Re: Time: is time a concept or a physical force and can we prove the arrow of time
Posted: September 5th, 2018, 5:27 pm
Halc wrote: ↑September 4th, 2018, 11:55 pmHaving read what you said again, I can see that I misinterpreted it before, so no conflict there.David Cooper wrote: ↑September 4th, 2018, 5:39 pm 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.Agree. I didn't assert otherwise.
Earth has no coordinates for instance. I notice you didn't answer my request for that.You can apply coordinates in whatever way you like. That will involve putting an origin somewhere and it will, for a moment, be co-moving with the Earth.
I'm just saying that no such origin is needed. Positions are typically given with a relative reference (like N light years left of event X), and not a set of coordinates (100, -20, 15, 75). Not wrong to do it with coordinates, but just less meaningful.It is sufficient to have something at rest in the frame to recognise that the frame must move in the same way that object does, so if two objects are moving relative to each other, the frames in which they are at rest are also moving relative to each other.
So the university textbooks teach that Einstein's relativity has been disproven??None that I know of do, but they should.
Yes, Einstein affirmed this assertion that was made at least 3 centuries before his time. It is not his assertion.Where it becomes his assertion is when he denies the existence of the absolute frame. If he wasn't the first to do that either, it's of little significance - it was his position, and it's his theory that's being discussed. The aim was to introduce people to the subject with as little extraneous baggage as possible. That's the normal way to do things to improve readability and avoid going of on long diversions. You'll notice that I did include somewhere a wording along the lines of "Einstein wasn't the first to say this, but".
Answer the question. You evade this consistently.I don't do evasion.
Are the speed limit signs wrong at the side of the road, because they ask you to decelerate your car to a nearly stationary speed while Earth smashes into you at about 1/800th c?The speed signs are all about speed relative to the road under your wheels. Why would I need to evade answering that, or anything else? If you somehow imagine that I'm avoiding answering questions, put them in a numbered list and demand answers in the way I do when dealing with people who refuse to answer questions.
An evasion? It was a reply to "Things have a location????" and I was pointing out in response that location is an essential service which the universe provides. No locations --> no relative positions.It's an essential service which the universe provides.Another evasion.
Tell me your location please, without relating to anything with a location that hasn't been provided. I assert that location is only a relation, and the thing I ask cannot be done.My location is somewhere in the fabric of space, but the fabric of space doesn't allow us to access labels to tell us where we are within it - it keeps that knowledge to itself. We can only see some aspects of our location by comparing how we move relative to other things in that fabric.
Since you seem to equate location to spatial separation, I also assert that spatial separation is a relation.There's no equating involved - location is a service that provides spatial separation by dint of there being many available locations with different amounts of fabric between them.
If there is a universe with just two existents, there is no meaningful way to express the separation between the two things. It requires at least a third thing so that Y might be twice as far from X as is Z.The space fabric is not hampered by our inability to see what's going on. Things are where they are within that fabric, and not where they aren't.
What I said is correct, and here it is again for reference: "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."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.Classic strawman fallacy then. No physicist would describe things that way. Use their own words if you want to discredit a theory.
Any physicist who disagrees with that is plain incompetent, failing to understand what frames are and how they are required to function. You cannot allow light to move through a frame of reference at a speed other than c (unless it has been slowed down by interactions with a medium like gas/glass/etc. or by gravity). That is a founding principle of a frame of reference - if you have light move through it at other speeds, you're either breaking the rules of that frame or have failed to create a valid frame. Whatever wording your physicists want to use, they have to conform to frame rules - there is no magic override. There is no possibility of them confirming that the speed of light relative to themselves is c because that was the basis on how they were set up, so it's circular. All frames assert that the speed of light relative to other frames is not c in some directions, and this is a necessary consequence of the way frames are designed - this is a point which most physicists don't want to tell you, but it is an absolute requirement with no way to get around it. They don't like it precisely because it undermines their position. All other frames are moving relative to the current frame, so if light moves at c through the current frame, it doesn't move at c in some directions in every other frame. That's a fundamental truth, and no amount of misguided authority can overturn that - it is a mathematical necessity. My wording is correct and should not be replaced by irrational alternatives from people who don't respect the rules.
Moving clocks are not allowed to run slow in SR. SR has time dilation, but it produces contradictions where a clock slows its ticking rate and increases its ticking rate at the same time. Einstein was very clear that clocks don't really run slow - they all tick at the rate of one tick per second and there is no other kind of time in the model to govern them. This exposes a contradiction in the whole model, because either it's running mode 1 with no clock running slow under the governance of any other frame's time, or there's an absolute frame mechanism which allows some clocks to run slow. That's why there are multiple versions of SR that need to be modelled separately.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.Again a strawman wording. Moving clocks 'run slow' under SR. The term is dilation, not 'running slow', but I presume you mean that at least.
If you want to pick on something: If there is an objective metaphysical frame, SR asserts that clocks that are objectively stationary are dilated in any other frame. That means that time back on the home planet to either rocket ship (after launch) 'runs slower' than the clock on the rocket. I think your simulation would show this, especially if you could rotate it a bit further to the frames of the ships.SR's claim that all frames are equally valid means that it requires an infinite number of such frames all governing the rest while at the same time being governed by the rest. The way out of that hole is to accept that only one frame can have such a governing role.
This is not a contradiction since SR does not make any metaphysical claims. LET would simply state that the alternate frame does not represent the ordering of events as per the preferred frame, and so the objective clock is not objectively running slow.SR makes a metaphysical claim as soon as it asserts that all frames are equally valid and that there is no absolute frame. We can see though that that puts it into a position that breaks it, so when you assert that it makes no such assertions, the only rational option you leave it with is to accept an absolute frame and to hand over to LET.
Spin and hogwash. Science is about explaining reality, and SR makes metaphysical claims. There's an army of SR experts out there including a whole stack of famous physicists pushing the metaphysical claims at every opportunity and shouting down rival metaphysical claims, asserting that those are philosophy and shouldn't be allowed. They are hypocrites.Science is about explaining realityNo, Metaphysics is about explaining reality. Science is about making practical predictions.
You really need to understand this distinction.You need to understand that your physicist friends are not playing by those rules.
Science produces useful models, and cares not a hoot if the model corresponds to reality or not.How stupid would science be if it really worked on that basis - of course they want their theories to correspond to reality rather than being abstract stuff which doesn't make sense of things. Science is very much about understanding things.
The 2 digit speed limit sign at the side of the road is a useful model even if reality is a varying figure with about 7 more digits. The value on the speed limit sign is science. The 9 digit figure is a metaphysical interpretation.Speed limit signs are not there to explain how the universe works. Science and theories are. Science is much more than just methods for working out numbers, but if you want to restrict it to that, you've got a lot of work to do to convince everyone else, and I don't think they'll listen because they don't want to farm explanations out to a different discipline. When people phone a science phone-in and ask "how" questions, they don't want to be fobbed off with mathematical methods for crunching numbers - they want real explanations, and the scientists try to answer them. In the course of doing so, they often lay down the law about which explanations are valid and which should be rejected, and with relativity they always back the SR version with all its metaphysical dogma and reject the LET one. They are all pushing metaphysics - it's what they do. On every science documentary on the subject, the same thing happens - they push metaphysics. And the reason they do this is simple - it's because this "metaphysics" IS part of physics.
It likely has no ability to go at any speed other than the one it goes at. For it to run slower, you then need to have some other kind of time for its speed to change relative to, at which point that other kind of time would be revealed to be the real time. If there is no superior kind of time beyond Newtonian time, then there is nothing to slow it against.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.Oh good. You acknowledge that there is no distinction between it running faster or slower.
I shy away from positing undetectable things, but that's just me. I could find nothing in the LET description that posits this sort of thing. All it proposed was a preferred frame, but nowhere could I find a mention of flow. There was a reference to a presentism article somebody wrote, but the reference was only used to pull one of Einstein's quotes.LET has Newtonian time, and that time simply runs. It isn't a dimension. If time didn't run, nothing could happen.
I'd love to see your example. If you've got something that can change my mind, I want it. There's nothing more useful than finding out that you're wrong about something so that you can correct a fault in your model of reality, and unlike most people, I'm always ready to tear mine up and start again whenever that happens.That is something I'd like to see. No flow --> no possibility of it being real causation.Yes, I noticed you have this bias. You'd not like my example then. Your define causation in terms of flow, so an example without it will not be designated as causation in your opinion.