Re: Sample of my SR model"s interpretation - first paradox

From: eelgro (eelgro_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 11/15/04 

Date: 15 Nov 2004 12:43:41 -0800

Bill:
"SR, in its domain of applicability, is fully in accord with
experiment"
By accusing me of something unrelated to what I have been espousing,
you might just as well have called me a witch. This is the common,
unthinking response I usually get from 'believers' of orthodoxy. So
knee-jerk reflexive. I have am not ‘challenging' the Lorentz
transform.

"…so that is all that counts."
No, that is not true. Equations provide answers to questions in their
domain of competence. But models provide some things that an equation
does not, namely ‘hints' as to further questions that might be useful
to ask; and at arriving at easier ways of solving problems, by so
doing, than are available only by using those equations. I will
illustrate this later using my Al and Bert example.

John Anderson :
"SR doesn't have paradoxes that need resolving. They were resolved
decades ago."
See my first comment to Bill above. You are accusing me of something
that I am not espousing. Like I said, this is the common type of
response made by uncritical readers blinded by their zeal.
Relativistic contradictions have always been resolvable. But
paradoxes mean something else. (See in what follows.)

(A more thoughtful) Bill:
"Gamma has got nothing to do with how far Bert is ahead of Al - that
has got to do with how long Al accelerated and how long he remains at
speed v."
Of course you are right. I am excerpting my writings, unfortunately
leaving out some details. I was assuming near instantaneous
accelerations taking practically no time to reach velocity v from a
standing start, in order to simplify discussion. Or you can view this
as two Al's – one at rest, at the moment he is passed by his
doppelganger, who has already been accelerated to velocity v.

"This sort of thing can be tricky stuff. I suggest you fix up your
notation before preceding and consider avoiding terms like – new
perceptual reality."
By thinking in terms of my model I am able to more clearly see the
problem. I am illustrating that here. So it is not as ‘tricky' as
might be thought by someone without the use of that model.

Now about those paradoxes. Reviewing what I have previously written:
     We have Al at relative rest with Bert, seeing Bert's clock
showing a time reading "-D years" at a distance D light years ahead.
If Al had instead traveled at velocity v through that same spot, Al
would still have seen Bert's clock reading "-D years". But Bert's
clock would have appeared to be further distant, namely 1T = T =
f(1-v)D = kD light years away, k = sqrt( (1+v)/(1-v) ) > 1. Some of
this is easier to see from Bert's point of view. Regardless of Al's
speed, both he and his doppelganger, passing through the same spot,
SHOULD see the same clock image, as they are both hit in the eye by
the same ray of light. But how do we explain the discrepancy in how
far away things appear? After all the ray of light is the same in
both cases. It hasn't changed. (If both observers are present
simultaneously, we can split the beam into two paths, one for each
observer.) So the observers must be the things that are physically
different. By making the moving observer physically different, the
orthodox relativist can ‘justify' why the moving Al might differ in
his opinion as to how far away Bert appeared to be. The orthodox
relativist requires that the moving Al be relativistically contracted.
 Then the lenses in Al's eyes and in any telescope he is carting along
with him must also be shallower, i.e. less convex and less concave
than when they were at relative rest to Bert. As the lenses become
shallower they more closely approximate panes of flat glass, thus
losing their former magnifying strength, thereby making objects appear
to be further away. The stationary Al claims the ‘real' distance to
Bert is –D lightyears and that the moving Al mismeasures this ‘true'
distance due to that ‘damaging' relativistic distortion introduced
into his moving instruments of observation, his eyes.
     But the moving Al has absolutely no evidence that anything has
changed within his own physical makeup. The orthodox model defaults
to a single light beam in a single reality that contains two observers
who ‘agree to disagree' about their measurements. My model does not.
As viewed by stationary observers the moving observer MUST physically
change in the most incredible ways. His *** must teleport through
time so as to be slightly farther in the future than his ***. His
width must physically contract by a factor of f (f^2 + v^2 = 1).
These can't simply be affectations attributable solely to measuring
instruments being at rest. If the moving Al doesn't REALLY
relativistically contract, he won't ‘really' see Bert appear to be
further away than before. But he does! So these effects must be
genuine, as real as it is possible to physically subject such things
to examination. When a too-long pole flies through a too-short barn,
with both doors then temporarily closed, the pole must ACTUALLY be
physically contained within that barn. It must be physically shorter
than it was at rest with respect to the barn. These things must
REALLY happen.
     On the other hand, such incredible changes are as completely
UNREAL to their moving subject as they are real to the stationary
observer. If such changes are so genuinely real, he asks, how come
they have absolutely no noticeable effect on him? While in flight,
parts of his body were teleported into the future for God's sake! And
yet not even a stretch mark to commemorate the event? The orthodox
relativist attempts to avoid the issue by proclaiming, "That is simply
the way things are!" But this begs the question. If time after time,
when a magician waved his wand and made a rabbit appear out of his
hat, would physicists simply conclude that was the way the world
works? No! They would attempt to discover what physical mechanisms
connected the rabbit's appearance to the magician's wave, the specific
actions that tied the two events together. In the process they might
learn quite more than is given through blind acceptance. Orthodox SR
does NOT do that with relativistic effects. The stationary observer
sees acceleration ‘causing' objects to weirdly contract. But
acceleration and contraction are physical processes. Where are the
series of physical linkages (as viewed by the stationary observer)
that concretely tie the two mechanisms, cause and effect, together?
     If a 17th century naturalist looked through a lens and saw
objects magnified, would he say, "Looking through specially cut glass
makes things look bigger, and that is all I have to know about that,
as I have Snell's Law to give me the exact quantitative results"? No!
 He would search for a model of how rays of light work that would
allow him to see how light rays should bend when going from air
through glass. A model shows him WHY and EXACTLY HOW the lens
magnifies. But we get none of that with SR orthodoxy. But by
refraining from using ANY model, the orthodox relativist gets one
anyway - a kind of default, agnostic booby prize. One that is most
certainly NOT correct. All of this is a historical legacy from
quantum theory. No one has been smart enough to model QT, so it has
become ‘post-modern chic' to claim that models are passé. Baloney!
Having a mathematical formula to give correct quantitative results is
no substitute for a model that shows more of what is actually going on
to CREATE that mathematical structure for the reality under
investigation.
     So our FIRST PARADOX is that relativistic effects must actually
occur to the moving observer (as seen by the stationary observer) or
otherwise the accelerated observer wouldn't experience what he claims
that he does experience. Yet such exotic effects go completely
unnoticed by the moving observer himself. I know there are rationales
to ‘explain' all this away. (On the order of, "If the whole universe
shrank to half its size, nobody would notice because all our rulers
would also be half their original size. So guess what! The whole
universe HAS shrunk to half its size! Blah, blah, blah." Yeah,
sure.) But such a rationalization fails to explain why there is no
physical chain of events physically linking these weird
spatial-temporal consequences to the observer's original change in
velocity. This is a physics devoid of any physical plenum, any
physical substrate to reality. It is motivated solely by an
ectoplasmic ‘mathematical necessity' that demands "IT BE SO". A
brother's rocket ship is pushed forward by rockets, returning him
years younger than his twin, and no one asks how this was PHYSICALLY
accomplished. Mathematical modalities now ‘trump' the need to explain
physical processes in detail. (Second and Third Paradoxes are coming;
i.e. to be continued.)
             
lee groth

Loading