Re: 1c+1c Closing Velocity...,answer to Henri Wilson

From: The Ghost In The Machine (ewill_at_sirius.athghost7038suus.net)
Date: 02/12/05 

Date: Sat, 12 Feb 2005 16:00:03 GMT

In sci.physics.relativity, Eric Gisse
<jowr.pi@gmail.com>
 wrote
on 12 Feb 2005 02:38:56 -0800
<1108204736.562236.161460@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com>:
>
> The Ghost In The Machine wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
>> >
>> >>
>> >>http://www.astronomynotes.com/starprop/s12.htm
>> >>http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2001/AsserEstriplet.shtml
>> >>
>> >>>
>> >>> I think you will soon be converted, Ghost.
>> >>
>> >>I wouldn't be so sure of that. There are too many results
>> >>neatly explained by SR.
>> >
>> > Name one.
>>
>> [1] GPS. Oh, that's right, it's a clock malfunction.
>> [2] Pi meson storage ring.
>> [3] Muons coming out of the atmosphere. Admittedly, this one's
>> a bit hard to show directly.
>> [4] Supernovae. Various artifacts are an issue if one assumes
>> c' = c+v, such as the neutrinos traveling "faster than light".
>> There's also the issue that there are a freaking lot of them.
>> [5] Michelson-Morley disproves rigid aether. I'm not sure if
>> it's been repeated with a moving light source or not (the
>> logical candidate would be the brightest thing in the sky
>> apart from the Sun -- Venus).
>> [6] Mass gain in accelerators has to be accounted for.
>>
>> However, *none of these are proof of SR OR GR*. Just very good
>> evidence.
>
> One of these days you are gonna snap when you realise how much time you
> spent being patient with Henri and Androcles. No matter how patient,
> cordial, supporting, and helpful you are - he will not bend.

Heh...well, I freely admit I'm stubborn in my own way.
But they sure aren't bending. I might as well be blowing
on the support post of a skyscraper; even supernovae didn't
seem to faze them all that much. "Oh, a star blew up,
and ballistic theory predicts its intensity perfectly, and
of course the neutrinos are traveling faster than light".
(This is a paraphrase. I'd have to look for an exact
quote, but at that point my brain began to melt a la
Salvador Dali's clocks.)

I'm still trying to figure out precisely how to approach
Androcles' mosquito. It's actually a pretty problem, as
he's specified the length of the ladder in the moving frame,
and the mosquito speed in the still frame. Of course Androcles
will never believe the results, which among other things
requires the ladder to shrink in the direction of its travel.

(It's admittedly a miniscule shrinkage given the velocities used,
about the order of a fraction of an atomic nucleus. From
a practical standpoint one might as well use Newtonian, as
no one will be able to measure the difference.)

And then there's that character with the pumps and a 1-light-year-long
wooden trough containing water. There's a few issues he might have
to work out first -- like how to keep the water from freezing in the
trough, if it even can stay in the trough with the lack of gravity,
and how to keep the wood from snapping in two, or stopping it from
vibrating. I doubt even carbon composites would help here.

>
> Henri is on record saying, and repeating, that he does not trust any
> experiment that supports SR or GR.

Can't be too careful. Al Qaeda might have been involved with
Michelson-Morley. Might have to throw in the Philadelphia
Experiment and the grays, too.

There's even been sightings of Kibo, and of course we can
always include the Loch Ness Monster. Does one of Saddam's
palaces include an interdimensional gate that we know of?

>
> He has a mental block to ANYTHING that supports SR or GR. When I
> confronted him with the Compton effect, which is an amazing use of
> conservation of energy within SR, he flusters. He cannot explain it, he
> cannot derive it using Newtonian mechanics [though he said he could],
> and the thread ended with him proclaiming how the ballistic theory
> proves everything.

That's a darned good confirmation, too -- but if that can't
dislodge him, nothing will. If one assumes a moving laser of
velocity 3 m/s = 10^-8c, then:

Newtonian:
KE - KE_0 = 1/2 m_ph ((1 + 10^-7)c)^2 - 1/2 m_ph c^2
          = 1/2 m_ph (2 * 10^-8 + 10^-16) c

(where m_ph is admittedly a "fudge factor").

SR:
KE - KE_0 = h v (1 / sqrt(1 - 10^-16) - 1) ~= h v (5 * 10^-17) c

(where "v" in this case is actually nu, the light frequency).

Looks even easier than affixing a moving light source to MMX
(electrons are easy targets as there are so many of 'em :-) ),
and if we can measure an error of 4.46 * 10^-10, we can
measure 2 * 10^-8.

But it's still not proof of SR -- just very very good evidence.
(It's a reasonably good *disproof* of Newtonian, of course.)

I'm a little surprised Compton scattering wasn't covered in my
studies -- I had 2 quarters of QM and 1 quarter of solid state
physics; the math got very hairy and I basically discontinued
my efforts at delving further. I might have been able to
compute the eigenstates of a hydrogen atom at one point.

Of course, I might simply have forgotten it. It's been a
long time since I've had to do anything close to computing
the eigenstates of a hydrogen atom, in my line of work.
Usually I chase things of an entirely different sort: man made
software bugs. :-)

>
> He does NOT want to believe. It is plainly simple as that. I personally
> think he tried to understand SR and/or GR in the past and failed, and
> that failure gnaws at him.
>
> He will rant randomly about how relativity is a conjecture put forth
> only by the West. Which amazes me because the West [North America, west
> Asia, Aussieland, Europe] has the most technologically advanced nations
> on Earth with the best quality of living and education. Every time he
> pushes that argument, he argues FOR relativity because I would prefer
> to live in say, Germany or Austrailia instead of just about anywhere in
> Africa...

I'll admit I wonder about Africa. The bits that show up in
the news are pretty corrupt on a good day, and downright
bloody on a bad. Some of their modifications, however,
are very interesting, though not always in a good way
(one particularly vicious industry apparently in South
Africa involves car add-ons to thwart carjacking; Unreal
Tournament could learn a few things from them :-/ ). I do
like their color and pattern sense, though; they somehow
manage to combine bright colors and jagged patterns without
looking totally garish.

But that's when the cloth isn't being bled on.

Sigh.

[rest snipped] 

-- 
#191, ewill3@earthlink.net
It's still legal to go .sigless.