Re: OWLS & Out of Sync Clocks-By How Much Are They Out of Sync.


"kk" <mr_kurt_kingston@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1131031850.782419.199640@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Harry wrote:
> >Don't fool yourself: *many* people incl. myself have
> >searched for such a way [to absolutely synch clocks]...
>
> List one textbook on special relativity that states that
> a goal of mainstream theoretical or practical physicists
> is to find a way to absolutely synchronize clocks.

It may not be mainstream, but nevertheless it does happen - I even know of a
few such experiments going on (typically of the M-M/Miller type).

> Show us where Einstein both admitted that he could not
> correctly synchronize clocks,

Apart from the phrasing: just read his paper of 1905. He made care not to
claim that it is "correct".

> and said that we should be searching for a way to do this.

He started with the assumption that that can't work (the PoR).

> List a popular book on special relativity which tells us
> explicitly that an important goal of physics is to find
> a way to absolutely synchronize clocks or that Einstein's
> clocks are incorrectly related, so all of SR's results
> are wrong.

That's a bit too narrowminded. Most popular textbooks forget to mention that
an important goal of experimental physics is to find a way to disprove
existing theories, in order to improve on them and to discover new things.

> What I am speaking of here in general is simply truth
> in advertising. It does not exist in the case of SR.
>
> >and I even know of one or two that could work - but only
> >if there is a little flaw in SRT.
>
> If SR's clocks are incorrectly related, then all of SR is
> flawed because all of SR was derived from letting two frames
> use two clocks to record two events.

Wrong. Read a good book on SRT, or just Einstein's 1905 paper.

> However, if the one or two methods about which you were
> talking have even little flaws, then they are worthless.

It depends on what the flaws are.

> >The problem is that I have come to realise that those
> >that I know require a huge investment of time and money
> >in order to obtain credible results, one way or another.
>
> Well, what is absolute time worth?
> On the other hand, my method is fairly cheap.
> It calls for the use of only a single atomic clock
> and two moving entities.

Then go for it. ;-)

> >If you want to dedicate your life to that, I'll be happy
> >to advice you, and maybe also Tom Roberts will be willing
> >to give some advice on error analyis when you design your
> >experiment.
>
> The first step is to get in down theoretically, and for that
> step, there is no worry about experimental error; however,
> my method is very simple and straightforward, so it could be
> used without much trouble.

I thought that you already had done that, for how else could you claim
anything?!

> [Harry stated re Einstein's "synchronization"]
> >That's a practical procedure - a convention that was first
> >proposed by Poincare.
>
> It may have been a mere practical procedure for Poincare,
> but Einstein claimed it to be the basis of theoretical
> flat space-time physics.

No. Read his 1905 paper.

> Einstein claimed that clocks must
> be set his way, and that all the results thereof are to be
> accepted as part of physics, including the invariance of
> light's one-way speed, the relativistic transformation
> equations, and the relativistic composition of velocities
> equation. Does this sound like a mere convention to you?

Reference please.

> >What do you find silly about SRT?
>
> It is extremely silly to say that one-way light speed
> invariance is a law of physics after one has forced
> clocks to obtain it (by sheer and mere definition).

Sure - and I have never read that except in inaccurate renderings of SRT.

> It is worse than silly to claim that Einstein's
> "time dilation" has anything to do with physics
> when it is merely an improper result due to the
> use of his out-of-synch clocks.

It's fully independent of that - you are being side tracked by an
inessential simplification.

> It is worse than silly to claim that Einstein's
> "length contraction" has anything to do with physics
> when it is merely an improper result due to the
> use of his out-of-synch clocks. (Since Einstein's
> observers cannot absolutely simultaneously locate
> a passing rod's end points, they cannot correctly
> measure its length, and it is incorrectly measured
> as being "shortened.)

Same. Length contraction was first of all the conclusion from the MMX, which
only has two-way speeds - and which likely is at the basis of Einstein's
definition of light speed.

> It is worse than silly to use incorrectly related
> clocks without (1) explicitly admitting that they
> are incorrectly related, (2) explicitly stating
> that the use is just a stopgap until a way is
> found to absolutely synchronize clocks.

You are attacking a straw man, but you still don't see it...

> It is both foolish and silly to claim that the PR
> in any way supports SR. (The PR merely says that
> all laws should be the same in all frames; it does
> not say which laws must be found, so it could not
> prefer one-way light speed invariance over one-way
> light speed variance.)

All inertial frames would *not* be equivalent in that case - for example, at
CERN they would measure different max. electron speeds depending on the time
of the day...

> It is silly to claim that SR is a scientific theory
> when it is essentially merely a clock-setting
> convention, as you yourself admitted above.

It's irrelevant to SR.

> You cannot obtain a scientific theory about nature
> from a convention.

Sure.

> (Note again that all of SR's
> results come from the use of at least two clocks
> per frame, so all of SR's results are given up
> front by a mere convention.)

Wrong. Very wrong. SR is *based* on *one clock* per frame. Which textbooks
did you read?

> I would give you more SR silliness, but I am getting
> tired of typing about it.

Good! - it was all misdirected.

> >>But Einstein did not (and could not) prove that
> >>clocks cannot be (absolutely) synchronized.
> >>That is why "such an experiment" may be possible.
>
> >That's an open door:
>
> But how many SR books state this? How many SR students
> know this? All I hear is that SR is a fully valid and
> fully accepted scientific theory which has no chance
> of being disproved because so many experiments have
> fully supported the silly thing for over 100 years!
>
> >no theory can prove itself to be 100% correct. That
> >such *may be* possible is very different from your
> >opinion that it *is* possible.
>
> Well, even a mere opinion that it merely *may* be
> possible is a far cry from the current view of SR as
> being locked in forever.
>
> >>([Harry] had _his_ fun with that big upfront SNIP!)
>
> >No fun: just cutting through to the essential point.
>
> You seem to have forgotten how you put it, so let me
> refresh your short memory:
>
> "SNIP fruitless debate on semantics" (I would call that
> having fun.)

No, I am very bored from seeing such waste of time.

> >>Now here a couple of those details: (1) all
> >>parts of the experiment must lie on a single
> >>line; (2) you can get by with only one running
> >>clock up front since all you need to do is to
> >>compare, not quantify, equal speeds of the
> >>objects which start the clocks.)
>
> >I don't know what you're after, but perhaps you overlook
> >the fact that in SRT what appears as "equal speeds" in one
> >frame, appears as different speeds in another frame. You'd
> >better first of all have a hypothesis about a glitch in the
> >laws of SRT, otherwise you'll be chasing windmills. Especially
> >single-line motion is very straightforward (excuse me for the
> >pun), and the symmetry of the LT doesn't leave any possibility
> >on success - they have been extensively verified in such
> >experiments.
>
> See, the silliness of SR even destroys perfectly good and
> useful phrases such as "equal speeds." Thanks to SR's pure
> silliness, I (and others) must continuously guard against
> saying simply "synchronous clocks" instead of "absolutely
> synchronous clocks," and "equal speeds" instead of "truly
> equal relative speeds."

The problem is (going in circles!) to establish that. OK I'll read on.

> Let me further explain my "equal speeds" thingie:
>
> Picture a long rod floating in space. At two points
> of the rod is an unstarted clock set to start on zero
> when hit by a movable object.
>
> ----[0]----------------------------------------[0]-----
>
>
> Now add a couple of movable objects somewhere in-
> between:
> ----[0]------------------@--@------------------[0]-----
>
> Just as in your favorite "theory" of flat space-time,
> i.e., just as in special relativity "theory," I simply
> ignore the possibility that the rod may be moving through
> space (just as we know that light can move through space),
> so I am interested in only the motions of objects along
> the rod **relative to** the clocks.
>
> However, even merely *relative* motion must be *correctly*
> measured, but this is not possible in SR due to the
> (absolute) asynchronousness of Albert's silly clocks.
>
> Clearly, my main problem is how to make sure that
> the objects' merely relative speeds are equal as
> each moves toward its clock in this 'closed world'
> (aka an inertial ref. frame).
>
> (And while I am at it, I should point out that SR is
> also silly because it cannot correctly measure even
> its own merely relative speeds!)
>
> Are you beginning to get the picture? Does it seem like
> an impossibly complicated and terribly expensive deal?
>
> Slide a couple of objects toward a couple of clocks at
> (truly) equal speeds wrt to the clocks, and - voila! -
> you have (absolute) synchronization!

You indeed propose the kind of experiment that I suspected above. The point
that you continue to miss: if the scientists at CERN are not cheating us
every day, then it is to be expected that your experiment will give us the
result as predicted by SRT. The main point: you can't know what *truly*
equal speeds are. Never heard the song, "there's a hole in the bucket"?

> (Of course, there are a few more important details to
> attend to, but these have been worked out.)

Good luck. When you have a proposal + calculation ready, there may be some
people here willing to debunk it.

Harald


.

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