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Comments for Sunday,
August 1, 2021, thru Saturday, Aug. 7,
2021:
August 1, 2021 - Sigh!
On Friday I started working on my new
science paper again, and things seemed to go
fairly well. But on Saturday morning I
realized I was going about things in the
wrong way once again. The paper was
tentatively titled "Relativity's
Fundamental Ideas." One problem
I had was that I didn't like the word
"ideas." I want to use the word
"facts." But using the word "facts"
will just generate arguments from people who
feel the "facts" have not been sufficiently
established as being "facts."
Another problem I had was that I could not
figure out the order of the ideas, i.e., the
order in which they would they best be
presented. I'd already changed the
order dozens of time, and on Saturday I saw
that the latest order still wasn't
right. But I also realized that I
shouldn't be presenting the "ideas" one by
one, discussing each before moving on to the
next idea. I should present all
of the ideas before discussing how they work
together. As of this moment, there are
just 6 ideas:
1. Every
atom is a tiny clock that creates time at
its location.
2. Light
is the transmission of photon energy from
one atom to another.
3. Atoms
emit photons at the speed of light, which
is 299,792,458 meters per local second.
4. A
second lengthens when speed and/or gravity
increase for the emitting atom.
5. A
second shortens when speed and/or gravity
decrease for the emitting atom.
6.
Nothing can go faster than photons from
the slowest moving atom.
A clock second, of course,
has no natural meaning. It is purely a
man-made idea. According to one
on-line source:
The Persian scholar
Al-Biruni first used the term "second"
around 1000. He defined it—as well as the
day, hour, and minute—as fractions
according to the lunar cycle. The first
mechanical clocks to mark the second
appeared in the 1500s, and in 1644 French
mathematician Marin Mersenne used a
pendulum to define the second for the
first time, leading to the international
adoption of grandfather clocks by the end
of the 17th century. In the 19th century,
scientific institutions worked to define
the second in astronomical terms, and in
the 1940s an international agreement
defined the second as 1⁄86,400 of a mean
solar day.
So, I need to explain how
atoms create time, which
allows humans to measure
time. Einstein explained how the
oscillation rate for electrons slows when
the electron moves. That is, in
effect, slowing down time as measured by the
clock that is the electron. Einstein
also explained that electrons gain mass when
they move, and that is why their oscillation
rate slows down and causes time to slow
down. But how does gravity
slow down an electron's oscillation
rate? If you view gravity as equal to
acceleration, then it is like
motion, just not like constant
motion. I can visualize an electron
gaining mass just because it is near some
massive object, but is being kept from
falling into the object, which would
eliminate that added mass. But I'm not
sure how to describe it. And that
means I'll probably try describing it,
decide that I didn't describe it in the best
way, and I'll then start over again.
Hopefully, I won't spend the rest of my life
on it.
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Comments for Sunday, July
25, 2021, thru Saturday, July 31, 2021:
July
30, 2021 - On Wednesday,
after writing my comment for
that day, I found I couldn't
work on my new book, nor on the
paper about "Fundamental Ideas,"
so I sat down on my couch and
started listening to a
science-fiction audio book I got
from the library. The book
was "Flashforward"
by Robert J. Sawyer.
I finished it yesterday evening. It
was 10 hours and 28 minutes long. I
was somewhat surprised to read that it was a
"hit" TV series on ABC in 2009 and
2010. I have absolutely no memory of
that series, and I can't imagine how I would
be unaware of any sci-fi series on a free TV
channel. I must have tried viewing it,
didn't like it, and promptly forgot about
it. The book was first published in
1999. The main story takes place in
2009.
Anyway, the book is about an experiment with
the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, near
Geneva, Switzerland, that goes wrong and
causes everyone in the world to black out
for about two minutes. That results in
tens of thousands of deaths as cars crash
into things, people fall down stairs, or
just fall down in the street, doctors fall
down while doing operations, planes crash
while taking off or landing, etc. And
while they are blacked out, nearly everyone
sees visions of what they will be looking at
just over 20 years in the future, on October
23, 2030. The only people who do not
see the visions are people who will
presumably be dead on that day.
The first part of the book was fascinating
to me because of all the details the book
provides about operations at CERN, and the
middle of the book is fascinating because of
all the predictions the book makes about
what life will be like in 2030. A few
examples:
The President of the
United States was African-American and
male; there had apparently yet to be a
female American president in the interim.
But the Catholic Church did indeed now
ordain women.
Cars couldn't fly-but they
could levitate up to about two meters off
the ground. On the one hand, road work was
being curtailed in most countries. Cars no
longer required a smooth, hard surface;
some places were even dismantling roads
and putting in greenbelts instead. On the
other hand, roads were getting so much
less wear and tear that those left intact
required little maintenance.
George Lucas still hadn't
finished his nine-part Star Wars epic.
Bill Gates lost his
fortune: Microsoft stock tumbled badly in
2027, in response to a new version of the
Year-2000 crisis. Older Microsoft software
stored dates as thirty-two-bit strings
representing the number of seconds that
had passed since January 1, 1970; they ran
out of storage space in 2027.
Attempts by key Microsoft employees to
divest themselves of their stock drove the
price even lower. The company
finally filed for Chapter Eleven in 2029.
Donald Trump was building
a pyramid in the Nevada desert to house
his eventual remains. When done, it will
be ten meters taller than the Great
Pyramid at Giza.
Pepsi won the cola wars.
The United States will
finally go metric.
India established the
first permanent base on the Moon.
Unfortunately, for me the
last part of the book was tedious and
difficult to follow because of all the
things happening at once to a lot of
different people. When listening to
audio books I sometimes have a hard time
remembering names, and this book was such a
case. It's frustrating when something
happens to Leo, and I can't remember if Leo
was a good guy or a bad guy. But,
that's my problem and shouldn't bother most
people who take my recommendation and read
the book or listen to the audio book.
July 28, 2021 - I spent the
past few days going through a
collection of 152 books in
e-book format that I haven't yet
read on my Kindle. I'm not
sure what I was looking for, but
it's a form of research, and
research is what I tend to do
whenever I've hit some kind of
roadblock preventing me from
doing what I want to do.
What I want to do is either work
on my new book about Logical
Relativity or write a
paper about Relativity's
Fundamental Ideas.
But if I'm going to explain
"fundamental ideas" of
Relativity, I need to explain
them in the right order.
With fundamental ideas, you need
to understand Idea #1 before you
even begin to understand Idea
#2.
This morning I was browsing
through a book titled "It's
About Time: Understanding
Einstein's Relativity"
by N. David Mermin. When
browsing through it a couple
days ago, I noticed that it has
a correct version of Einstein's
Second Postulate on page 27:
The special theory of
relativity is said to rest on two
principles: the principle of relativity
and the principle of the constancy of the
velocity of light. In Einstein’s great
1905 paper, he did not use the word
Prinzip for this second principle (as he
did for the first). He characterized each
principle as a “postulate”
(Voraussetzung). His second
postulate was that light in empty space
moves with a velocity that is
independent of the velocity of the body
that emitted the light.
While I didn't check every
one of the books to see if it mentioned
Einstein's Second Postulate, this morning I
wanted to see if this one also
had a correct interpretation of "relative
motion." It doesn't.
On page 63 it has this:
The slowing down of moving
clocks is often referred to by the
deplorable term “time dilation.” It is
deplorable because it suggests in some
vague way that “time itself” (whatever
that might be) is expanding when a
moving clock runs slowly. While the
notion that time stretches out for a
moving clock has a certain intuitive
appeal, it is important to recognize
that what we are actually talking about
has nothing to do with any overarching
concept of time. It
is simply a relation between two sets
of clocks. While it is
commonly believed that there is something
called time that is measured by clocks,
one of the great lessons of relativity is
that the concept of time is nothing more
than a convenient, though potentially
treacherous, device for summarizing
compactly all the relationships holding
between different clocks. If one set of
clocks is considered to be stationary,
synchronized, and running at the correct
rate, then a second set, considered to be
moving (and synchronized in the frame in
which they are all stationary) will be
found to be both asynchronized and running
slowly, according to the first set. But if
we consider the second set to be
stationary, synchronized, and running at
the correct rate, then according to the
second set the first set will be found to
be asynchronized and running slowly.
The author admits (in the
first part that I highlighted in bold)
that he has no clue as to what time
is. But in the second part (which I
highlighted in red
and bold) he somehow knows
that "It is simply a
relation between two sets of clocks,"
meaning that it is something mathematical,
and he knows what that is.
No, time dilation
is a relation between two sets of
clocks. Time itself is
"what a clock measures," just as
Einstein stated. And every atom
(and probably every particle within an
atom) is a tiny clock measuring time
at that location.
It appears I need to explain that
"Fundamental Idea" before I explain
anything else. Then I can
discuss light, which is emitted by
atoms according to the atom's current
time measurement. Photons are
emitted at the speed of light, and
speed is a measurement of distance
over time, so you need
to understand time before you can
discuss speed.
Now, hopefully, it is just a matter of
sitting down and doing the
writing. Groan!
July 26, 2021
- After lunch yesterday, I sat down on
my couch and finished reading a book
on my Kindle. The book was "Films
from the Future: The Technology
and Morality of Si-Fi Movies"
by Andrew Maynard.
The book discusses 12 sci-fi movies that
address interesting scientific issues, from
resurrection biology as depicted in the
movie Jurassic
Park, to climate change as
depicted in the movie The
Day After Tomorrow, from
predicting criminal intent as depicted in
the movie Minority
Report, to pharmaceutically
enhanced intelligence as depicted in the
movie Limitless.
I have 11 of the 12 movies in my DVD and
Blu-Ray movie collection. (I don't
have the Tom Hanks movie Inferno,
evidently because I rented it from Red-Box
and didn't like it.)
Here's an interesting quote from the chapter
about The Day After Tomorrow:
In July 2017, a massive
chunk of ice broke off the Larson C ice
shelf in Antarctica. The resulting tabular
iceberg covered around 2,200 square
miles—about the area of Delaware, and a
tad smaller than the British county of
Norfolk—and was one of the largest
icebergs in recorded history to break off
the continent. The event grabbed the
attention of the media around the world,
and was framed as yet another indication
of the mounting impacts of
human-activity-driven climate change.
Thirteen years earlier, the climate
disaster movie The Day After Tomorrow
opened with a block of ice splitting off
another of the Antarctic ice shelves, in
this case the Larson B shelf. At the time,
the sheer size of this make-believe
tabular berg was mind-boggling enough to
astound and shock moviegoers. But the
movie-berg ended up being rather smaller
than the 2017 one, coming in at a mere
1,212 square miles. Looking back, it’s
sobering to realize that what was
considered shockingly unimaginable in
2004 had become a pale reflection of
reality in 2017.
One movie I was surprised to
see mentioned was The Man
in the White Suit, an Alec
Guinness black and white movie from
1951. It's about a chemist who
develops a new material for clothing that
never gets dirty and never wears out.
It might seem like a good idea, but it means
that it will put countless people out of
work who all depend on clothes needing to be
washed or replaced. The movie is a
good example of an interesting idea that has
disastrous consequences.
The last movie mentioned in the book is Contact,
based upon Carl Sagan's book of the same
name. The last quote I highlighted in
the book was:
We live in a stunning,
awe-inspiring, pretty damn amazing world,
with a million and one things that are
just as mind-blowing as discovering
aliens. And yet most of us simply don’t
care.
July 25, 2021 - I'm still only on the
first two pages of my new book about Logical
Relativity. Sometimes I think I
may have revised those two pages a thousand
times. It's not that I cannot decide on how
to begin the book, it is because how I
decided to begin is by summarizing
Relativity down to some "fundamental ideas,"
although it took awhile before I realized
that was what I was trying to do.
Right now I have five
fundamental ideas. As I've pondered
how to write about them, I've changed their
order dozens of times, and several times
I've merged two ideas into one and added
another.
I'm hesitant to show them here, since I
might revise them another thousand times
before I'll feel I've got them right.
However, I've already discussed the first
three ideas here many times in various
contexts, so I might as well show them:
Fundamental Idea #1:
The speed of light photons is the maximum
speed allowed in our universe. All
other motion in the universe is relative
to the speed of light photons and can be
viewed as a percentage of the speed of
light.
Fundamental
Idea #2: Every particle and atom is
a tiny clock that measures and creates
time at its location.
Fundamental
Idea #3: Motion and gravity cause
those tiny “atomic clocks” to run slower
relative to the speed of light.
My July
18 comment is all about a discussion
of Idea #1 that I had on Facebook, getting
lots of "likes" and upsetting a South
American electrical engineering
professor. Weeks before, I had a
similar argument with that same professor.
Idea #2 is the topic that caused a different
South American college professor (or one of
his students) to post dozens of insults to
my log file, and caused me to write about it
in April
and May.
Idea #3 just merges the first two ideas
together with Einstein's Relativity.
Yesterday, I decided to try to put the five
ideas into a science paper before putting
them into a book. Or the paper might
turn out to be the opening chapter of the
book. Time will tell.
Meanwhile, I've downloaded a couple dozen
more episodes of the "Daniel
and Jorge Explain the Universe"
podcast, and I've listened to a few more of
the episodes that I had previously
downloaded into my MP3 player.
Although Professor Daniel Whiteson and I
fundamentally disagree on some of his views
about Time Dilation, there seem to be
many areas where we agree.
And, more importantly, some of those areas
are areas where Professor Whiteson disagrees
with other college professors I've
encountered.
One example is in the episode titled "Is
the Universe Infinite?" In that
episode, Prof. Whiteson basically says, Yes,
the universe is probably infinite in
size. I've argued with many QM
mathematicians who doggedly argue that the
universe is NOT infinite, it ends at the
farthest object. What is beyond the
farthest object? To them that is not a
valid question, since the universe ends at
the farthest object.
I hope Prof. Whiteson responds to one or
both of the two emails I've sent him via his
web site. I'd really like to
discuss "relative motion" with someone who
won't just immediately start hurling insults
and telling me that I need to take some
college physics courses and learn how to
view mathematical models.
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Comments for Sunday, July
18, 2021, thru Saturday, July 24, 2021:
July 23,
2021 -
Yesterday afternoon and
last night, I listened to
seven
more episodes of "Daniel
and Jorge Explain the
Universe."
While the first two I'd
listened to were
excellent, the seven I
listened to last night
were definitely a "mixed
bag." The first one,
an episode
from March of 2019
titled "What
is Time Dilation?"
was wildly
wrong in
many ways.
Then I listened to their
episode from Dec. 25,
2019, titled "How
does Relativity affect
our perception of time?"
It contained the same
errors as the March 2019
episode and one additional
error that was totally
absurd.
I'd never encountered it
before, except that it
seems to be a variation on
something I noticed while
browsing through their
book.
In the episode, Professor
Daniel Whiteson describes
a race between Joe and Mo
(he used different names)
and how different
observers traveling at
different speeds will see
the race. One of the
observers sees Joe moving
faster than Mo, and a
second observer sees Mo
moving faster than
Joe. That's okay,
since they both see Joe
crossing the finish line
first. But the
third observer sees
Mo cross the finish
line first. That is
totally absurd! How
can someone see an
physical event that never
happened? Professor
Whiteson then gets into
talking about Quantum
Mechanics (he teaches
physics at the University
of California - Irvine and
sometimes works at CERN)
and he explains things by
saying "They don't make common
sense, but they make mathematical
sense." Ah!
The RELIGION of
mathematics! Believe
what the math says and do
not question it, since it
is THE WORD OF GOD!
This morning I sent him an
email, recommending that
he take a look at my
web page of experiments
which demonstrate that
light hits a moving
observer at c+v or c-v.
I hope he responds, since
I'd really like to find
out what he thinks of
those experiments.
Meanwhile, there are many
more episodes of their
podcast that I look
forward to listening
to. The good ones
are really
good.
July 22, 2021 - I keep
finding new science podcasts
that I never heard of
before. A couple days ago,
I was looking at a list of
podcasts on some web site, and
off to one side on the screen
there was a list of other
podcasts that the site figured
might be of interest to anyone
viewing the podcast I was
looking at. One of the
podcasts they showed was "Daniel
and Jorge Explain the
Universe." Looking
through the list of nearly 300
episodes, I downloaded about a
dozen into my MP3 player.
Then, yesterday, I listened to a
couple. The first was
their fourth episode, from back
in 2018, titled "Is
Time Travel Possible?"
It was an excellent episode,
discussing the topic and also
how movies depict time travel.
Then I listened to one of their
more recent episodes. It's
from July 13, 2021, and it is
titled "What
do the Navy UFO videos really
mean?" At 1 hour and
22 minutes, it is also one of
their longest episodes.
I'd seen news stories on TV
about the government recently
releasing six Navy videos which
reportedly showed UFOs, but I
hadn't really paid much
attention to the
stories. To me, the
videos obviously showed problems
of various kinds with the camera
that took the video. And
that is basically what the
podcast said and explained in
detail. The podcast was
mostly an interview with Mick
West, the author of a book
titled "Escaping
The Rabbit Hole: How to
Debunk Conspiracy Theories
Using Facts, Logic, and
Respect."
Hmm. I'd never heard of
that book, either. I was
able to obtain a copy, and
browsing through it, I decided
it will definitely go at or near
the top of my reading list -
which has about 40 other
high-priority books on it.
The Mick West interview was
really fascinating. Since
I've been researching conspiracy
theories ever since the anthrax
attacks of 2001, Mr. West and I
seem to share nearly identical
views about conspiracy
theorists. One
disagreement we have is that he
does not include the anthrax
conspiracy theories among his
Top 10, which are:
1. Big
Pharma: The theory that pharmaceutical
companies conspire to maximize profit by
selling drugs that people do not actually
need
2. Global
Warming Hoax: The theory that climate
change is not caused by man-made carbon
emissions, and that there’s some other
motive for claiming this
3. JFK:
The theory that people in addition to Lee
Harvey Oswald were involved in the
assassination of John F. Kennedy
4. 9/11
Inside Job: The theory that the events of
9/11 were arranged by elements within the
US government
5. Chemtrails:
The theory that the trails left behind
aircraft are part of a secret spraying
program
6. False
Flag Shootings: The theory that shootings
like Sandy Hook and Las Vegas either never
happened or were arranged by people in
power
7. Moon
Landing Hoax: The theory that the Moon
landings were faked in a movie studio
8. UFO
Cover-Up: The theory that the US
government has contact with aliens or
crashed alien crafts and is keeping it
secret
9. Flat
Earth: The theory that the Earth is flat,
but governments, business, and scientists
all pretend it is a globe
10.
Reptile Overlords: The theory that the
ruling classes are a race of
shape-shifting trans-dimensional reptiles
In addition, I think I may
be a "conspiracy theorist" myself, since I
somewhat believe in conspiracy theory
#1. It drives me nuts when I see ads
on TV for prescription
drugs. No other country in the
world allows that. It
encourages people to ask their doctors for
specific drugs, because the patient has done
an analysis of his own symptoms and
concluded what his doctor should prescribe.
The only conspiracy theory on the list that
I would remove and replace with anthrax
conspiracy theories is #5. I've heard
of Chemtrail conspiracy theories, but they
certainly do not seem very common -- and
contrails appear over Air Force bases all
the time, so why would Air Force pilots
spray chemicals over the area where they
live? And why would just about every
commercial airline pilot get involved with
such a thing? I would think that the
only people who would believe that airplanes
are spraying chemicals are people who have
never flown on an airplane, don't live
anywhere near a commercial airport, and who
sometimes see small planes spraying crops
with insecticides.
Anyway, I really enjoyed that podcast
episode and look forward to listening to a
lot more of them. I might even send
Daniel and Jorge an email asking them to
discuss some favorite topic of mine.
But first I need to study what topics they
have already covered, since I just noticed
an episode from March of 2019 titled "What
is Time Dilation?" I think I
know what Time Dilation is, but I'd like to
hear the topic being discussed.
July 20, 2021
- Hmm. This morning I received
an email from my web site "host,"
advising me that they have been
acquired by a much larger web hosting
company. That means that some
time in the very near future, this
ed-lake.com web site will be moved
from a computer in Huntsville,
Alabama, to a computer in Lansing,
Michigan.
I'm not sure what's involved, but I
plan to shut down anthraxinvestigation.com
at that time, rather than move
it. I've only been keeping that
site on-line as a public service,
since it contains more information
about the anthrax attacks of 2001 than
can be found anywhere else. I
haven't had any reason to update the
site since December 31, 2014, when I
set up ed-lake.com. Having a web
site isn't free, and although the cost
isn't very much, I don't see any
reason to continue paying for
something that I'm no longer
updating. That site still gets
about 250 visitors per day, which is
almost twice the number of visitors
that this site gets. But mostly
the visits are from search engines and
robots. The Sogu Web Spider
downloads my main web page at least a
hundred times per day. (I keep
wondering if that isn't one way that
Chinese hackers cause problems.)
After writing the above paragraphs, I
checked with my current web site host,
and they set things up so that the
anthraxinvestigation.com site will
shut down on August 5. Whether
or not there will be a transfer to
Lansing is unimportant. I just
need to remember to remove the link
that is at the top of this web page.
Meanwhile, I'm still trying to work on
my new book. I keep wanting to
create a plain English version of
Einstein's 1905 paper "On
the Electrodynamics of Moving
Bodies," but some sections
are nearly nothing but mathematical
equations, which are difficult to
decipher. Other sections,
however, contain plain English
statements that are definitely worth
quoting. Here's one from the
next to last page, page 22:
Thus, when v = c, W
becomes infinite. Velocities greater than
that of light have—as in our previous
results—no possibility of existence.
W is the energy of an
electron. The paper is about how
motion adds to the energy (and mass) of an
electron and thereby slows down time.
When you reach the speed of light, the
energy (and mass) becomes infinite.
Here's a quote from the last page, page 23:
This relationship may be
tested experimentally, since the
velocity of the electron can be directly
measured, e.g. by means of rapidly
oscillating electric and magnetic
fields.
It
says that you can determine the
velocity of an electron by measuring
how fast its electric and magnetic
fields oscillate. Unfortunately, while
c (the speed of light) is used
in all the equations, Einstein never
specifically states that the motion of
the electron is relative to the speed
of light. I appears that if you
can understand the equations, you
understand that all motion is relative
to the speed of light.
I thought it was worth quoting since
photons also have oscillating electric
and magnetic fields, even though it
seems most mathematicians will argue
otherwise, without ever attempting to
explain how photons work. When
you ask them about photons, they just
start talking about waves.
July 18, 2021 - On
Wednesday afternoon, I decided to start a
new discussion thread on Facebook using the
comment and image I mentioned here on that
day. The
Astrophysics and Physics Facebook Group
is moderated, so the image didn't get posted
until 6:34 that evening. The resulting
discussion lasted just two days, ending on
Friday afternoon with 99 comments, 22
"likes" and 2 "haha's".
It was a terrific discussion,
mostly between me and a Minnesotan named
Brandon, who posted 40 of the
99 comments, and that South American college
professor named Miguel, who posted 8
messages. I posted 39 comments in
response to those messages and in response
to a few messages from others who posted
just one comment each.
I also saved a copy of the discussion, since
some parts might be worthy of including in
that book I am supposed to be writing.
Brandon and I argued about the speed of
light and whether it is possible for light
to arrive at c+v, where v is
the speed of the observer of the oncoming
light. He claimed that was not
possible, but then he altered the
discussion:
We're no longer arguing
about the speed of the light, we both seem
to agree it's c. We're now arguing
about whether the car would see light from
the radar gun blueshifted if it is the
radar gun moving, not the car.
I responded,
I have a radar gun. I've
studied it and others, and I've performed
many experiments. Einstein's second
postulate is confirmed: "light is always
propagated in empty space with a definite
velocity c which is independent of
the state of motion of the EMITTING BODY."
The
speed of the gun does not cause red or
blue shifting of the photons that are
EMITTED. It DOES, however affect the red
and blue shifting of the RETURNING photons
when the gun is moving.
And Brandon responded,
How do we determine if the
car measures the light blueshifted or not
from a [moving] radar gun?
I responded,
Einstein's Second
Postulate says that blueshifting CANNOT be
done by the emitter. Therefore it can ONLY
be done by the receiver.
and I posted a link to a
NASA web page about how radar guns can
theoretically measure the speed of a car
using a single photon. Brandon's
response was:
That's not our case. Our
case is the car is at rest, the gun is
moving. How do we determine if the light
is blueshifted in the car's frame of
reference, if the car is at rest, and it
is the gun that is moving? The NASA link
has the car moving. Doesn't answer our
question. And it holds the same if the car
wasn't moving, and it was the emitter
moving instead, at least from my
understanding of relativity. But
you seem to think the light would NOT be
blueshifted from the car's frame of
reference if the car was at rest and the
emitter was moving.
Ah! That was what I
was waiting for! He shifted to
mathematician mode and began talking "frames
of reference" and mathematical models.
So, I responded,
When you start talking
about "frames of reference," you are
getting into mathematical models and AWAY
FROM REALITY.
The
car is NOT moving. The radar gun is
moving. If you create a FANTASY where the
car is moving and the radar gun is
stationary, then your FANTASY has no basis
in reality.
Radar
guns work IN REALITY even if they do not
work in your fantasies.
We continued to argue for
awhile after that point, but neither of us
could name an experiment where light from a
moving emitter approaching a stationary
observer is received "blue-shifted."
There are claims made by astronomers
that light emitted by and received from
distant galaxies is "red-shifted," but the
Big Bang and our expanding
universe says that we are moving
away from other galaxies while those
galaxies are also moving away from
us. So, there will be red-shifting due
to our motion away from those
galaxies.
Brandon then posted this:
Yep, a situation where the
observer is stationary and the emitter is
moving, then we're asking if the light
detected by the observer (the receiver) is
blueshifted or redshifted depending on if
the emitter is moving away from or towards
the receiver. In my head, that is
identical to the receiver moving away
from or towards the emitter.
And I responded,
Only in mathematics are
they identical. In REALITY and LOGICALLY
one is moving at a smaller percentage of
the speed of light than the other, so the
"reference frames" where each can be
viewed as being stationary are PURE
FANTASY and NOT VALID in Einstein's
universe. In a talk Einstein gave to the
Prussian Academy of Sciences in 1921, he
stated, “As far as the laws of
mathematics refer to reality, they are
not certain, and as far as they are
certain, they do not refer to reality.”
Amen to that.
Thanks
for the discussion, but let's end it here.
And that was the end of my
discussion with Brandon. It makes
clear what Einstein meant by his statement
to the Prussian Academy. You cannot
just change "frames of reference" and assume
that an emitter will emit blue-shifted or
red-shifted light because in the new "frame"
the emitter is stationary and the observer
is moving, when IN REALITY the RECEIVER is
moving.
While that discussion was going on, I was
also engaged in a discussion with Miguel,
one of the two college professors from South
America, about something similar, but using
different physics. I
posted this comment:
One of the most ABSURD
beliefs in physics is that all motion
is relative, therefore when viewing an
accident it is equally valid to say
that a speeding car hit a stationary
wall as it is to say that a speeding
wall hit a stationary car.
And I posted this image:
Using that image, I argued that when two
identical space ships encounter each other
in empty space it is possible
to tell who is moving faster by the
difference in their kinetic energy.
The space ship that is moving faster will
cause more of the debris to travel in the
direction he was traveling. According
to Einstein, the faster ship will have
greater mass due to its speed relative to
the speed of light.
The South American college professor
responded by posting a link to a
YouTube video showing a car hitting a wall
which he claimed would not show any
difference if the wall hit the car. It
was the same argument I was having with
Brandon, the mathematician's belief that
"reference frames" are
interchangeable. Miguel was arguing
that if a moving car hits a stationary car,
the damage is the same as it would be if the
"reference frames" were reversed and the
stationary car hit the moving car.
I responded with this:
That Mythbusters episode
is about how a car crumples to absorb the
energy of a crash.
Your claim is the
same as saying that when playing pool,
a fast moving pool ball will hit a
stationary ball and they will both
remain in place [or bounce away from
each other].
In
reality, of course, the fast moving ball-A
hits the stationary ball-B and transfers
its kinetic energy to the stationary
ball-B. Ball-B then speeds away from
Ball-A, which has come to a stop.
The
crashing of spacecraft would be like
suspending glass ball-A from a string and
then throwing glass ball-B at ball-A as
hard as you can. Do you really believe the
speed of Ball-B won't matter, and the
pieces of both balls will scatter equally
in all directions? It seems like an easy
experiment to perform.
The college electrical
engineering professor responded,
I don't have time to teach
you basic physics. The point remains that
[your claim that] "One of the most ABSURD
beliefs in physics is that all motion is
relative" is total nonsense.
That pool balls (or billiard
balls) example was right on the mark, as far
as I was concerned, and I can see why the
professor simply ignored it. It
conflicts with his beliefs, so it is not
worth discussing. I'll definitely use
it when writing about kinetic energy in my
book. And it really seems that
Einstein's statement to the Prussian Academy
of Sciences could have been about
mathematical frames of reference being
interchangeable, when many simple
experiments can show that they are NOT
interchangeable.
That Facebook discussion was truly
productive for me. I didn't change any
minds, but the number of "likes" says I was
not alone on my side of the debates. I
was just the only one willing to argue with
the mathematicians. The
discussion also generated a bunch of "unique
IP downloads" for my paper about Einstein's
Second Postulate and my two papers about
Radar Guns and Relativity. So,
people are interested in the
topic, even if they do not want to publicly
discuss it.
|
Comments for Sunday, July
11, 2021, thru Saturday, July 17, 2021:
July 14, 2021 - That
discussion
thread I
started on
July 11 at
2:49 PM on the
Astrophysics
and Physics
Facebook group
is still going
strong, but
it's getting
somewhat
tedious.
It now has 28
"likes" and 2
"loves," and
it has 196
comments.
The problem is
that that
professor from
South America
is still
arguing that,
regardless of
what
experiments
and science
papers show,
motion does NOT
slow down
clocks, motion
actually
causes clocks
to travel a
different
route through
"spacetime,"
which results
in the clock
showing a
different time
than a
stationary
clock when the
two clocks are
compared.
Clearly
nothing is
going to
change his
mind.
I've showed
him document
after document
that says
motion slows
down the tick
rate of
clocks, but he
just finds
something
somewhere in
the paper that
he can twist
to support his
beliefs.
And he has
also found a
few sources
that agree
with his
beliefs.
Meanwhile,
I've been
thinking of
starting a NEW
thread using
this image:
The question
is: Why
do you need an
"ether" if all
speeds are a
percentage of
the speed of
light?
If I am going
at 0.01% of
the speed of
light, and you
are going at
0.02% of the
speed of
light, you are
going faster
than I
am. By
no stretch of
the
imagination
can you claim
that I am
going faster
than you
are.
Motion may be
relative to
some other
body, but if
the two bodies
are not
stationary
relative to
one another,
one of them is
moving at a
higher
percentage of
the speed of
light.
That is why
Einstein
stated that
his theory
made the
luminiferous
ether
"superfluous."
I just don't
know if I want
to start a new
argument on
Facebook.
On the other
hand, if I
don't post the
image and get
opinions,
there could be
something to
it that I'm
missing.
And I don't
know what the
naysayers'
opinion is.
July 12, 2021 - Yesterday, at 2:49 PM, I started a new discussion
thread on the
Astrophysics
and Physics
Facebook group.
I started it
with this
image:
And this
comment:
It appears that Time is a
"thing." Time Dilation experiments
show Time is something that can be
affected by motion and gravity.
Illusions and concepts cannot be affected
by motion and gravity. Einstein
seemed to think that every atom is a tiny
clock whose tick rate can be affected by
motion and gravity. That would make
time the same as particle spin. Slow
particle spin and you slow time.
As of this moment today, the
thread has 19 "likes," 2 "loves" and 1
"wow." Plus it has 82 comments, with
more appearing every minute. That
college professor from South America is
posting again, arguing the same things he
argued before, that clocks do not slow down
when moving, the moving clock just travels a
different path through "spacetime" which
causes the difference in elapsed time when
the clocks are side-by-side again.
It appears that the people who "like" and
"love" and "wow" my post do not write
comments. The people who write
comments are people who post wisecracks,
like this:
Time is a concept created
by man, because humans cannot fathom
everything happening at once.
Or nonsense like this:
Motion and gravity are
also illusions.
Or disagreements, like those
posted by the South American
professor.
Unfortunately, arguing in that thread is
preventing me from working on my book, but
it might clarify what points I need to
address in my book to make certain I explain
everything clearly and as thoroughly as is
practical.
July 11, 2021 - That Facebook discussion I had with that college
professor in
South America
last week is
still on my
mind.
The discussion
provided a lot
of pieces to
the puzzle
I've been
trying to
solve for at
least 6 years:
How can
mathematicians
believe what
they believe
about
Relativity and
the Universe
when experiment
after
experiment
clearly shows
they are
WRONG?
And why does
nearly every
college
physics
textbook have
a different
version of
Einstein's
Second
Postulate?
The answer
seems to be:
The authors
cannot reduce
Einstein's
theory to a
simple Quantum
Mechanics
mathematical
model, so they
create one of
their own and
use that model
as if it was
Einstein's.
And why does
it seem that
no one has
noticed that
nearly every
college
physics
textbook has a
different
version of
Einstein's
Second
Postulate?
The only
answer I can
come up with
is that they
don't
care.
They assume
that the
professor who
chose or wrote
the textbook
knows what he
is talking
about.
My discussions
with such two
such
professors
showed that
they do NOT
KNOW what they
are talking
about.
Time after
time they
state things
that can be
clearly shown
to be
untrue.
The prime
example:
They claim
that clock
tick rates do
not
slow down when
the clock is
moving.
Instead, they
claim that
moving clocks
travel a different
route
through
imaginary
"spacetime"
which results
in the moving
clock showing
less time has
passed than
what is shown
by a
stationary
clock.
Then they
twist and
distort things
to claim that
that is what
Einstein
stated,
too.
When it is
shown that it
is NOT what
Einstein
stated, they
claim it is
what Einstein
meant.
In addition,
that most
recent
discussion
caused me to
look at my own
understandings
from a
different
angle, and as
a result I was
able to find
some missing
pieces to my
own version
(and
Einstein's
version) of
Relativity and
the
Universe.
When you see
things more
clearly, you
can explain
things more
clearly.
And that is
what I'm
trying to do
as I get back
to work on my
book about "Logical
Relativity."
It is all
absolutely
fascinating to
me, but I
still cannot
believe that
no one with
the authority
to change
textbooks
cares about
any of
this? Is
it just
because they
can't find any
teachers who
are willing to
teach
Einstein's
version of
Relativity?
Or is it
because if
they teach
Einstein's
version, they
will be
teaching a
version that
most other
schools do not
teach, and
that will put
their students
at a
disadvantage
if they change
schools.
When I finish
my book, will
anyone read
it? I
don't know.
Possibly
not.
But, I'm not
writing it for
others to
read, I'm
writing it to
clarify
everything in
my own
mind.
Writing things
down causes me
to see them
more clearly
and sometimes
differently.
I'm an
analyst.
I enjoy
analyzing
puzzles and
figuring them
out. And
the Relativity
vs Quantum
Mechanics
puzzle is one
that people
have been
arguing about
for over a
hundred years
-- even if
Quantum
Mechanics
mathematicians
claim there is
no such
dispute, there
is just what
they believe
and there are
people who are
mistaken and
not worth
listening
to.
|
Comments for Thursday,
July 1, 2021, thru Saturday, July 10, 2021:
July
9, 2021 - Groan! What I don't need right now is another
mystery! But
that is what I
got when I
looked at my
web site log
file this
morning.
For some
unknown
reason, people
from 11
different
cities in
Poland
visited my
site just to
view my web page
about Time
Dilation
experiments.
IP
TIME
CITY
83.21.126.228
09:03
Gdansk, Poland
31.172.190.61
09:59
Krakow, Poland
95.41.128.48
12:32
Szczecin,
Poland
46.204.55.41
13:00
Lubraniec,
Poland
89.69.61.239
13:47
Minsk
Mazowiecki,
Poland
31.183.182.45
14:07
Lodz, Poland
87.101.23.39
14:31
Katowice,
Poland
95.108.40.182
14:49
Poznan,
Poland
31.60.83.227
22:52
Wroclaw,
Poland
185.186.17.45
23:41
Siedice,
Poland
77.252.185.129
23:50
Katowice,
Poland
If it was
someone
telling the
others about
my web page,
you would
think that
there would be
multiple
people in the
same city, or
that the
visits would
be clustered
around the
time they were
all
told.
But there are
no two visits
from the same
city, and the
times are
scattered
throughout the
day. And
there were NO
visitors from
Poland the day
before.
And there were
NO visitors
from any other
country
yesterday who
viewed my page
about Time
Dilation
experiments.
I can make no
sense of it at
all.
Added NOTE:
Early on July 9
there were two more
accesses from Poland
to my web page about
Time Dilation
Experiments:
5.184.35.236
2:46
Warsaw,
Poland
88.220.161.66
3:21
Piaseczno,
Poland
Note that the
two cities are
not on the
list of
accesses for
July 8, and
the two new
access times
are within 24
hours of the
first
access.
And there have
been no such
visits from
Poland since.
The mystery
deepens.
July 8, 2021 -
At 10:59 AM this
morning, the
discussion of
Einstein's Theory of
Special Relativity
that I was having
with a college
professor from South
America on the Astrophysics
and Physics
Facebook group
came to an end when
the professor posted
this:
Ok, you have your fixed
ideas about this and I will stop the
discussion here. The difference between
principle and postulate is that principle
is a fundamental assumption while
postulate is something assumed without
proof as being self-evident or generally
accepted, especially when used as a basis
for an argument.
I'm not sure what he was
trying to argue with that last comment, but
it seems he was just trying to explain why
he pays no attention to Einstein's
postulates.
In a comment less than an half hour earlier,
he wrote this after I tried to explain to
him that the
Hafele-Keating experiment involve propelled
airplanes, not some magical moving inertial
systems:
Hafele-Keating experiment
has nothing to do with Einstein 1905
paper.
I responded by quoting two
places in Hafele's
and Keating's first paper where
they mention Einstein's Theory of Special
Relativity. Here's the first quote:
SPECIAL
RELATIVITY predicts that a moving
standard clock will record less time
compared with (real or hypothetical)
coordinate clocks distributed at rest in
an inertial reference space.
The
professor, like other mathematicians,
argued that the Hafele-Keating clocks
did not run slower,
they were just taken on a longer path
through "spacetime."
"Spacetime," of course, does not
exist. It is purely a
mathematical idea.
The entire
conversation was terrific and
I saved a copy in html (web page code)
format. Then I converted it to a Word
file. It's 23 pages long. I plan
to include it (or parts of it) in my new
book, somewhere near the end, to show what
an argument with a mathematician is like,
and how there seems no way to convince them
that clocks actually run slower when they
are transported at high speeds. I may
also convert it to a pdf file and put it on
my web site somewhere once I remove the
professor's full name and replace it with
just his first name or a fake name.
I really really enjoyed the conversation and
posted this as my final message:
Thank you for the TERRIFIC
DISCUSSION! You showed me how
mathematicians are unable to comprehend
Time Dilation, so they IGNORE Einstein's
postulates and just make up stuff using
various principles from one place or
another. It is CRAZY!
Maybe tomorrow I can get
back to work on my book.
July 7, 2021 -
I'm still discussing
Einstein's Theory of
Special Relativity with a
college professor from
South America on the Astrophysics
and Physics Facebook
group
(A&P). I've been
saving the discussion, and
I might include it as part
of my new book. The
discussion is absolutely
fascinating to
me. It's like a
detailed examination of
all the debates I've had
with mathematician
physicists over the
years. Only this
time the mathematician
isn't just calling me
names and demanding that I
take some college physics
courses, he is trying to
explain where I am
wrong. And in the
process I am explaining to
him where HE is wrong.
Here is what he wrote a
few minutes ago (with my
highlighting):
In any theory in science,
the postulates or principles defined are
the equivalent of axioms used in
mathematics. Postulates or principles
are stated as true and they do not need to
be justified. You are
reading too much on the "which is only
apparently irreconcilable with the former"
words used by Einstein.
I responded,
If you present two
POSTULATES that APPEAR TO CONFLICT, then
you MUST explain how they do not conflict.
Today WE KNOW THAT TIME DILATION
RECONCILES THE TWO POSTULATES. Time
dilation is what the paper is about.
And the professor responded:
An axiom, postulate or
assumption is a statement that is taken to
be true, to serve as a premise or starting
point for further reasoning and arguments.
And I responded:
Yes, I KNOW that. But what
if you have TWO POSTULATES THAT APPEAR TO
CONFLICT? Then you MUST explain why they
do NOT conflict as part of your "further
reasoning and arguments."
The TWO POSTULATES do NOT conflict because
of TIME DILATION. The paper explains how
Time Dilation works.
I don't know if we will
reach an impasse on this or not. He's
saying the postulates are unimportant.
His beliefs are based upon two "principles"
that are described on page 4. To me
that is incomprehensible. The
postulates are the setup for the entire
paper. The two "principles" are just
part of Einstein's theory about "Length
Contraction," a theory that has NEVER been
confirmed. As I see it, Einstein used
"length contraction" to explain how Time
Dilation works. He believed that the
faster an atom moves, the smaller and more
heavy it becomes, thereby slowing down time
for that atom and what it is part of.
That is not too far off from my theory that
the faster an atom moves, the slower its
components move, thereby slowing down time
for that atom and what it is part of.
The slowing down of atoms and their
components is how atomic clocks are able to
measure Time Dilation. There is no
reason for an atom to get smaller.
I think I'm going to have to re-start my
book. I need to explain Time Dilation
at the very beginning. Then I can
later get into all the conflicts over how it
works. At my current rate, I should be
done with the book in about 30 years.
July 5, 2021 - I'm
still discussing science on the
Astrophysics
and Physics Facebook group
(A&P). I've started to
save some parts of the
discussions because they are
really interesting and
thought-provoking. For
example, late on Saturday, Felix
Jhunrey Poblete Limpag (who is
apparently a boxing promoter in
the Philippines) posted this
question:
Hi:) I have a question.
What I've known lately in
school is that when light passes through a
glass, light bends and somehow losses
speed. (If I'm not mistaken, energy also).
Then after surpassing the glass, it will
regain it's original speed like wow! But
how?
That has always puzzled me,
too. It is not logical for a photon to
slow down as it passes through glass and
then speed up when it exits the glass.
That would require some force to cause the
photon to speed up. I wondered if the
photon might slow down because it has to
weave its way through the atoms in the
glass, but it's not logical for the photon
to weave its way through atoms without
hitting the atoms.
The first person to respond was Jeffrey
Zurek, who posted this:
Light specifically doesn’t
loose energy by doing this. Sorta…..
There is no such thing as
fully transparent matter. So some of
the light will be reflected and the
rest will pass through. “Speed” will
depend on the medium (glass, water
etc).
So energy is lost with
respect to some being reflected and
scattered
That answer doesn't address
the question. It just says that some
light gets scattered. It says nothing
about how light gets back to full speed once
it exits the glass (or water, etc.).
HOWEVER, the article at the link does answer
the question. I dug into it looking
for the word "photon" and found this:
Every photon (bundle of
electromagnetic energy) travels between
the interatomic void at a speed of c;
yet time delay involved in the process of
being absorbed and reemitted by the atoms
of the material lowers the net speed of
transport from one end of the medium to
the other. Subsequently, the net speed of
an electromagnetic wave in any medium is
somewhat less than its speed in a vacuum -
c (3 x 108 m/s).
Ah! That's an answer that makes perfect
sense, but it is still hard to
imagine. In my response, I quoted that
passage and added this:
In other words, a photon
does not travel "through" water. A light
photon hits an atom in the water (or air),
and it is absorbed by the atom. The atom
cannot hold the extra energy, so it emits
a NEW photon. The NEW photon travels at
the speed of light to the next atom. This
process continues, atom by atom, until the
energy leaves the water or air and gets
back into the vacuum of space where it
once again becomes a single photon that
travels at the speed of light.
Photons travel from atom
to atom at the speed of light. But the
process of being absorbed and re-emitted
as a NEW photon countless times means the
light will take longer to get from one
side of a substance to the other than it
would if the substance wasn't there.
That means a photon going
through a piece of glass is actually
absorbed and recreated a gazillion times as
the energy travels from atom to atom through
the glass. And doing all that only slows the
light by a tiny tiny fraction of a
second. But it explains how the photon
can return to traveling at the speed of
light when it exits the glass. It
boggles the mind, but its perfectly
logical. My response got a "Wow" emoji
from the guy who asked the question.
A different discussion pitted me against a
man named Miguel, who is evidently a
Professor of Electrical Engineering at a
Catholic University in a South American
country. Interestingly, we argued some
of the same things I previously argued with
another college professor from the same
country, the professor who kept posting
insults into my log file.
The discussion about light and the speed of
light, and my part in it began with a post
by Davyking Caerlsberg asking:
I wonder why people are
giving different answers. That brings
another question. Is science constant or
it depends on the scientific view of
scientists!?
I responded that there has
been a debate between Relativists and
Quantum Mechanics mathematicians for over a
hundred years. They see things
differently.
And Miguel responded,
Well, to start with, there
is no "battle" between physicists working
on Relativity and those working in QM.
I responded by providing
link to a Guardian article about the "Battle
for the Universe" being waged between
Relativists in QM mathematicians.
Miguel responded that that was about the
struggle to find a theory of Quantum
Gravity. He claimed there was no
"battle," it was just very difficult to fit
everything in to a single theory.
So, we argued a bit more and then came the
key point. Miguel stated:
When Einstein uses the
word "stationary", it means the location
of an observer, which considers himself
at rest. A physics laboratory,
inside a building, is usually an example
of a stationary system. The fact that
Earth is rotating and orbiting the Sun
does not affects in a meaningful way the
experiments of that laboratory. When
Einstein writes "emitted by a stationary
or by a moving body", it is a matter of
logic to conclude that the stationary
observer will also receive the light at
speed c. If that were not the case then
"emitted by a moving body" could not be
true!!!
I responded,
Einstein STATES that
"stationary" applies to A SYSTEM OF
COORDINATES, NOT TO ANY OBSERVER.
A
stationary observer INSIDE a "stationary
system of coordinates" WILL receive light
at c. HOWEVER, a MOVING OBSERVER inside a
"stationary system of coordinates" will
NOT receive light at c.
And Miguel wrote:
That is not logic. You may well have a
stationary light emitter sending light
to a moving observer, which is totally
equivalent to a moving light emitter
sending light to a stationary
observer.
And I responded,
NO!!!!! ABSOLUTELY NOT!!!!
You do not understand a key part of
Einstein's theory. A stationary
emitter sending light to a moving
observer will result in the observer
observing the light to arrive at c+v or
c-v.
A
moving emitter sending light to a
stationary observer will result in the
observer observing the light to arrive at
c. So will a stationary emitter sending
light to a stationary observer.
Einstein's
Second Postulate: "light is always
propagated in empty space with a
definite velocity c which is independent
of the state of motion of the EMITTING
body."
That
means that no
matter how an emitter is moving (or
not moving) the emitter will always
emit light at c. It says
NOTHING about how an OBSERVER will
receive that light. The Doppler shift says
a MOVING OBSERVER can receive that
light at c+v or c-v.
This
is FUNDAMENTAL physics and optics.
And the discussion stopped
there for the day. We were in a
fundamental disagreement. I am stating what
Einstein stated about the emitter, and I am
stating what is known by experiment about
the Doppler Shift.
Many people believe that the Doppler
Shift will be observed when the emitter
is moving toward a stationary observer.
Why? Because it is TRUE FOR
SOUND WAVES. A moving train will emit
sound waves that are closer together for
anyone in front of the train. That is
because as the train moves, it moves a bit
between emitting every sound wave. So
it emits waves that are closer together.
But that is NOT true for light.
Why? Firstly, because Einstein said
light is emitted at c independent of
the emitting body. Secondly, because
light does NOT consist of
waves. Light consists of
photons. So, an observer
may get more photons per second if he is in
front of the moving emitter than if he is
behind the emitter, but that just means the
light will be brighter. The
oscillation frequency of the light photons
is the same in both situations. It is
a wholly different situation than you get
with sound waves.
And if I ever get back to work on my book,
I'm going to have to find a place somewhere
to describe how light "slows down" when it
goes through glass and then "speeds up"
again when it leaves the glass. And
I'm going to have to find a place to
describe the difference in how the Doppler
Effect works with light versus sound.
I don't think either point is in any of my
papers.
Added NOTE: This
morning, Miguel started arguing about
"inertial systems." I've been
explaining to him that Einstein never
used the word "inertial" in his 1905
paper on Special Relativity. His
paper is only about moving and
stationary systems. Inertial
systems are mathematical models that
mathematicians create to allow them to
compute certain effects.
Unfortunately, they often assume that
a laboratory on Earth is an "inertial
system. It is not. Gravity
is a FORCE that is being applied to
the laboratory and everything in
it. Plus, different speeds are
being applied to laboratories in
different locations on our spinning
Earth.
July 4, 2021
- I wish everyone a happy Independence
Day - the 4th of July!
July 3, 2021
- Wow! Some of the
discussions I've been having on the Astrophysics
and Physics Facebook group
(A&P) are really interesting and
thought-provoking. The
discussions are vastly different from
the countless arguments I've had on
the sci.physics.relativity
(SPR) UseNet forum. On A&P
people actually ask interesting
questions. And no one insults
you if they do not like your
answer. They just frame the
question in a different way and try
again, like intelligent people
normally do. The same thing with
the claims they post. If they
claim something that I believe is
false, I'll post my understanding,
usually along with some source, and
then they'll respond by questioning
whether my source really says what I'm
claiming it says. And we go from
there.
And I keep getting "likes." I
started a thread about radar guns, and
as of now it has 31 "likes." And
I get more "likes" on individual
comments. SPR had no way to post
"likes," but I doubt anyone there
would post any even if they had a way.
I keep wanting to write a comment here
showing some of the questions and
answers, but every time I start on it,
I get a signal that someone has posted
a message to me on that group.
There just aren't enough hours in a
day! And I'm supposed to
be working on my new book!
July 1, 2021 - Groan!
I'm supposed to be working on my new book,
but what am I doing? I'm sitting here
staring at my computer screen trying to
think of something to write about in order
to start a new month of comments.
While doing that I also checked the Astrophysics
and Physics Facebook group to see what
they are arguing about there. I found an argument about
the Doppler effect. Someone was
arguing that the Cosmological Doppler effect
results from the fact the universe is
expanding. They claimed that, when
stars get farther and farther apart, the
light waves from the stars get farther and
farther apart.
I countered with this:
I think
the key is that light consists of
photons, not waves. You can fantasize
about waves getting farther and farther
apart, but when you talk about photons
you are talking about something that
remains unchanged from the time it is
emitted until it hits something.
Wow!
That's an argument I'd may never have used
before when discussing astronomy. And
it seems to have brought the discussion to a
halt. It says that the only way you
will see the Doppler effect with light is if
you, the observer, are moving away from the
source of the light. And it seems
there may be hundreds of astronomy articles
that say otherwise - because they discuss
light as consisting of waves, not photons.
I've said the same thing in my papers, but
never before in a discussion.
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