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.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.
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 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.
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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.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.
By moving in space there will be the same... more time slow and energy.
Neutron stars are end state matter not a BH.
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.That was message #149, and my last message for the day.
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.
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.
