Re: .Re: Why all the fascination with E = mc^2 ??

From: Leonard Pardin (leoppard_at_MailAndNews.com)
Date: 06/06/04 

Date: 5 Jun 2004 17:14:56 -0700

D.McAnally@i'm_a_gnu.uq.net.au (David McAnally) wrote in message news:<c9stf3$l9e$1@bunyip.cc.uq.edu.au>...
> leoppard@MailAndNews.com (Leonard Pardin) writes:
>
>
> Einstein's First Postulate (the Principle of Relativity) states that the
> physical laws relative to all inertial frames of reference are identical.
> There is no physical experiment that can distinguish between them. This
> means that no inertial frame of reference is more special than any other.

    If that's true, then the inertial frame that is stationary
relative to the radiating body must be indistinguishable from any
other frame. Yet, in that frame, no loss of mass is demonstrated.

    And that is the crux of our disagreement. Us common folk think of
a reference frame as a place, but we can think of it as simply a
coordinate system. As a practical matter,though, the coordinate
system that follows the object to be analyzed may be the most
important frame depending on what we are seeking.

   If I am on a ship in the ocean studying another distant ship, I may
want to know his speed relative to my ship. In that case, the
reference frame centered on my ship is the most important. If I want
to know how fast the other ship is traveling relative to the water,
the sea would be the most important frame.

    But if I want to know how fast one of the crew is running along
the deck of the other ship relative to the other ship, the reference
frame surrounding that other ship is the most important frame. In
order to calculate that information, adjustments to my own frame of
reference must be made. I must triangulate the other ship to get its
size, and distance. Then I have compute the distance the crewman runs
and time it. In other words, the information I am trying to calculate
is what is actually happening in the other ship's frame of reference.
But the ultimate answer, the true answer, that which is really
happening on the other ship, is best measured by using the reference
frame of that other ship.

    If our ships were space ships traveling some hefty percentage of
the speed of light, the data collected on my own ship would be skewed,
and adjustments would have to be made using the Lorentz equations. If
all physical laws must be the same for all frames, then the final
result of my calculations should be the same as the final result of
the calculations made aboard the other ship. That's where the action
is. If it isn't, then either my calculations are wrong or the laws of
physics don't apply equally to all reference frames.

<snip>
  
> > The question: why is the mass relative to the first frame not
> >"invariant?"
>
> Who said that it was not invariant? I didn't. Your assertion that
> we do not regard it as invariant was based on your having performed the
> illegal operation of dividing by zero. So your assertion here carries
> absolutely no weight.
>
> The rest of what you wrote was also based on your illegal operation of
> dividing by zero, so that the rest of what you wrote was all noise and no
> signal.
>
> David
>

     I not dividing anything (I hate math, any math. You won't catch
me dividing if I can help it). Einstein postulates a frame that is
stationary relative to the radiating body. He tells us what the mass
of the body is before and after radiation relative to that stationary
frame. No loss of mass occurs relative to the stationary frame.

   Let me quote you in providing Einstein's First Postulate (the
Principle of Relativity): "physical laws relative to all inertial
frames of reference are identical. There is no physical experiment
that can distinguish between them. This means that no inertial frame
of reference is more special than any other." (Now don't tell me
that's wrong, because I quoted from your statement at the beginning of
this post.)

     It follows then (Damn, I am beginning to sound like Einstein)
that inasmuch as there is no loss of mass in the frame that is
stationary relative to the radiating body, there can be no loss of
mass relative to any other reference frame, since no reference frame
is more special than any other.

     To us laymen, that makes much more sense. It seems to me that
adjustments have to be made to the other frames to comport with what
is actually going on in the reference frame that is traveling along
with the radiating body. After all, that's where the action is.

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