At the simplest level, an equation allows you to predict the results of an experiment without actually having to conduct it.

The wonderful thing about equations, however, is that they can also reveal deep connections between quantities that are not immediately apparent from the results of experiments, and in doing so can lead to a much deeper and more profound understanding of nature.

At the heart of Einstein’s theory of special relativity lie two proposals, which in the language of physics are termed axioms. An axiom is a proposition that is assumed to be true. Given the axioms, we can then proceed to work out the consequences for the real world, which we can check using experiments.

The first of Einstein’s axioms is that Maxwell’s equations hold true in the sense that light always travels through empty space at the same speed regardless of the motion of the source or the observer. The second axiom advocates that we are to follow Galileo in asserting that no experiment can ever be performed that is capable of identifying absolute motion. Armed only with these propositions, we can now proceed as good physicists should and explore the consequences. As ever in science, the ultimate test of Einstein’s theory, derived from his two axioms, is its ability to predict and explain the results of experiments. Quoting Feynman more fully this time: “In general we look for a new law by the following process. First we guess it. Then we compute the consequences of the guess to see what would be implied if this law that we guessed is right. Then we compare the result of the computation to Nature, with experiment or experience, compare it directly with observation, to see if it works. If it disagrees with experiment it is wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science. It does not make any difference how beautiful your guess is. It does not make any difference how smart you are, who made the guess, or what his name is—if it disagrees with experiment it is wrong. That’s all there is to it.”

If we could build a spaceship that could whisk us into space at speeds very close to light speed, then the distances to the stars would shrink, and the amount of shrinking would increase the closer to light speed we could travel. If we managed to travel at 99.99999999 percent of light speed, then we could travel out of the Milky Way and all the way to the neighboring Andromeda galaxy, almost 3 million light-years away, in a mere fifty years. 

It might seem like distances shrink because of your speed, just as it might seem like the distance to Walmart is shorter if you go 50 mph than if you go 30 mph, but it makes absolutely no sense to think of things that way.  Your motion does not change distances.  It only changes how time passes for you: time passes slower when you go faster, which is something the book says many times.

While the book was often a frustrating read, it was also thought provoking in that it gave me insights into the screwball way that mathematicians think, and that should help me understand them better, and enable me to create better arguments against their nonsensical beliefs.

December 31, 2020 (A) - I solved another mystery this morning.  It was kind of bizarre.  Yesterday, while grocery shopping at Walmart, I was checking out at one of the automated lines, and when I tried to pay with a $20 bill, the machine rejected the bill.  I tried it a second time, and it rejected it again.  So, I paid with a $10 bill that the machine accepted with no problem.

When I got home, I wondered why the bill was rejected.  I examined it and discovered it didn't have a "magnetic strip" like all the other 20s I had at home.  I never carry anything larger than a 20, and I get all my 20s from my bank.  Did the bank give me a counterfeit $20 bill??  It looked like a new, crisp $20, which seemed like another indicator that it might be a counterfeit.

I thought about it overnight, and this morning I did a little research.  I wondered how long the magnetic strip has been in use.  When I researched it, I discovered that there is a lot of stuff I didn't know about.

Here's what that $20 bill looks like (this isn't mine, it's one from the internet):

 

Just like my $20 bill, the bill above is "Series 1985" (stated in small letters just above the second L in Dollars).  Here's what the rest of my 20s look like:



They didn't add the magnetic strip until 1990.  Nor did they add any of the other security features until 1990.  So, my $20 bill appears to be a good $20 bill, even though it was rejected by the machine.  Interestingly, crisp new $20 bills from 1985 are worth as much as $40 to collectors, IF they have a star after the serial number, as the lower bill above has.  My $20 bill doesn't have the star.

So, I guess I'll have to get rid of my $20 bill from 1985 by handing it to a check-out clerk instead of inserting it into a machine.

Live and learn.

Like all attempts at human progress, the scientific approach works better in theory than in practice. Not all scientists doubt one another as effectively as they should. The need to impress scientists who occupy powerful positions, and who are sometimes swayed by factors that lie beyond their conscious knowledge, can interfere with science’s self-correcting ability. In the long run, however, errors cannot endure, because other scientists will discover them and promote their own careers by trumpeting the news. Those conclusions that do survive the attacks of other scientists will eventually achieve the status of scientific “laws,” accepted as valid descriptions of reality, even though scientists understand that each of these laws may some day find itself to be only part of a larger, deeper truth.

The Meridianstøtten was an obelisk on a small elevation in the middle of a graveyard of warehouses. I later learned that it was a memorial erected to celebrate the completion in 1840, on this very spot, of the first scientific measurement of the earth’s circumference. (Hammerfest’s other historical distinction is that it was the first town in Europe to have electric street lights.) I clambered up to the obelisk with difficulty, but the snow was blowing so thickly that I couldn’t read the inscription, and I returned to town thinking I would come back again another day. I never did.

There is no audible tick-tock everywhere in the world that could be considered as time. If physics wants to use time, it first has to define it. In this endeavor it is apparent that this definition necessarily requires a body of reference, and that this definition makes sense only with respect to this chosen body of reference. It turns out that one can define time relative to this body of reference such that the law of the propagation of light is obeyed relative to it. This definition of time can be realized for bodies of reference in any state of motion. But it turns out that the times of differently moving bodies of reference do not coincide. A more detailed justification of this is found in my popular book about the theory of relativity.[3] If two events occurring at different locations are judged simultaneous from a body of reference, then they are not judged so from a body of reference that is moving relative to it.

There is no omnipresent tic-tac audible in the universe that we could regard as time. If physics wants to make use of time, it first has to define it. In an effort to do this, it becomes clear that a reference body is needed for this definition, and that the definition only makes sense relative to this reference body. It turns out that one can define time in relation to this reference body in such a way that, relative to it, the laws governing light’s velocity are valid. This definition of time can be made for reference bodies in any state of velocity. However, it so happens that the times of differently moving reference bodies do not coincide. There is a more detailed proof of this matter in my popular book about the theory of relativity.[3] If two events happen simultaneously in two different locations judged from a reference body, they are not simultaneous if judged from another reference body moving relative to the first.

Good books about time dilation are hard to find. I probably have the names of a few filed away. I'll check tomorrow.

There might be books on time dilation somewhere, but mostly there are just scientific papers.

Stupid Ed lake does not understand Causality when he claims that *the cause of time will also occur in time*   utterly stupid

Stupid Ed lake does not understand that he can sit on other peoples lap but HE CAN NOT SIT ON HIS OWN LAP

Stupid Ed lake does not understand his claim that *the cause of time will also occur in time* is like saying that TIME SITS ON IT'S OWN LAP   utterly stupid

Stupid Ed lake does not understand that when he says *Time=Particle Spin* what he is really saying is *Time=Motion*   Motion occurs in Time---Motion stops in Time---Motion slows down in Time

light is always propagated in empty space with a definite velocity c which is independent of the state of motion of the emitting body.

I think it's coming along fairly well.  I've mostly finished with doing research, and I'm almost totally focused on just writing it.  I suppose I should have started with an outline, but I didn't, and as a result I'm constantly reorganizing the paper.

And, as I write, I'm analyzing what I'm writing.  When writing about radar guns, for example, I'll write about how the oscillation frequency of a photon is altered when the photon hits an oncoming target.  An atom in the moving target adds kinetic energy to the photon, sending a new photon back to the gun that has more energy than the photon the radar gun originally emitted. 

By definition, kinetic energy is a "form of energy that an object or a particle has by reason of its motion."  Also, "Kinetic energy is a property of a moving object or particle and depends not only on its motion but also on its mass."  That poses the question that mathematicians continuously ask: "Motion relative to what?"

Suppose you have two rocket ships encountering each other in outer space with a closing speed of 10,000 mph.  Mathematicians will argue that, since all motion is relative to some object, it can be argued that Rocket-A is moving at 10,000 mph toward Rocket-B, or that Rocket-B is moving at 10,000 mph toward Rocket-A.

But what happens if they don't notice each other and collide head on?



Answer: Their kinetic energy will show who is moving fastest.  It will be like billiard balls on a table.  The fast moving Ball-A will hit a stationary Ball-B with great kinetic energy, causing Ball-B to absorb nearly all of the kinetic energy from Ball-A and go shooting off to the corner pocket while Ball-A comes to a stop, because it transferred its kinetic energy to Ball-B.

With the two rocket ships, their kinetic energy will determine in which direction the collision debris will travel. 

The Internet is a magnificent repository of knowledge, and yet it’s also the source and enabler of a spreading epidemic of misinformation. Not only is the Internet making many of us dumber, it’s making us meaner: alone behind their keyboards, people argue rather than discuss, and insult rather than listen.

We all want to be taken seriously and to be respected. In practice, this means we don’t want anyone to think we’re dumb, and so we pretend to be smarter than we are. Over time, we even come to believe it.

Arguing at length with a conspiracy theorist is not only fruitless but sometimes dangerous, and I do not recommend it. It’s a treadmill of nonsense that can exhaust even the most tenacious teacher. Such theories are the ultimate bulwark against expertise, because of course every expert who contradicts the theory is ipso facto part of the conspiracy.

Unable to see their own biases, most people will simply drive each other crazy arguing rather than accept answers that contradict what they already think about the subject. The social psychologist Jonathan Haidt summed it up neatly when he observed that when facts conflict with our values, “almost everyone finds a way to stick with their values and reject the evidence.”

it’s normal for people to avoid saying they’re bad at something. As it turns out, however, the more specific reason that unskilled or incompetent people overestimate their abilities far more than others is because they lack a key skill called “metacognition.” This is the ability to know when you’re not good at something by stepping back, looking at what you’re doing, and then realizing that you’re doing it wrong. Good singers know when they’ve hit a sour note; good directors know when a scene in a play isn’t working; good marketers know when an ad campaign is going to be a flop. Their less competent counterparts, by comparison, have no such ability. They think they’re doing a great job.

Doctors routinely tussle with patients over drugs. Lawyers will describe clients losing money, and sometimes their freedom, because of unheeded advice. Teachers will relate stories of parents insisting that their children’s exam answers are right even when they’re demonstrably wrong. Realtors tell of clients who bought houses against their experienced advice and ended up trapped in a money pit. No area of American life is immune to the death of expertise. The American public’s declining capabilities in science and mathematics are enabling multiple public health crises from obesity to childhood diseases. Meanwhile, in the worlds of politics and public policy—where at least some familiarity with history, civics, and geography is crucial to informed debate—attacks on established knowledge have reached frightening proportions.

At a Wisconsin rally in early 2016, Republican candidate Donald Trump unleashed an attack on experts. In earlier debates, Trump had often been caught at a loss for words over basic issues of public policy, and now he was striking back. “They say, ‘Oh, Trump doesn’t have experts,’ ” he told the crowd. “You know, I’ve always wanted to say this… . The experts are terrible. They say, ‘Donald Trump needs a foreign policy adviser.’… But supposing I didn’t have one. Would it be worse than what we’re doing now?” Trump’s sneering at experts tapped into a long-standing American belief that experts and intellectuals are not only running the lives of ordinary people, but also doing a lousy job of it.

Consider the various ways in which Trump’s campaign represented a one-man campaign against established knowledge. He was one of the original “birthers” who demanded that Barack Obama prove his American citizenship. He quoted the National Enquirer approvingly as a source of news. He sided with antivaccine activism. He admitted that he gets most of his information on foreign policy from “the shows” on Sunday morning television. He suggested that Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who died from natural causes in early 2016, might have been murdered. And he charged that the father of one of his opponents (Ted Cruz) was involved in the Mother of All Conspiracy Theories, the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

Worse, voters not only didn’t care that Trump is ignorant or wrong, they likely were unable to recognize his ignorance or errors.

December 14, 2020 - Yesterday I finished converting to MP3 files all 192 of my cassette tapes of jazz and blues that I recorded off the radio and other sources over 25 years ago.  The listings I produced of what songs are on the cassettes indicate that I had 150 tapes on January 10, 1996.  On November 14, 1996, I produced another list of tapes #151 through #180, which I must have recorded during those 11 months.  The last numbered tape in the collection is #242, but I never got around to printing a listing that contained the final batch.  And I have no idea what happened to the missing tapes, since I have only 192.  Presumably, 50 tapes snagged and were destroyed in the tape player, since I have vague memories of ripping tapes out of some cassette player.  I don't recall that ever happening in recent years, although one tape snagged when I was copying it to an MP3 file.  I simply unsnagged it and copied it again.

And, of course, about a week ago I figured out what was wrong with my cassette player's connection to my amplifier and large speakers, so I am now listening to the cassettes instead of listening to the MP3 files.  That means I have to turn around and change or flip cassettes every 45 minutes, but it is good exercise.  I listen to the MP3 files when I'm reading in the afternoon, something I haven't had time to do recently.  And they'll be there when my cassette player finally goes blooey.  I've probably had it for nearly a quarter century. 
 
I also have 9 cassette tapes left to copy.  They are pre-recorded cassettes I purchased many years ago.  A box containing 2 of those cassettes is shown in the photo below along with the MP3 converter. 
 


I'm going to try to copy them song by song, instead of creating one MP3 file for an entire tape as I did with the other 192 cassettes.  That will require that I listen to the tapes as I copy them.  So, it will require two or three full evenings of my time, instead of just a few minutes every hour and a half while I'm watching TV or listening to podcasts.

Meanwhile, I have another chore to perform.  I need to get rid of about 475 CDs I burned from audio books I got in MP3 format from the library.



They are all the audio books I listened to while driving in the past few years.  It's illegal to sell them or to give them away, so I'll have to dump them in the trash.   I'm a guy who hates to throw anything away that once provided me with entertainment.  That's why I still have them all.  However, I'm determined to throw them away this week as part of some long-overdue house cleaning.

And today we'll all do a bit of housecleaning as the Electoral College votes to validate and designate Joe Biden as our 46th President.  That means that on January 20, 2021, America will finally throw out the heap of trash that has been fouling up the system since 2016. That's a day I'm really looking forward to.     

December 13, 2020 - Groan!  I've been working on my new paper, which is tentatively titled "Motion Relative to the Speed of Light," but it is very slow going.  I just spent about two days downloading, organizing and glancing through dozens of science papers about the Sagnac Effect, and then I spent more time studying the papers to see if they contained anything at all of value to me.  Some did, but it was usually part of something larger, making it difficult to quote it in my paper.  For example, the quote below

The principle of relativity is another such concept. Negative attitude of some Lorentzians with respect to it is the result of confusing of this physical principle with the philosophical principle of relativity of motion. While the first one, stating that the laws of nature have the same form in all inertial frames of reference, is quite sound and empirically well confirmed, the second one, stating that it only makes sense to speak about motions of bodies relative to other bodies, is not only wrong, but also incompatible with the very theory of relativity!

Thirdly, almost all Lorentzians reject Einstein's second postulate. Some points need to be clarified in this context. First of all, literally understood, this postulate states nothing more than the independence of light velocity of the motion of its source, which is common to the relativity theory and all ether theories, contrary to "ballistic" theories, like the one of Ritz. Unfortunately, this rather weak assumption is often confused with the so-called "constancy of light velocity hypothesis" (CLV), according to which the value of light velocity is always equal to the universal constant c in any inertial frame of reference. It is CLV that is usually contested under the misnomer "Einstein's light postulate". In fact, it is not identical with the second postulate, but it is a consequence of both postulates, taken in conjunction.

The Sagnac effect, also called Sagnac interference, named after French physicist Georges Sagnac, is a phenomenon encountered in interferometry that is elicited by rotation. The Sagnac effect manifests itself in a setup called a ring interferometer. A beam of light is split and the two beams are made to follow the same path but in opposite directions. On return to the point of entry the two light beams are allowed to exit the ring and undergo interference. The relative phases of the two exiting beams, and thus the position of the interference fringes, are shifted according to the angular velocity of the apparatus. In other words, when the interferometer is at rest with respect to a nonrotating frame, the light takes the same amount of time to traverse the ring in either direction. However, when the interferometer system is spun, one beam of light has a longer path to travel than the other in order to complete one circuit of the mechanical frame, and so takes longer, resulting in a phase difference between the two beams.

Narcissist Ed Lake sure loves to play the GALILEO GAMBIT   He LOVES to claim that He-and he alone-is right and everybody else (and their gramdma) is wrong

Narcissist Ed Lake does what all narcissists do...he claims that he is the ONLY ONE who understands Relativity and that there is conspiracy going on against him and his stupid ideas

Narcissist moron Ed Lake is a conspiracy theorist and there is no way to change his mind

a person who has an excessive interest in or admiration of themselves.

"narcissists who think the world revolves around them"

Now, when you (Ed) talk about "the speed of an object relative to the speed of light", that doesn't parse, because a speed isn't an object nor a system of reference. A speed doesn't establish the positions of an object. If you just mean you are going to express each speed as a fraction of the constant c, that's just a choice of units, and has nothing to do with what people mean when they talk about speeds relative to different systems of reference. You could say the truck's speed is 40mph/c, or 1000mph/c, or 67000mph/c, but that doesn't tell us which of those speeds we are talking about. If you said "the speed of an object relative to a particular pulse of light", then that would at least parse, but it would be wrong in special relativity because a pulse of light is not at rest in terms of any inertial coordinate system.

Based on the things you say, it's clear that you really have in mind some local system of reference at every time and place, in terms of which the speed of light is isotropically c, which means you espouse a fully dragged ether theory, but then sometimes you switch to a stationary ether theory.

The long part of the rectangle is positioned east-west, and the shorter part of the rectangle is north-south.  When measuring the rotation of the earth, you are doing an east-west or west-east measurement of the device's speed relative to the speed of light emitted within the device.  A north-south measurement should give you zero as a speed, and that is what the device was designed to do.
 

The fringes to be measured were those formed by the beams going in the opposite directions around the circuit ADEF.  As a fiducial [fixed] mark from which to measure the displacement, a second set of fringes was formed by the mirror system ABCD.  The area inclosed by this circuit was much too small to give a measurable displacement of the fringes, and the shifts actually recorded were those between the central fringes of the two sets.

Nope. The measurement was of the rotation relative to a non rotating frame tied to distant stars. Not relative to speed of light.

The measurements were done ENTIRELY inside metal tubes. The ONLY thing that moved relative to the inside walls of those tubes were PHOTONS.  Any screwball "non-rotating frame tied to distant stars" is PURELY IMAGINARY, concocted to avoid using the speed of light light to compare movements. .

 

December 1, 2020 - I'm still spending a lot of time arguing with people on the sci.physics.relativity forum.  As of this moment, there are 121 messages n the argument thread, exactly 100 more than there were before the discussion restarted on November 26.  Yesterday, I tried to take a break from the discussion, so that I could put some new ideas into my paper about "Relativity and Radar Guns," but, as usual, when I try to do that the people on the forum start ranting that I'm running away from the discussion because I can't respond to their arguments. 

In reality, I just need time to think.  In yesterday's discussions, I came up with a new way to perform the truck experiment which measures the speed of a moving truck from inside the truck.  The argument from the mathematicians on the forum is always that photons are not only always emitted at c, but are also always received at c, therefore a radar gun cannot measure the the speed of the truck by measuring the speed of the truck relative to the speed of light, c, either inside or outside.  They believe that radar guns emit waves, not photons, and an object has to be moving relative to the radar gun in order to be measured.  None of those beliefs are true.

Their argument is that, inside the truck, the four walls are stationary relative to the gun.  So, if the truck is moving at 40 mph and you point the gun at the front wall, that wall is stationary relative to the gun, so the gun will read the speed of the wall as zero.  My argument is that is true, but NOT because the gun is measuring the speed of the wall as zero but because photons from the gun hit the front wall at c-v, where v is the speed of the truck, and the returned photons from the front wall hit the radar gun at c+v, giving you c+v-v=c, or a speed of zero. 

To measure the speed of the wall (and the truck) from inside the truck, you have to measure movement in only one direction.  In my "Relativity and Radar Guns" paper, I proposed a way of doing that by having one radar gun emit the photons and a second radar gun receive the photons. 



The problem is that no known radar gun emits photons which oscillate at an exact known frequency.  It may be stated in the manual that the gun operates at 35 Gigahertz or 35,000,000,000 Hertz, but in reality that is just an approximate frequency.  In reality, the gun could be operating many thousands of Hertz higher or lower than that approximate frequency.  It is able to compare the frequency it transmits to the frequency it receives and measure traffic speeds correctly because 40 miles per hour is a difference of 4,167 Hertz between emitted and received frequencies, whatever those frequencies are.

So, to do the proposed experiment, you need two guns that transmit at nearly identical frequencies, with no more than a 500 Hertz difference.

During the discussions on the forum yesterday, a different experiment occurred to me.  Unfortunately, it also needs special equipment that may not readily exist. 

Instead of two men holding radar guns, you need an automated transmitter and and automated receiver, so that the times of emission and reception can be determined down to the millisecond or better.  You need one transmitter and receiver to be exactly 45 feet apart inside the truck, and another transmitter and receiver to be exactly 45 feet apart outside the truck, on a stationary platform at the same height as the pair inside the truck.

Then you need to have a way to trigger both transmitters at the same instant.  Then the truck is driven at high speed past the stationary equipment, and when they receivers and transmitters are exactly parallel, the transmitters are both triggered. 

Photons from the stationary transmitter will still travel exactly 45 feet to reach the stationary receiver, but photons from the moving transmitter will travel a shorter distance to reach the moving receiver, because that receiver is moving toward the oncoming photons.

According to the Second Postulate of Einstein's Theory of Special Relativity, photons are emitted at the same speed, c, regardless of whether the emitter is moving or not.  So both emitters emit photons at the speed of light, c, but the moving receiver receives photons at c+v while the stationary receiver receives photons at c.

The difference is that you have two experiments and one is seen to be moving while the other is seen to be stationary.  The fact that the emitter inside the moving truck is surrounded by walls that are stationary relative to the emitter, and the gun is fired at a receiver that appears to be stationary, does not mean that they are actually stationary.

Mathematicians will argue that the stationary equipment is not really stationary either, since it is on a planet that is rotating at about 1,000 mph and its moving in orbit around sun at 67,000 mph.  But that is just a way of avoiding the fact that photons hit a moving receiver at c+v or c-v, which they say is not possible. 

If you truly believe that you are stationary in a moving truck just because the walls around you are stationary relative to your location, then there are also other ways to show that that is nonsense.  If the truck passes a clanging railroad crossing signal, you will hear the source of the sound passing the truck.  Do you really believe the truck is stationary and the railroad crossing is moving? 

I should be writing all this in a paper, instead of doing it here.  But, maybe I also need to see what the mathematicians on the forum have to say about the new experiment. 

Lots to think about.