Re: About absolute reference frame......

Tom Roberts wrote:
Phil wrote:

Well, Lorentz believed that light did, in fact, travel at a constant velocity relative to "the ether,"


Sure. Because Maxwell's equations as then understood (~1904) were valid in the ether frame. As they are not invariant under Galilean transforms, people expected Maxwell's equations to not be valid in labs on the moving earth. But experiments did indeed show them to be valid. So Lorentz, Poincare', and Einstein (plus others) looked for ways to explain this. Einstein's approach has won out over the others.


The modern objection to absolute laws is more of a philosophical objection, rather than one which necessarily follows from experiments.


Not true at all. At present there is no local experiment that can detect any type of "absolute motion", reliably and reproducibly.

Come on, be honest here, don't just mindlessly defend the status quo without reason. True science is more than capable of handling criticisms, especially those that lead to new insights, new realizations and improvements in our understanding of nature, without having to resort to such measures. Can we see dinosaurs? No, so they never existed? That line of "reasoning" is great for debates, but it has no place in true science. We can't see that most of the mass of an atom is in a central region that Rutherford named the "nucleus," but it is, because that fact *necessarily follows* from things which we *can* observe. The first error in your reasoning is that the absence of an experiment that can measure absolute velocity (and there are some experiments that I would *not* consider to be a violation of the principle of relativity even if they could measure AV) "proves" that absolute laws are either non-existent or meaningless. In reality, it proves only what I said, namely EITHER that (1) there are no absolute laws, or (2) there are absolute laws, but you never find just one in any event, and when they are present, the INITIAL effect that one law has on the results is always exactly cancelled out by the initial effects from other absolute laws.

Logically speaking, you must dig deeper to know which of these two alternatives is correct, and scientifically speaking, you must do so because the alternative is to act like Galileo's jailers, people more concerned with "protecting the Great Beliefs" than with true science, true understanding, or honesty. Einstein would NEVER have tolerated such an attitude -- you KNOW that's true -- so why would you want to do that yourself? Be honest here about what "the facts" do, but also do NOT, tell you. If you do otherwise, I will, quite legitimately, look down on you as a roadblock to true science, Einstein's kind of science. Sorry to be "preachy" here, but this attitude is rampant out there, and it really needs to be *consciously* recognized and refuted, otherwise we really do end up acting just like Galileo's jailers (and yes, I was once in your shoes, until I was forced to wake up).

In reality, not one experiment has proven that light does *not* travel at a constant velocity relative to the medium of space, or that there are no laws that are functions of absolute velocity. In other words, not one experiment has proven that option (1) above is in fact the case. In fact, as I mentioned in this post (you removed that part), the fact that changing an experiment's absolute velocity and nothing else whatsoever about the experiment can change the results *proves* -- in exactly the same manner as it has been proven that the nucleus exists and dinosaurs once walked the Earth -- that option (2) above is correct, absolute laws do exist, *unless* I have made an error of logic and scientific reasoning. Now, if you can see some such error, please do tell me, and I will admit to the world that you, Tom, kicked my (mentally speaking) ass! No problem! I will be more intelligent as a result, and that's fine with me! But please, no debating tricks, no half-truths, and no mindless defense of the current beliefs, merely because no one before noticed this possible oversight or error.

There are a few toys masquerading as experiments that claim
to do so, but none are reproducible or reliable.

I am utterly unimpressed with ANY so-called "exception to the principle of relativity," other than the one I mention below, but not even that is necessary to prove, scientifically, that many of the laws of nature are in fact functions of absolute velocity, unless you or someone else can find a *legitimate* error in my reasoning. Actually, this isn't so bad, as it mostly means that we do not, after all, live in a "neutered" universe, one which has no laws which vary as a function of absolute velocity. Basically, the fact that the universe is *partially* relativistic means that we cannot use the absolute laws to measure our absolute velocity (I don't view the use of the CMBR as an exception to the P of R), but the fact that it is *only* partially relativistic means that we cannot stop an experiment, change our absolute velocity, and resume it without running a risk of changing the results. Nor can we travel along a closed path relative to an inertial observer without seeing results consistent with a higher average absolute velocity than the inertail observer, for the simple reason that the "closed-path" observer really does have a higher average absolute velocity, making it possible for the laws that do vary as a function of absolute velocity to affect him.


Actually, there is one experiment (that I am aware of) that truly violates the principle of relativity,


Reference, please.

It's the one I then described, starting below.


Physicists believe that if you travel in a straight line long enough (as in, follow a beam of light), you will eventually return to your starting point.


I have no idea where you got this. It is blatantly false. There are indeed certain cosmological models in which there are closed paths "around the universe", but they all include a "big crunch" that ends the universe, and it happens before it is possible to send a light ray all the way around, much less a timelike observer.

Steven Weinberg, among others, says so (p 34 of The First Three Minutes). Remember, the universe can, in theory, expand to a point where it takes a VERY long time to collapse, time enough for many trips around the universe. All that is necessary is for the combined mass of the universe to barely exceed the critical mass. A trillion years? No problem. A trillion trillion years? No problem. And during most of that time, the universe will be expanding, or contracting, or both (sequentially, of course), at a rate which is much less than the speed of light. Face reality here, it has long since been established that if the universe is closed, then unless the big crunch comes VERY quickly, light and other objects can travel around the universe. You can double-check on s.p.research, but when I posted this there a couple of years ago, no one brought up your "point," and for good reason; it isn't true. Look, I'll save you some of the trouble. It expands, starting now, for a trillion years. It then contracts for a trillion years, until the size is again what it is today. Do you ACTUALLY BELIEVE that light won't get around the universe in all that time, even given an *initial* rate of circumferential expansion greater than the speed of light? Yes, I haven't run the math here, but surely you already know what the result is going to be, especially given the number of top physicists who say that we can, in theory, return to our starting point by traveling in what appears to be a perfectly straight line.

At present there is no clear experimental or observational evidence that the universe is anything other than spatially flat at cosmological scales.

That's true.

That precludes such "all the way around" trips.

That's both stupid and false. For an ant, the Earth *appears* spatially flat. But it could still go around the Earth. Come on Tom, you seem like a bright guy, so WAKE UP! You don't *improve* the staus quo by mindlessly *defending* the staus quo. If I've made an error, but you don't know where, SAY SO! Maybe someone else can figure it out. Or maybe there's nothing to figure out, because today's physicists are not gods handing out perfect descriptions of nature. Maybe they're humans who occasionally have oversights, make errors, or draw partailly incorrect conclusions. Like, since we cannot measure our absolute velocity, *therefore* (the error), even if some laws are functions of absolute velocity, there is no reason to say so in our physical models. In reality, that is true *if and only if* those absolute laws have no visible effects under *any* circumstances. As soon as our experiments have results that can ONLY be explained by the presence of absolute laws, then we have a reason to acknowledge their existence in our physical models. And changing an experiment's absolute velocity in the middle, when it has been temporarily stopped, and then *observing* that this change in absolute velocity, and this change in absolute velocity ALONE, changed the results, *proves* that some of the laws affecting the results *must be* functions of absolute velocity. The error was to observe one aspect of our partially relativistic universe, and then fall prey to an *invalid* line of logic and reasoning, concluding that it is either entirely relativistic, or functionally equivalent to such a beast.

Phil


Tom Roberts
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Natural Philosophy - Its challenge to SR
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    (sci.physics.relativity)
  • Re: Natural Philosophy - Its challenge to SR
    ... those laws to create an "overly relativistic" physics. ... By "an overly relativistic physics," I don't mean the LAWS of relativity, but rather Einstein's attempt to always use relative references, rather than absolute references, in his models of reality. ... Einstein believed them, and in his SR paper, he took his realization that Poincare's "principle of relativity" was actually a LAW OF LAWS, a description of how the laws of nature were "designed," and phrased both it and a couple of "normal laws" from a viewpoint that was VERY biased, and excessively relativistic, thereby causing the usual damage that occurs whenever we try to fit a square peg into a round hole. ... Not sure what you mean here, but the 1st postulate CAN be restated as "the results of experiments are unaffected by their initial absolute velocity." ...
    (sci.physics.relativity)
  • Re: The Real TWINS Paradox - the Simplest Version
    ... The universe does allow an experiment to "reveal" to us that information about our "absolute velocity" which we could simply deduce on our own, ... If we KNOW, prior to running an experiment, that the experiment's velocity will include a change of 0.6c relative to inertial observer C, as seen by inertial observer C, then it would actually be amazing if the results of that experiment were NOT consistent with a change of 0.6c, such as an elapsed time of 0.8 relative to any inertial observer. ... Remember, relativity does not disprove absolute velocity; the conclusion has been that absolute velocity should be eliminated from physics because it is irrelevant, not because relativity has somehow proven that absolute velocity doesn't exist. ... My paper is "The Need for Absolute References in a Relativistic Universe," and its point is largely summed up in this exercise; if it NECESSARILY FOLLOWS from OBSERVATIONS that some laws are in fact functions of absolute velocity, then the fact that experimental results are independent of initial absolute velocity does not mean that we should declare that there are no "absolutes," no absolute laws, in our universe. ...
    (sci.physics.relativity)
  • Re: The Real TWINS Paradox - the Simplest Version
    ... then A's AVERAGE absolute velocity is also at least ... Remember, relativity does not disprove ... To claim that "I can't measure absolute velocity, therefore there are no absolute laws," is faulty reasoning, and in fact, if you read the old arguments carefully, Einstein and others said that there is no NEED to state that there are absolute laws, not that they do not exist! ...
    (sci.physics.relativity)
  • Re: Absolute speed
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