Halc wrote: ↑September 3rd, 2018, 1:16 am
I would like to add that if LET makes all the same predictions, it would also predict that each rockets returns home while home is still in the past, as your simulation depicts, so LET would also be disproved by this (invalid) argument.
LET slows down moving clocks and doesn't tolerate contradictions, so it behaves like mode 3 and functions fine - mode 3 theories are viable, but they require acceptance of an absolute frame.
Interesting. Acceleration is a vector rate of change in velocity, not a change in speed. There is no difference between acceleration and deceleration. The ISS for instance is always accelerating, yet its speed remains constant (relative to Earth). This is high-school physics, not even touching on relativity.
It's a contradiction that you've been heavily brainwashed into believing is acceptable, but the part about clocks speeding up and slowing down at the same time takes it a much more obvious step into the irrational.
Speed is defined within a frame, and within that frame, the clock rate is dilated in accordance to that one speed. In a different frame, it might be dilated less. So I suppose a velocity difference would result in a larger and smaller speed in different frames (and corresponding time dilation), but that is not 'in the same way', so not a violation of the law of non-contradiction.
There is one single underlying reality which is what the universe is actually doing. Different frames provide different claims about that underlying reality, and when one frame says a clock's ticking is slowed by a change in speed while another says that its ticking is speeded up, they are both attempting to describe the same underlying event in which the clock cannot be doing both of those things. It is a fundamental contradiction. The mechanism for what's actually going on will either slow a clock or speed it up - it can't do both at the same time.
You seem to be only rotating the spatial axes. OK, your model is a 3D one, so talk of worldlines and such is perhaps speaking to a different interpretation, but you did it in your web page.
Frames of reference are limited to three space dimensions showing events at fixed moments in time (by the time of the selected frame).
In the one diagram for question 2, the worldline of the planet (you drew the worldlines of all 4 objects) that moves to the right was depicted as parallel to the time axis, but in the simulation of the same scenario, the temporal axis was oriented with the left-bound planet. You rotated the temporal axis to be parallel to the worldline of a different planet. The speed of each object were suddenly not exactly the same, since a different planet is now stationary, and the former stationary planet is now moving at .866c to the right.
The time axis is always vertical in the diagrams and represents the selected frame's version of time, so an object cannot be moving parallel to the time axis in any frame that shows that object moving to the right.
Frames don't have positions or origins. They don't have velocities, but they do have velocities relative to each other.
If you are assigning positions to objects in a frame, you give them coordinates based on an origin somewhere. This can be done by multiple observers in different frames, and those origins will all move relative to each other. It is possible for them (the origins) all to be at the same location at one moment, but then they must diverge as they are necessarily at rest within their own frame.
I don't hate it. It isn't wrong. It doesn't contradict relativity. It just isn't the only valid interpretation, and you seem to feel otherwise.
There is a deeply hostile reaction to it almost everywhere, and there are plenty of sources of information including university textbooks which make out that it is a disproved theory, whereas in reality it still stands (unlike SR which has been found to be invalid).
From any other location in space such as A, different frames order events differently, and the event at B may be in the future or past of some event at A. Again, this would violate the law of non-contradiction only if the A before B and B before A were true in the same way, but they're not since they're being considered in different frames.
The point is that you are at A and all frames are represented at that location, but they make different claims about what's happened or not happened yet at B. Those claims are incompatible. SR asserts that they are all equally valid, which either requires contradictions to be tolerated or for all the claims to be equally invalid, in which case none of them would be true representations of reality, so while that's a lot better, it's still pretty dire.
No. The event has already happened in one frame, AND hasn't happened yet in another. Relativity does not use your wording.
The event has either happened or it hasn't. It cannot be in both those states at the same time. SR claims that all frames are equally valid, and that requires them to be equally true (or equally false).
You presume an objective ordering, and if you chose one, then you can happily say that other frames order events in non-objective order. SR does not forbid this. Relative simultaneity is not the same as objective simultaneity, and SR only speaks to the former. I am stationary in my chair here, and at the same time am moving at 1000 km/hr due to spin of Earth. This is not a contradiction in the same way that your example is non-contradictory.
If you run the simulation in mode 2 to the point where the time counter says 360 and freeze the action there, when you change frame you will see some events unhappen, and then you can keep changing frame to make them rehappen and unhappen over and over again as many times as you like. If you were able to freeze the unfolding of events of the real universe in the same way and change frame, the same would have to happen for SR to be correct, meaning that events would unhappen and rehappen at that single, frozen moment in time as you change frame. The real universe should not be expected to behave in such a ridiculous way. If there was no other theory available, we would have to put up with SR and its contradictions as the best of a bad lot and we'd consider it to be weird, but we have an alternative theory which doesn't suffer from that serious defect. Occam's razor tells us to reject the theory that depends on contradictions and which therefore requires magic for its functionality.
How can it be logically dependent on what it doesn't mention?
An incomplete theory which depends on unstated components is not simpler than a theory which includes the necessary components. It merely produces an illusion of being simpler. When you then add the unstated logically-required components and find that its interaction with them is more complex than the theory which stated its components in full, then Occam's razor is applied to the theory that wrongly claimed to be simpler and turned out to be more complex.
As I said, it only has one premise, and that premise doesn't mention a fabric or an objective frame. It seems you need to assert such things to beg your specific interpretation, but SR doesn't assert any particular interpretation.
These theories are attempting to account for the behaviour of a real universe which must be doing something. One theory requires that real universe to be doing contradictory things while the other theory doesn't. The theory that requires it to be doing contradictory things then tries to hide that by detaching itself from the real universe which it supposedly relates to and thereby becomes some independent thing that isn't bound by the rules of reality, but that's a departure from real physics. Real physics is tied to nature - nature is doing something which these theories are supposed to be trying to account for rationally.
Things have a location????
It's an essential service which the universe provides. Without it, how can there be distance between things? Why is one thing within reach while another is a billion lightyears away? What enables that separation if there are no locations?
Less time still passes on Earth in the frame of a ship making a rapid trip from here to some distant star. Fabric of space (or lack of it) makes no difference to that.
Fabric of space provides the speed limit on light which leads to functionality slowing as objects move through that fabric. That is the only rational mechanism for clocks slowing. Without it, you have no mechanism to coordinate the tick rates of clocks on different paths and you are forced to run the universe in mode 1.
You're confusing space with objective space. Things still have relative separation under SR, just no objective location or objective velocity. The fabric is the objective aether-like stuff in relation to which one might be objectively stationary.
There has to be something enforcing that separation, and you have to have a speed relative to that something. With SR, this something is ignored, but it must be there regardless, so to maintain SR you then have to have everything move relative to that something at all possible speeds at the same time,and that's a highly complex aether because it magically supports contradictions.
Different frames set the speed of light relative to them to c as part of the rules as to how frames work, and that dictates everything else they do - they do not confirm the speed of light relative to themselves because they have set themselves up directly on the basis that light travels at c relative to them, and in doing so, they all assert that the speed of light relative to ALL other frames is >c in some directions and <c the other way.
Ouch...
Is this a deliberate misrepresentation? This is in direct conflict with the empirical premise of SR. It describes no known theory, LET included.
This describes all theories - it is fundamental to how frames work. If SR doesn't want to work with valid frame rules, it shouldn't pretend to use frames of reference.
Sharing the same maths sounds like the same mechanisms.
In LET, the mechanism for "time dilation" (which is actually just the slowing of apparent time) is that movement of a clock through the space fabric slows its cycles by increasing the round-trip distances for moving parts. That mechanism does not exist in SR because no clock is allowed to run slow.
Sharing the same predictions sounds like the same theory, but differing on being grounded on a preferred frame. I looked it up, and while it had different roots, the modern version is just considered to be just an interpretation of SR with a preferred frame playing the role of the otherwise undetectable aether. The distinctions with standard spacetime interpretation of SR are all just philosophical, not scientific.
If you looked it up and found the Wikipedia page on LET, that contains a recent attempt by the establishment to pretend that they have backed LET all along. They were forced to do this when they realised it was still valid and that they were going to end up looking very silly if they couldn't find some way to wriggle out of the ridiculous position they'd put themselves in by backing an irrational theory instead of a rational one that accounted for all the same facts. But they're still making the mistake of pretending it's just an unimportant philosophical argument when it's much more than that. Science is about explaining reality, and every time they push the SR explanation of relativity and suppress the LET one, they are breaking their own rule by dragging banned philosophy in and ramming it into everyone's head as if it's a truth. If they want to get rid of the "philosophy", they need to strip all proposed explanation out of the theory and just give people the maths alone.
SR dictates that there is no absolute frame; that no frame is superior to any other
It says there is no local test to detect it. It doesn't assert its nonexistence. In fact, an obvious one is suggested by a non-local test: the frame of the center of gravity of all the stuff within sight.
In that case, all the textbooks need to be rewritten to make it clear that SR and LET are different versions of the same theory, and the LET should then be systematically taught because it is the most rational version.
SR is not a metaphysical model of reality. It is a scientific theory that states that local empirical observations of any test will behave the same in any frame. You seem to confuse this scientific theory with the metaphysical model that there is no objectively more correct reference frame. That metaphysical model does indeed sometimes accompany the SR theory, but SR does not assert it. GR sort of asserts a preferred frame, so in that sense, GR and LET are quite similar.
SR asserts that there is no absolute frame. Einstein was very clear about that, and so are the textbooks, websites and hordes of experts who push SR and shout down LET at every turn. But if they all want to clean up their act and drop the philosophical baggage which they deny they're bringing along for the ride, then that's great. And while they're at it, they can stop attributing the theory to Einstein.
One theory says that "it's already happened" and "it hasn't happened yet" and [* are] simultaneously compatible claims, but the other says they are contradictions.
SR does not claim "it already happened". It claims that it it already happened in a certain frame, which is a relative simultaneity, not an absolute (metaphysical) one. SR does not assert what is. It just asserts what will be measured. The former is metaphysics and the latter is science. You seem to have no capability to separate the two.
You are trying to exclude from science something that has always been part of science and which SR has always been allowed to bring in when it denies the absolute frame. If you want to tidy up SR to get rid of all the metaphysics from it, you've got one hell of a task ahead of you.
Einstein's original SR without 4D Spacetime produces contradictions.
Oh really...
Seems to work fine in 3D. It is instructive to do the standard train/platform example in 3D instead of 4D.
Select mode 2 and freeze the action at 360, then change frame and watch the contradictory claims made by different frames about what has happened yet and what hasn't. That is not SR working fine.
As for LET describing a 'flow of time', constant or not, there is no way to detect a flow (or lack of it) at all. There is not even a unit for it. Seconds per second? That simplifies to nothing, like asserting that distance flows at a rate of meters per meter.
Time runs at the rate time runs - it could run ten times as fast or ten times as slowly and no difference would be detectable, but that doesn't mean it has no rate at which it runs. If you want to try to run it without a rate by having everything happen infinitely fast, then order of events is lost and chains of computations will not compute correctly because it would be impossible to impose the right order on them.
Funny, but I can effortlessly find a causal structure that has no flow.
That is something I'd like to see. No flow --> no possibility of it being real causation.
I don't care to argue eternalism with you. Relativity doesn't assert it, so I'm fine with your biases for the topic at hand. OK, the thread is sort of about it, and not about relativity.
It's highly relevant to relativity, though only to the eternal static block universe (which is where SR goes to try to escape from the contradictions without accepting an absolute frame).
The arrow of time is proved by entropy. Without that, there is no arrow. Past and future are not distinct.
The arrow is clearly there, and so is the flow.