding up
of time when you slow down again.
Researching
the subject, I found a few people have
asked the question I've been asking myself,
and the answers mostly seem to be from
mathematicians who do not believe in Time
Dilation, so they certainly and emphatically
do not believe in Time Contraction. Or
the author just writes gobbledygook. Example:
Nature succeeds in
accelerating extended and massive objects
to relativistic velocities. Jets in active
galactic nuclei and in galactic
superluminal sources and gamma-ray burst
fireballs have bulk Lorentz factors from a
few to several hundreds. A variety of
effects then arises, such as the beaming
of the radiation produced, light
aberration, time contraction and
the Doppler frequency shift. I will
emphasize that special relativity applied
to real (i.e., extended) observed objects
inevitably must take into account the fact
that any piece of information is carried
by photons. Being created in different
parts of the source, they travel different
paths to reach the observer, depending on
the viewing angle. The object is seen
rotated, not contracted, and at small
viewing angles time intervals are observed
shorter than intrinsic ones.
"Time contraction" is an
interesting idea for me because the Earth is
spinning on its axis at a rate of 1,040
miles per hour, it's orbiting the sun at
67,000 miles per hour, it's moving with the
sun around the center of the Milky Way
galaxy at 486,000 miles per hour, and it's
moving along with the Milky Way Galaxy in
the direction of the constellation Hydra at
1,342,161 miles per hour.
1,342,161 miles per hour certainly seems
very fast, but in reality it is just 373
miles per second. When Time Dilation
is calculated, that means that 1 second at
zero speed is 1.0000020027761 seconds at
1,342,161 miles per hour. That's still
a very small difference in the length of a
second that can really only be measured with
atomic clocks.
What I'm wondering about is: Could Time Contraction
be used to point to the location of the Big
Bang? In an off-hand way it seems
somewhat logical, given that we are still in
an "expanding universe." But when you
look at all the complications, it is totally
mind-boggling. I've been thinking of
writing a paper about it, but I'm not even
sure where to begin. The only place to
begin is to start writing. The
audio book I'm currently listening to
when driving my car is telling me that I
have to start feeding information to my
sub-conscious mind. It will try to
sort things out. And the best way to
feed things to my sub-conscious mind is to
write them down. But there are
complications. Here's a quote from the
book:
Brains are like representative
democracies. They are built of multiple,
overlapping experts who weigh in and
compete over different choices. As Walt
Whitman correctly surmised, we are large
and we harbor multitudes within us.
And those multitudes are locked in chronic
battle.
There is an ongoing conversation among the
different factions in your brain, each
competing to control the single output
channel of your behavior. As a result, you
can accomplish the strange feats of
arguing with yourself, cursing at
yourself, and cajoling yourself to do
something—feats that modern computers
simply do not do. When the hostess at a
party offers chocolate cake, you find
yourself on the horns of a dilemma: some
parts of your brain have evolved to crave
the rich energy source of sugar, and other
parts care about the negative
consequences, such as the health of your
heart or the bulge of your love handles.
Part of you wants the cake and part of you
tries to muster the fortitude to forgo it.
The final vote of the parliament
determines which party controls your
action—that is, whether you put your hand
out or up. In the end, you either eat the
chocolate cake or you do not, but you
cannot do both.
Because of these internal multitudes,
biological creatures can be conflicted.
Amen. I feel that
conflict right now. Should I start
writing a paper about Time Contraction, or
should I just lie down on my couch and read
a book? Or should I just sit here,
staring at my computer, unable to decide?
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Comments for Sunday,
March 7, 2021, thru Sat., March 13, 2021:
March 11, 2021 -
Ah! The copies of my new
sci-fi novel, "Time
Work," that I
ordered back around February 22
arrived yesterday
afternoon.

To my pleasant surprise, they
included the changes I made on February 27
as a result of the book being
proof-read by "tinkerdan," even
though, as of this morning,
those changes have not yet
appeared in the "Look Inside"
feature on Amazon's page for my
book.
This morning I took the picture
you see above and then put it in
on Imgur.com
in their public comments
section. I don't know if
anyone will pay it any
attention, but since it is a
self-published book, I need to
get all the free advertising I
can get. I also mentioned
it on my Time
and Time Dilation Facebook
group. It quickly
got one "like." I tried
mentioning it on the Science
Fiction Facebook group,
but first it had to go through
their moderators. To my
pleasant surprise, it was
approved almost
immediately.
March 10, 2021 - While eating
breakfast this morning, I finished
reading another library book on my
Kindle. It was "The
Comedians: Drunks, Thieves,
Scoundrels, and the History of
American Comedy" by
Kliph Nesteroff.
It's a very interesting book about "stand-up
comedians," i.e. comedians who make a living
(or try to make a
living) by making an audience laugh.
It begins with vaudeville comedians like the
Marx Brothers and Bob Hope and ends with TV
comedians like Jon Stewart and Jimmy
Kimmel. Along the way there was radio,
night clubs, comedy clubs and
podcasts. And there was "The
Mob." Here's a quote from the book:
The Mob essentially
created the term “stand-up
comic”—according to eighty-six-year-old
comedian Dick Curtis. “The Outfit used to
manage fighters. A stand-up fighter is a
guy that is a puncher. A stand-up guy was
a guy who was tough and you could depend
on. The Outfit managed fighters and they
managed clubs that booked comics, so the
term found its way into the lexicon of
nightclubs. A guy who just stood there and
punched jokes—joke, joke, joke—he was a
stand-up comic.”
and another:
For a good forty years the
Mob controlled American show business. “It
was always ‘Outfit’ to us,” says comedian
Dick Curtis. “Never the Mob or Cosa Nostra
or any of the other names you might have
heard. These guys were the Outfit.” From
the 1930s through the end of the 1960s
every city in America had at least one
glamorous supper club, if not four or
five, featuring the top headliners in
every showbiz genre. Furthermore, it
didn’t matter if these clubs were in
Cleveland, Portland, Corpus Christi or
Baton Rouge—if it was a nightclub, the
owners were the Mob. “The clubs were owned
by bootleggers and even a few killers,”
said actor George Raft, who had worked as
a dancer in New York supper clubs. “In my
time I knew or met them all. Al Capone,
Joe Adonis, Frank Costello, Vito Genovese,
Dutch Schultz, Machine Gun Jack McGurn,
Lucky Luciano, Vinnie Coll—most of them
were around.”
In places it was a very
funny book, but mostly it was about how
difficult it is to make a living by making
people laugh. I can understand that,
since I think every time I've tried to tell
a joke to an audience of more than one
person, the joke fell flat. It's
interesting to write jokes, however.
And I have occasionally created
cartoons. Here's one, but I'm not sure
how funny others will think it is:

March 9, 2021
- Groan!!! There
just aren't enough hours in a
day!!! I have a Facebook
forum called "Time
and Time Dilation" which
normally has about 2 brief
conversations per year. But people
keep asking to join. It now has
76 members. Two joined this
morning.
I created the forum years ago to
discuss Time and Time Dilation.
I wanted a forum where I could kick
people off of it if they started
arguing mathematics against science
and logic, which is what I constantly
encounter on other science
forums. I've only had a few
occasions to kick people off my
forum. One was because they
tried to use the forum to sell
knickknacks, another wanted to sell a
psychology book. And one wanted
to peddle mathematicians' beliefs.
A couple days ago, I had another
mathematician who wanted to sell his
beliefs via my group. As is
usual, he called my arguments
"nonsense" and would just preach his
beliefs. I tried to get him to
discuss specific issues, but, like
most other mathematicians, he was
evidently incapable of discussing
anything. All he could do what
declare his beliefs and argue that
whatever I wrote was "just plain
wrong" without explaining how
it was wrong. I argued with him
for a couple days, telling him that if
he couldn't answer questions and stop
making declarations, I would boot him
off the forum. He didn't stop,
so yesterday I booted him off.
But I left the arguments intact to
show why he was booted
off.
I wondered how the others on the forum
would react. They posted no
comments, and, as stated above, this
morning two new people asked to
join. They do, however, post
"likes" sometimes when I make
comments. I think they are all
others who dislike arguing with
mathematicians, but I don't know for
sure. Maybe I should ask.
Hmm. One of the people
who joined this morning must have read
my mind. He just posted a
message explaining why he joined the
forum. It was because he had
just watched the movie "Interstellar."
Maybe his post will prompt others to
explain why they joined.
I also keep wanting to mention my
sci-fi novel on the forum. I
don't think it would be entirely
off-base, since the book is about
manipulating time. But first I
need to get the book into better
shape. And, that is where I've
been spending most of my time. I
made the corrections to typos in the
book, and I wanted to make one more
change, but I wanted to "fix" the
manuscript first, by combining the
"front matter" pages (which have no
page numbers) with the main text
(which has page numbers) into
one single WORD file. I've never
been able to do that. I could
only create separate PDF files for the
two parts, and then merge the PDF
files. The guy who found all the
typos in the book told me how to do it
in WORD. But, his explanation didn't
seem to work. I had to
experiment to find out for myself how
to divide the book into two
"sections." Once you know how,
it's simple, but figuring out
how is tedious and
complicated.
On top of those issues, I have a truly
major issue. Sometime fairly
soon, maybe this coming summer or
fall, I plan to move from Wisconsin to
Virginia. And that will require going
through decades of accumulated junk to
see what I should take along and what
I should sell or give to
Goodwill or the Salvation Army.
Right now, I find it hard to even
think about it.
March 7, 2021 - Hmm.
Last Monday I wrote about joining a couple
Internet forums where I thought I might be
able to promote my new sci-fi novel "Time
Work." One was the
Facebook forum "Science
Fiction," and the other was a blog
called "Science
Fiction and Fantasy Chronicles," also
known as "SFFC." I mentioned how
"tinkerdan" had read the first three
chapters of my book via Amazon's "Look
Inside" feature, and on SFFC he pointed out
two typos that I had failed to notice.
It appears that "tinkerdan" then bought
a Kindle copy of "Time Work" and went
through the entire book twice,
making notes of my typos. Then he
displayed all 30 of the typos in a comment
on the SFFC blog, along with several other
errors he found. In effect, he
proof-read my book. With a
couple exceptions about punctuation,
everything he pointed out was worth
correcting.
For example, on page 9, I wrote:
I could a vaguely make out
what looked like a bank of some kind of
large batteries.
And "tinkerdan" pointed out
that it should be "I could vaguely make out
..." without the "a" between could and
vaguely.
It's a true typo that I somehow failed to
see in the many times I read the book,
although it's totally possible I created the
typo while fixing something else on the
final version.
There were about 29 more such typos.
And then he mentioned some errors. For
example, he wrote:
FYI: I'm not sure how you
are using the word davit in relation to
the trucks.
I did a search through the
manuscript for the word "davit." I
only used it once. I used it in this
sentence:
McGinnis then tied the
chopper owner to a tie-down davit
on the wall near the front of the
helicopter.
I checked the definition for
"davit" and found I'd used a totally wrong
word. A davit is defined as "a small crane on board a
ship, especially one of a pair for
suspending or lowering a lifeboat." I
meant "cleat," which is defined as "a
T-shaped piece of metal or wood, especially
on a boat or ship, to which ropes are
attached." So, I fixed that.
"Tinkerdan" also thought that my use of the
word "mufti" might offend
some people. Huh? I had
written:
A few military people in
camouflage fatigues were enjoying a meal
there. But, mostly it was just
smiling and hungry people in mufti.
Looking up the word, I found
it has two definitions. The first is "a Muslim legal expert who is
empowered to give rulings on religious
matters." The second meaning of mufti
is "'ordinary clothes,' when they're worn by
people who usually wear a uniform. So a
soldier wearing civilian clothes might be
said to be in mufti."
I changed it to "civilian clothing."
I also wrote, ""I woofed down a cup
of yogurt and then headed to the health club
for a workout." Tinkerdan pointed out
that the word should be "wolfed." He
was right, so I corrected it.
When I made all the changes to the
manuscript, I decided I'd see if I could
make the changes to the Kindle and paperback
versions on Amazon.com. No problem. I
made the changes in less than a half
hour. I also thought about thanking
"Tinkerdan" in the acknowledgments section,
but it didn't seem right to use a screen
name, so I didn't do it.
Then, when I was finished updating the
Kindle and paperback versions, I returned to
the SFFC forum and found that "Tinkerdan"
had posted a message saying that, if I
wanted to thank him, I could use his real
name, which he provided. I tried to
make that change, but Amazon hadn't yet
completed work on my previous changes and
wouldn't let me make any more. So,
I'll try applying that change later today or
tomorrow.
Someone else had offered to proof-read my
manuscript a couple weeks ago, but I turned
him down because I was afraid of getting
opinions about the story before
publishing it, which could delay publishing
indefinitely. Plus there didn't seem
any easy way to provide him with a copy of
the book in manuscript format.
"Tinkerdan" simply bought a
Kindle copy and proof-read it.
"Tinkerdan" also provide my first review of
"Time Work." He wrote on the
SFFC forum: "It's a good story. The
science is a bit wonky; but that always
happens with time travel stories."
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