Farsight

I think "particle" is such a bad word though, insane_alien. IMHO it makes people think of some discrete, distinct, "billiard ball" zipping through space, and makes them think about the properties of billiard balls and not the properties of space.

IMHO: A photon might be hundreds of metres long, as per long wave radio, so I don't like thinking of it as a "particle". I prefer to think of it as a self-propagating electromagnetic variation in space, or a "space effect" for short. Now instead of asking "Why does a photon travel at the speed of light?" you can ask "Why does a space effect propagate at the rate that it does?". The answer is to do with the properties of space. When it comes to gravitons (see DH's note) I'm definitely thinking "space effect" rather than "particle", and a propagation rate that again depends upon the properties of space. Since we hope that all the "forces" can be unified, it seems reasonable to expect the same propagation rate.

You know how I mentioned in the essay that smell was all down to molecular shape? Well maybe I was wrong. Because this guy reckons it's down to molecular vibration: http://www.newscientist.com/channel/opinion/mg19225780.123-interview-a-nose-for-controversy.html That's motion again. So that's: Sight detects the vibrational motion of photons Sound detects the vibrational motion through air molecules Smell detects the vibrational motion of airborne molecules Touch detects the vibrational motion of heat plus other motion stuff Taste detects... aw, four out of five ain't bad. Kinda makes you think huh? OK. Saturday night, gotta go. Ciao for now.

Not really. You prove the existence of water by throwing a bucket of the stuff over somebody's head. And anyhow, you could do a nice reaction using Oxygen and Hydrogen, BOOM! No, the point is that anybody with any expertise in maths knows that t is axiomatic. It's a given, an assumption, and you can't use maths to prove what time really is. That's why serious guys like swansont aren't interested in TIME EXPLAINED. It lies beyond maths, and without maths, in their eyes it's "mere metaphysics".

I've given you the essay, and I've said velocity should have its own c-based units, like temperature has degrees. I can't give a mathematical definition of the degrees we use in temperature. Nobody can. They are definitive. And even if I could, I couldn't base it on proven mathematical axioms, becuase axioms aren't proven. They're axioms. And therein lies your whole problem. Are you being deliberately obtuse? I've already told you spatial dimensions are degrees of freedom. I can move through a spatial dimension. I can't move through the "temperature" dimension, nor can I move through the "time" dimension. And have you forgotten the link I posted that said temperature used to be thought of as a fundamental dimension? C is fundamental. It is velocity. Your velocity as a fraction of c determines your time experience. No. Einstein was pissed off when Minkowski treated time as a fourth dimension. Oh yes you can move in a vertical direction. But the vertical direction curves back round to the black hole. All roads point to Rome. A photon is moving in that dimension. It experiences events. But not time. I'll say it yet again: Time is a dimension but only in the sense that it is a measure. In this respect it is like temperature. It is not a dimension like the dimensions of space that offer degrees of freedom for motion. Yes, c is fundamental and constant, and is a velocity. It dictates your experience of time. Therefore velocity is more fundamental. Here we go again Ed. You're telling me motion demands a period of time therefore I must be wrong. Yet again you use the axiom to "disprove" my essay. It looks like you're using semantics to dress up the axiom to again "disprove" the essay. And didn't the other definition tell you mass was a dimension? Have you actually understood what I've been telling you about dimensions? Ask somebody else what a dimension is, somebody you trust. No Ed. Things move through space. We can move through space. That's what motion is. Something is there. Now its there, now its there, now its there, now its here. It moved. And all the time it was now. It moved through space. I can move through space. It's dead easy. In any direction. But I can't do that with time. Because time just a measure of the motion, and you can't move through the measure of the motion. I didn't say time doesn't exist. As I've said before, it exists, like heat exists, and is similarly derived from motion. But it doesn't have a length, and there is no degree of freedom. We can not "travel" in time, because it is a comparative measure of travel. And I can't prove this with maths because its axiomatic. That's why nobody can "show me the maths" to disprove my argument. Ed, this is too much. I'm sorry, but you just don't understand what you're saying. There is symmetry between the cylinder's view of the nail and the nail's view of the cylinder. Find out more about this. Do not feel tempted to argue about it. OK, that's the last "superlong" post of yours that I will respond to at length. You keep repeating the same thing, which is basically "motion is defined by time". Read the essay again. Show it to somebody you trust. Note that "concept" is missing after "current" in the opening paragraph. What I explained is how motion defines time. By all means challenge this, but find something better to challenge it with than "motion is defined by time". You're just going round and round your axiomatic circle. I really do understand Special Relativity. It's because I understand it that I also understand the implications for time.

insane_alien: sure it can. But my TIME EXPLAINED essay says it's the wrong way of looking at it. edtharan: explain the geometrical necessity of mass. Don't try to white out your fatal error with a blizzard of other stuff.

You've got to be kidding Ed. That's a dictionary definition. You know it's not my definition. You know what I said: velocity is fundamental, your velocity as compared to c dictates your time experience, ergo velocity is fundamental, time isn't. Yes time is a dimension because it's a measure, like temperature is a measure, but it's not a dimension you can move in. Yes you can do useful mathematics by considering it to be perpendicular to the spatial dimensions, but that's only maths. It isn't really perpendicular. It's got as much direction and perpendicularity as the set of integers. Now stop pretending I said things I didn't in order to launch "straw man" attempts to discredit my argument. Ed. Did you skip over the bits of dictionary definition that busted your axiomatic doctrine? Here is again. Look it up on google yourself. 5. Physics: A physical property, such as mass, length, time, or a combination thereof, regarded as a fundamental measure or as one of a set of fundamental measures of a physical quantity: Velocity has the dimensions of length divided by time. http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=dimension%3Adefinition&meta= Try arguing about the geometrical necessity of mass. And please don't try the Grade School insults. Try logical, honest, reasoned scientific debate instead.

DH: the difference is that my spacetime is timeless. My c is fundamental, it's a velocity not a speed, and its true dimensions are not length and time because these depend on your velocity with respect to c. It means all reference frames are subjective, none are objective. That leaves me no room for an absolute reference frame. Semantics maybe to you, but it's important to me. I guess I do refer to the Universe. If we sit motionless in space the stars are spherical, and a rod is 7m long. But if we zip around at .99c our time dilation is sevenfold, as is the length contraction. The stars are now like thickcrust pizzas all face-on, rotating in a very strange fashion. And the rod is maybe 7m long, or maybe 1m long depending on our direction of approach. Sure, if the whole Universe was zipping along with us at .99c we wouldn't know the difference, the time dilation would be offset by the length contraction. The spinning stars would be spheres again. So I guess the Universe is my aether and my absolute reference frame, only I don't know and don't care if it's really absolute. What's absolute enough is the spherical shape of Saturn with its circular rings, the shadow on its face that I can triangulate to work out a billion miles. If I blast off towards it at .99c I know it hasn't turned into a flat striped disc where Mars used to be.

Aw, sugar that pill Zanket. I'll have to get back to you on that acceleration example. Is that a typo DH? Aren't you saying b is false? PS: I don't have a secret absolute reference frame. But I do have a touch of aether - not the old-style aether wind stuff, but a property of space that sets c and distinguishes it from nothing. This is space rather than spacetime, time is subjective to velocity, and while velocity is limited to c, speed is not. And my own typo is that I should have said The apparent speed rather than The apparent velocity.

And if and when you get back to me, please try to keep it short. Take your bestest, most crucial telling point of superior logic, and use it to point out the flaw in TIME EXPLAINED. That's science Ed.

For the record, I don't think there's anything wrong with Special Relativity. But I don't think people properly understand what it really means. This makes me feel less confident about General Relativity, enough to listen to Zanket regardless of the longevity of the theory. Please can we nail down this point: a) The apparent velocity of a meteorite falling past a 30m tree is limited to c in the tree's frame. b) The apparent velocity of a stationary meteor puncturing a relativistic 30m rocket from top to bottom is not limited to c in the crew's frame. Everybody agrees with a, but can anybody give some cool calm maths to illustrate why b is right or wrong, with particular attention to the limit condition?

I didn't say anything about an absolute reference frame in the essay, so it's wrong of you to say I said it or even implied it, and then use that to try to disprove what I did actually say. And my argument is there is no time travel. There's no semantics in that. But you keep talking about time dilation as if it's time travel, so if anybody has a problem with their semantics it's you. No. Motion is the fundamental thing that is there, not time. That's the whole point of the essay. You flatly deny this then use it to try to disprove the essay. That's no proof at all. It's like me declaring 1+1=3 and then saying I therefore disprove 1+1=2. No. Motion is motion. Or more properly velocity, expressed in the same fundamental units as c. You measure it using space and time, but your experience of time depends on your own motion through space. A photon travelling at c experiences no time. As far as the photon is concerned, its speed is infinite. And whilst there's no time for the photon, there are events. Events are events, not coordinates. Sure you can assign numbers to mark out the position of events in space. These numbers are coordinates. You can move at will from one space coordinate to another. You can assign a fourth number to denote the event in your experience of time, but it's not a coordinate. You cannot move at will to a new time coordinate. Yes, we refer to time when we describe an event. But in the cylinder and the nail A happens before B, or B happens before A depending on your viewpoint. The event sequence depends on whether you're riding a moving cylinder or a moving nail. That means it's subjective, and is therefore not a fundamental property of the event. See my Einstein quote on this a few posts back. Look it up Ed. A dimension is a measured property, not a measured direction. And ask yourself where "perpendicular" comes from here. Nowhere. 5. Physics: A physical property, such as mass, length, time, or a combination thereof, regarded as a fundamental measure or as one of a set of fundamental measures of a physical quantity: Velocity has the dimensions of length divided by time. Again you're making a flat assertion then trying to use it disprove the essay. We've covered this already. I've already said there's no absolute frame of reference when it comes to time. See previous post. There is "no one place in time" because there is no fundamental time. My now is not different to your now, because when we collide we collide now. I don't collide with you before you collide with me, whatever our clocks say. I'm not talking semantics, you are. I explained time, you refuse to accept it because you're still clinging to the groundless axiom that time is a length. And you're using this as some kind of proof. It doesn't work Ed. Read the essay again. Properly. This time with an open, scientific mind. It is what Einstein thought.

That's a long post Ed. Let's see now: It was at the same time. They didn't miss each other by a minute. BANG, they collided, clock 1 didn't hit clock 2 before clock 2 hit clock 1, whatever their readings said. Basically yes. The clock that was moving had its mechanism "slowed down" because the lateral motion of its photons/atoms/electrons had to cover the forward travelling motion. Look at the triangles in this "time dilation" article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_dilation No Ed. It experienced a different amount of time. I hope we can all agree on that. But your "must" is plucked out of the air. There's no "must" about it. Your "must" presumes that time is a dimension you can travel through, rather than a dimension that is merely a measure of events and motions. I never said anything about any Absolute Frame of Reference. So how you can use this to say my argument is self-contradictory I don't know. What I'm saying is that all frames of reference are subjective, because time is an experience derived from motion rather than a fundamental property. If all frames are subjective, none are objective, and no absolute frame of reference is objective either. See above re Absolute Frame of Reference. Now does have meaning. It has crucial meaning. It's the only place "in time" that there is. And regardless of your time experience, there is only now. That means time travel is impossible. Yep, I know about muons. I'm not disputing Special Relativity. I'm arguing for the correct interpretation of it. OK I'm at work, so I'll have to respond to your other points later.

Zanket: I think you ought to change the introduction in your paper to talk about a meteorite falling past a 30m tree, and then about a stationary meteor puncturing a relativistic 30m rocket from top to bottom. The duration of the former is limited to c in the tree's frame, whilst the duration of the latter is not limited to c in the crew's frame. This is clearer than the receding star. Personally I'd also change the word "flaw" to something like "query". Yes, there's something important here, but I'm not sure your conclusions are right. In fact I'm wondering whether you're going in the wrong direction. The black hole is the problem, because whilst you're falling from infinity to that event horizon I could be overtaking you in my powered spaceship: and as far as you're concerned, I'm travelling faster than c. I need to think some more about this. I'm pretty sure the answer will come in time.

Whoa there. You have used a lot of analogies: Agreed. None of the analogies are proven to be strong: Who proves analogies? Not me. They're just analogies to help understanding. Thus they form a weak analogy and enter the False Analogy category: They're just analogies. Who says they're weak? You. Who then says they're false? You. And look at you with your "thus", you're pretending to employ deductive reasoning. Come off it Ed. No it doesn't. The whole argument is that time is an experience based on motion, like heat. Not a perception like colour. As for evidence, I keep telling you about two clocks colliding. One of these clocks travelled fast and far though space, and has experienced less time, but you insist it has "travelled" in time even though both clocks collide at the same time. It's so blindingly obvious. So crushingly simple. But you refuse to acknowledge the evidence I give, and you're blind to the lack of evidence for your own view. Ed, this is the most important essay you will ever read on a bulletin board. In a while it won't be on a bulletin board. It'll be in magazines. It will be on TV. It will become accepted mainstream science. People will win prizes. This is what Einstein thought. It isn't crackpot nonsense. Unconvince yourself that it is.

Zanket: Sorry about the English thing. My mistake. DH: Stop digging. If you travel very very fast you can traverse a great distance in what to you seems like a short time. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_dilation Let's say you manage to accelerate to a huge velocity very close to c, such that you can travel a light year in what seems like 24 hours. You aren't actually exceeding c of course, but your time dilation is such that when you look at your shipboard clock, you passed Earth on Sunday, and Alpha Proxima on Thursday. Whilst traversing this distance, your rocket hit a ball that was sitting motionless in space. This ball penetrated the rocket and traversed it from top to bottom. Now. As measured by your shipboard clock, what fraction of a second did it take the ball to traverse your rocket? Or let's look at it another way. How long did it take your rocket to traverse the ball? Oh, and let's say your rocket is 300,000 kilometres long. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light-year A light year is 9,460,730,472,580,800 metres. You traverse this in 24 hours according to your shipboard clock. Your rocket is 300,000,000 metres long. So it took you: (300,000,000 / 9,460,730,472,580,800) * 24 hours ..to traverse the ball. There are 3600 seconds in an hour so that's: (300,000,000 / 9,460,730,472,580,800) * 86,400 seconds = 300,000,000 * 86,400 / 9,460,730,472,580,800 seconds = 25,920,000,000,000 / 9,460,730,472,580,800 seconds Chop both sides by a factor of a million: 25,920,000 / 9,460,730,472 seconds And again: 25 / 9,460 seconds Have I said enough yet?

It's a limit condition DH. OK, you've got this ball sitting there in space, and along comes this relativistic rocket. BANG! If the rocket is travelling at c, the stationary ball takes zero time to traverse the interior of the rocket as far as the crew are concerned. You can reduce the velocity of the rocket by as little as you like, and the stationary ball takes as little time as you like to traverse the interior of the rocket as far as the crew are concerned. Nowhere have we contradicted Special Relativity. Note that at c your apparent speed is infinite because Speed = Distance / Time and your time experience is zero. Thus the apparent speed of the ball can also be infinite. If you think I'm right you should say sorry to Zanket. English isn't his first language so try to cut him some slack. And read TIME EXPLAINED again.

DH: Stop saying crackpot. People call other people crackpots far too quickly. Sure Zanket might be wrong, but I wouldn't be too sure about him being wrong about everything. The thing you're forgetting is that when the crew are travelling at a velocity of c, they experience no time. Zero. Zip. Nil. None. And that ball inside the rocket might be sitting still, with an absolute velocity of 0. So it traverses the rocket interior at c. And it takes no time at all as far as the crew are concerned. Jeez, read Time Explained, try to get a handle on it, and right or wrong try not to be so rude.

D H, check out the link I posted at #54. This was a guy who said what you said: Now, from equation [16] one gets: [elapsed time]² = (T1-T2)² = 1/sh(aT)² = 1/th(aT)² - 1 = 1/v² - 1 Indeed, as v approaches the speed of light the time elapsed can be zero.

In his response to Godel's paper in the Schilpp volume, Einstein acknowledged that "the problem here disturbed me at the time of the building up of the general theory of relativity." This problem he described as follows: "Is what remains of temporal connection between world-points in the theory of relativity an asymettrical relation (like time, intuitively understood, and unlike space), or would one be just as much justified to assert A is before P as to assert that A is after P? The issue could also be put this way: is relativistic space-time in essense a space or a time." Don't preach to be about where the science is swansont. Science is reading the essay and demolishing it with careful reasoning and incisive logic. Science is doing that little colour perception experiment to grasp the distinction between experience and fundament. Not pronouncing the whole thing metaphysics of little merit and sniping from the sidelines with holier-than-thou quips like a glimmer of physics and where the science is. If you're truly a scientist, if you really are a physics expert, you know what you have to do. It's that simple.

D H: I don't understand Zanket's paper. But I've seen this before. There was a guy called lalbatros who argued blue in the face that Zanket was wrong, then conceded he was right. Fine, talk with the guy, debate. Knock the argument down. But please resist the temptation to say stuff like "people like you are dangerous". One day people like Zanket will be right. And then the dangerous people are the other guys. http://forum.physorg.com/index.php?showtopic=9591&st=122

Swansont, you didn't respond to the first portion of my post. Let me reiterate: You immediately dismissed the essay as semantics, lacking in mathematics. I can't use mathematics to disprove an axiom. You justify your position by talking about "metaphysics of little merit". And in the same breath you rub salt into the wound by talking about "a glimmer of actual physics" and "pointing out the flaws in my argument". You haven't pointed out any flaws, you've dismissed the entirety. That's not scientific discussion. If you want scientific discussion sit down, read the essay properly, ask me for any necessary clarification, then challenge me on any particular point or deduction or conclusion. Quote a paragraph and say why its wrong. Tell me where the argument falls down. You can't or you won't. OK no problem. But don't pretend to all and sundry, or to yourself, that you're the scientist here.

Swansont: By your first comment I meant your post #25 in response to my post #23 on the Relative Motion Question thread. You immediately dismissed the essay as semantics, lacking in mathematics. I can't use mathematics to disprove an axiom. Now you justify your position by talking about metaphysics of little merit. And in the same breath you rub salt into the wound by talking about "a glimmer of actual physics" and pointing out the flaws in my argument. You haven't pointed out any flaws, you've dismissed the entirety. That's not scientific discussion. If you want a scientific discussion sit down, read the essay properly, ask me for any clarification I can give, then challenge me on any particular point or deduction or conclusion. Quote a paragraph and say why its wrong. Tell me where the argument falls down. I don't think you'll able to. What I think you will find it a powerful reasoned argument. I ignored your post #14 because I took it as an insult saying I don't understand relativity. There was another one at post #17 that I didn't reply to where you said now was meaningless, which I took to be more metaphysics dismissal. If you want a response to these or anything else I'll give it.

Swansont: it didn't get moved. This is where I put it. Check with Dave who I PMd. And note your first comment: http://www.scienceforums.net/showthread.php?t=23279&page=2 Look to yourself when you say discuss your conjecture, civil manner, or scientific process. And please don't pretend you've actually read the essay. You skimmed it, saw there was no maths, and decided it was claptrap. If you had read it, if anybody had read it, we'd at least be talking about colour perception and the difference between experience and empirical reality. Read the twins paradox conversation I had with ParanoiA. I explained it, not you. I'm not some foolish crank who knows nothing. So stop treating me like one.

I haven't misunderstood anything, I know about special relativity, and general relativity, and clock experiments. Please don't suggest that experiments prove me wrong. I'm not in the least confused. You are. Now is not dependent on the observer. You and I might be travelling at very different velocities. We might start off a great distance apart. We might also be undergoing different gravitational effects. Yes, our clocks will be marking time at two different rates. But when we collide, we collide NOW. That's the absolute now, the only now, and it has total significance. It means you can't move through time, as the essay explains. I've just seen an adjacent thread about a Hollow Earth. And the aeons post above. Is that the kind of company I'm keeping? No wonder I'm talking to only young Ed, who has merely skimmed TIME EXPLAINED. And no wonder swansont can't be bothered to even do that. Jeez.