In an effort to eliminate some of the insanity among otherwise intelligent skeptics, I am attempting to inspire more skepticism among my fellow-skeptics regarding outlandish claims made by "theoretical physicists" (a.k.a. fantasy-makers) regarding time travel. I am disturbed to see so many wooed by the nonsensical babble they are spouting, and I hope you will take the time to read my blog post, copied below, in its entirety. I welcome your well-informed comments, as I will be discussing this topic on my radio show within the next couple of weeks.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
How the Publishing Industry is Blurring the Line Between Science and Fiction
At the risk of turning my blog into a collection of scientific articles, which I do not wish to do, I am providing some clarification on the issue of Einstein's "Theory of Relativity".
First, you should know that many scientists question the validity of Einstein's theory. It is, after all, a theory, and while certain aspects of it may turn out to be true, we do not currently have a way to test it with any degree of accuracy. However, assuming for a moment that it is accurate, let's examine what Einstein's theory of relativity actually states and/or means, as opposed to what many mistakenly believe that it states and/or imagine that it means.
In order to provide clarity, I present to you the fact that many people mis-use the word "time", which is poorly defined in almost every dictionary or science textbook you will ever read. It is this mass delusion that time is something other than the movement that it measures and represents, that causes people to conjure up images of dimensional, mystical, supernatural phenomenon, much like churchgoers experiencing "miracles" of healing based on their misunderstanding of the power of suggestion and how their perceptions can change as a result.
When you interchangeably use the word "time" to mean the same thing as "speed of movement", rather than separating the word time (which is a measuring system for measuring the movement of objects and the speed of objects that move) and the result of that movement, you begin to imagine that the word time somehow is what "causes" the movement.
It is the same thing as assuming that an inch, which is an expression of a measuring system, somehow is what causes something to stretch or shrink, rather than a static part of a measuring system used to accurately measure the item that is shrinking or expanding.
Another example would be to say that "the metric system expanded" when the item you are measuring stretches, or that the metric system shrunk because something you were measuring had shrunk after putting it through the dryer.
The metric system doesn't stretch, shrink, move, or do anything other than serve as a standard unit of measure. Similarly, time, as a measuring system, does not speed up, slow down, stretch, shrink, dilate, expand, bend, warp, or in any other way "change", because it is not something that exists in any other way other than to express the things that DO speed up, slow down, stretch, shrink, dilate, expand, bend, warp, or in any other way change.
For those of you who seem to think that the theory of relativity has something to do with "time slowing down", it is important to understand that, because Einstein spoke German, and because literal translation of any work is almost impossible due to the fact that not every German word has an equivalent in every other language, the best interpretation somehow got presented as "time slows down" at the rate of near-light speed, when what was actually meant was "the movement of objects contained in a vessel traveling at near-light speed slows down due to inertia". (Most scientists are woefully inept at expressing themselves accurately, believe it or not, and often take license with words in order to make things more understandable, which can ironically create more misunderstandings than clarity.)
Articles published in serious scientific journals discussing the experiments done on "clocks" (which are designed to measure and keep pace with the earth as it rotates on its axis in a 24-hour period) as somehow proving that time "warps" or "bends" when the clock is moving around and/or being blasted with radiation and/or particle accelerators make those who understand that time is a measuring system laugh out loud, because a clock is nothing more than a man-made machine designed to MEASURE the movement of the earth. It is not "time" itself. When a clock measures the movement of the earth (keeps pace with) "differently" than another clock connected to it that is not being subjected to the same conditions, it is only because the clock being subjected to conditions that affect the electro-magnetic field of the clock has begun to malfunction. It is as laughable as me saying that I have caused the earth to begin rotating more slowly because I found a way to reduce the amount of electricity going to my clock and therefore cause the clock to move more slowly. The clock is designed to maintain the same pace internally as the earth's movement as it rotates on its axis. That is what all of our clocks are designed to do. A clock keeping "time" (pace) with the earth's movement differently than another clock has nothing to do with how fast the earth is actually traveling. The earth is traveling at the same rate regardless of what millions of different clocks may say.
If I proudly proclaimed to you that I had managed to alter the speed of light by reducing the amount of electricity going to my lamp and, thereby dimming the light, you would laugh in my face. You should also laugh in the face of anyone, regardless of how many letters they may have after their name, for making such a ridiculous claim about "warping time" simply because they mange to cause a clock to become out of sync with the thing it was designed to be in sync with.
Once again, Einstein NEVER claimed that "time" was a "thing" that slowed down or sped up. At best, his theory of relativity expressed the fact that objects moving in a vessel traveling at the speed of light would most likely slow down due to inertia, and perhaps expressed it in a slang expression of the word "time" that caused people to imagine that time was something more than the measuring system that it is.
Here is an example of a nonsensical statement, taken from ScienceNews.com:
"Time dilation arises in two situations. In one case, time appears to move slower the closer you are to a massive object, such as the Earth. So a person hovering in a hot-air balloon, for example, actually ages faster than someone standing below."
WTF!?!?!?!? If you aren't laughing hysterically at that statement, you should be. I guarantee that if you put one twin in a hot air balloon for ten years, and you keep the other one on the ground for ten years, the only difference in whether they appear to age more quickly or slowly than one another will be accounted for by environmental conditions such as sun exposure, temperature and wind, and not because the electro-magnetic field is weaker or stronger. Such nonsense is what causes people to believe in the magical healing properties of magnets, which has become a multi-million dollar industry as people shell out $19.95 for a magical magnetic healing bracelet!
"Time also ticks by faster for someone at rest relative to someone moving. Einstein dramatized this second strangeness with the twin paradox — one 25-year-old twin traveling in a rocket ship near the speed of light for what he perceives as a few months will return to Earth to find the other has reached middle age."
Notice in both ridiculous statements, the assumption is made that because time APPEARS to move slower (only because watches move slower at higher elevations, which is an equipment malfunction and has nothing to do with time itself) that somehow this has something to do with how quickly someone ages. (If only it were true! I could have gone underground twenty years ago and prevented myself from aging at all!)
In the second paragraph, Einstein talks about the twin traveling at the speed of light for what he "perceives as a few months"... Newsflash: perception has nothing to do with quantifiable, quantitative changes in movement. Time, the measuring system, doesn't change PERIOD, much less simply because someone PERCEIVES it to be so. If this were true, one could claim time travel simply because they were very busy for 12 hours and did not notice that 12 hours had passed as the earth rotated on its axis while they were running errands, while the person at home who sits in boredom with nothing to do feels as though a week has passed, when it has only been 12 hours.
Furthermore, Einstein didn't say that time passes more quickly for someone sitting still, as the author erroneously concludes. He simply said that the PERCEPTION would be different, which is questionable to begin with, since we all know that sitting still tends to create boredom and the illusion that time is passing more slowly, not more quickly.
Before you try to explain this away, remember that any example you come up with that uses the words or anything that represents PERCEPTION, "appearing to slow down", "seems to speed up", or anything else that is subjective, has nothing to do with changing the constancy of a measuring system that we created in order to accurately measure the movement of the earth rotating on its axis.
Either you understand that time is a measuring system or you don't. If you don't, you will forever mentally masturbate yourself into believing that time is somehow supernatural in nature and capable of bending, warping, and doing all kinds of supernatural things.
Time really IS relative, because, as with any measuring system, it can only be expressed in terms RELATIVE to what it is measuring!
To encourage my readers to think more critically about what non-scientifically sound "theories" from "scientists" (theoretical scientists, especially) are so commonly feeding us in the media, I encourage you to read the full article from which I am quoting below:
"One can hardly turn around in a bookshop without seeing titles about black holes, worm holes, the big bang, quarks, anti-matter... very largely a new form of speculative science escapist literature that confers virtually nothing more of practical or human value to struggling mankind than does sheer science fiction fantasy. As a reviewer of one of those tedious big-bang-black-hole books once concluded, 'somehow one would wish for something more'. Wish, but not expect, while many scientists today hold a schoolboy philosophy that could well be derived from the satirical science fiction series 'Red Dwarf'... without the self-irony, that is!
In both micro- and macro-physics the public are repeatedly wooed with any number bizarre and even absurd ideas on the nature of time or on the existence and possible nature of parallel and 'negative' physical universes. A sound training in strict philosophical analysis would help to avert such nonsense. Self-contradictory ideas are adopted in all seriousness, like time travel. Stephen Hawking asserts such ideas6, which are based on intellectual confusions about the concept of time of the sort demolished long since by Ludwig Wittgenstein, but are only partly supported by speculative mathematical acrobatics. That it could ever be technologically possible for matter of any appreciable mass to move faster than light (which Einstein saw as an ultimate velocity) is preposterous, yet anti-experiential ideas about this are regularly bandied about by persons apparently deranged by abstruse mathematics... or, for all we know, by subconscious teenage fantasies about fleeing this awful world to the stars. All this serves to keep the sciences of astro-physics and cosmology in the forefront of the public eye, where they have the flagship role among sciences. Yet these sciences are largely useless both as regards arriving at ideas or knowledge that will help solve the real problems of humanity. It is successful mainly only for the publishing business, which publishes anything that sells. And that it sells says nothing of its truth or relevance, as the history of publishing proves beyond all possible doubt. Nor can they be propounding the truth about the universe, not least because the theoretical claims and counter-claims change almost monthly and major radical reevaluations are not uncommon. This may well demonstrate the critical spirit of competition of radical hypotheses so seldom seen in other more crytallised or ossified sciences."
Well said, Mr. Priddy. Well said.
As any TRUE scientist knows, junk science is often mistaken for real science, even by those who fancy themselves as experts on recognizing it.
A.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
How the Publishing Industry is Blurring the Line Between Science and Fiction
At the risk of turning my blog into a collection of scientific articles, which I do not wish to do, I am providing some clarification on the issue of Einstein's "Theory of Relativity".
First, you should know that many scientists question the validity of Einstein's theory. It is, after all, a theory, and while certain aspects of it may turn out to be true, we do not currently have a way to test it with any degree of accuracy. However, assuming for a moment that it is accurate, let's examine what Einstein's theory of relativity actually states and/or means, as opposed to what many mistakenly believe that it states and/or imagine that it means.
In order to provide clarity, I present to you the fact that many people mis-use the word "time", which is poorly defined in almost every dictionary or science textbook you will ever read. It is this mass delusion that time is something other than the movement that it measures and represents, that causes people to conjure up images of dimensional, mystical, supernatural phenomenon, much like churchgoers experiencing "miracles" of healing based on their misunderstanding of the power of suggestion and how their perceptions can change as a result.
When you interchangeably use the word "time" to mean the same thing as "speed of movement", rather than separating the word time (which is a measuring system for measuring the movement of objects and the speed of objects that move) and the result of that movement, you begin to imagine that the word time somehow is what "causes" the movement.
It is the same thing as assuming that an inch, which is an expression of a measuring system, somehow is what causes something to stretch or shrink, rather than a static part of a measuring system used to accurately measure the item that is shrinking or expanding.
Another example would be to say that "the metric system expanded" when the item you are measuring stretches, or that the metric system shrunk because something you were measuring had shrunk after putting it through the dryer.
The metric system doesn't stretch, shrink, move, or do anything other than serve as a standard unit of measure. Similarly, time, as a measuring system, does not speed up, slow down, stretch, shrink, dilate, expand, bend, warp, or in any other way "change", because it is not something that exists in any other way other than to express the things that DO speed up, slow down, stretch, shrink, dilate, expand, bend, warp, or in any other way change.
For those of you who seem to think that the theory of relativity has something to do with "time slowing down", it is important to understand that, because Einstein spoke German, and because literal translation of any work is almost impossible due to the fact that not every German word has an equivalent in every other language, the best interpretation somehow got presented as "time slows down" at the rate of near-light speed, when what was actually meant was "the movement of objects contained in a vessel traveling at near-light speed slows down due to inertia". (Most scientists are woefully inept at expressing themselves accurately, believe it or not, and often take license with words in order to make things more understandable, which can ironically create more misunderstandings than clarity.)
Articles published in serious scientific journals discussing the experiments done on "clocks" (which are designed to measure and keep pace with the earth as it rotates on its axis in a 24-hour period) as somehow proving that time "warps" or "bends" when the clock is moving around and/or being blasted with radiation and/or particle accelerators make those who understand that time is a measuring system laugh out loud, because a clock is nothing more than a man-made machine designed to MEASURE the movement of the earth. It is not "time" itself. When a clock measures the movement of the earth (keeps pace with) "differently" than another clock connected to it that is not being subjected to the same conditions, it is only because the clock being subjected to conditions that affect the electro-magnetic field of the clock has begun to malfunction. It is as laughable as me saying that I have caused the earth to begin rotating more slowly because I found a way to reduce the amount of electricity going to my clock and therefore cause the clock to move more slowly. The clock is designed to maintain the same pace internally as the earth's movement as it rotates on its axis. That is what all of our clocks are designed to do. A clock keeping "time" (pace) with the earth's movement differently than another clock has nothing to do with how fast the earth is actually traveling. The earth is traveling at the same rate regardless of what millions of different clocks may say.
If I proudly proclaimed to you that I had managed to alter the speed of light by reducing the amount of electricity going to my lamp and, thereby dimming the light, you would laugh in my face. You should also laugh in the face of anyone, regardless of how many letters they may have after their name, for making such a ridiculous claim about "warping time" simply because they mange to cause a clock to become out of sync with the thing it was designed to be in sync with.
Once again, Einstein NEVER claimed that "time" was a "thing" that slowed down or sped up. At best, his theory of relativity expressed the fact that objects moving in a vessel traveling at the speed of light would most likely slow down due to inertia, and perhaps expressed it in a slang expression of the word "time" that caused people to imagine that time was something more than the measuring system that it is.
Here is an example of a nonsensical statement, taken from ScienceNews.com:
"Time dilation arises in two situations. In one case, time appears to move slower the closer you are to a massive object, such as the Earth. So a person hovering in a hot-air balloon, for example, actually ages faster than someone standing below."
WTF!?!?!?!? If you aren't laughing hysterically at that statement, you should be. I guarantee that if you put one twin in a hot air balloon for ten years, and you keep the other one on the ground for ten years, the only difference in whether they appear to age more quickly or slowly than one another will be accounted for by environmental conditions such as sun exposure, temperature and wind, and not because the electro-magnetic field is weaker or stronger. Such nonsense is what causes people to believe in the magical healing properties of magnets, which has become a multi-million dollar industry as people shell out $19.95 for a magical magnetic healing bracelet!
"Time also ticks by faster for someone at rest relative to someone moving. Einstein dramatized this second strangeness with the twin paradox — one 25-year-old twin traveling in a rocket ship near the speed of light for what he perceives as a few months will return to Earth to find the other has reached middle age."
Notice in both ridiculous statements, the assumption is made that because time APPEARS to move slower (only because watches move slower at higher elevations, which is an equipment malfunction and has nothing to do with time itself) that somehow this has something to do with how quickly someone ages. (If only it were true! I could have gone underground twenty years ago and prevented myself from aging at all!)
In the second paragraph, Einstein talks about the twin traveling at the speed of light for what he "perceives as a few months"... Newsflash: perception has nothing to do with quantifiable, quantitative changes in movement. Time, the measuring system, doesn't change PERIOD, much less simply because someone PERCEIVES it to be so. If this were true, one could claim time travel simply because they were very busy for 12 hours and did not notice that 12 hours had passed as the earth rotated on its axis while they were running errands, while the person at home who sits in boredom with nothing to do feels as though a week has passed, when it has only been 12 hours.
Furthermore, Einstein didn't say that time passes more quickly for someone sitting still, as the author erroneously concludes. He simply said that the PERCEPTION would be different, which is questionable to begin with, since we all know that sitting still tends to create boredom and the illusion that time is passing more slowly, not more quickly.
Before you try to explain this away, remember that any example you come up with that uses the words or anything that represents PERCEPTION, "appearing to slow down", "seems to speed up", or anything else that is subjective, has nothing to do with changing the constancy of a measuring system that we created in order to accurately measure the movement of the earth rotating on its axis.
Either you understand that time is a measuring system or you don't. If you don't, you will forever mentally masturbate yourself into believing that time is somehow supernatural in nature and capable of bending, warping, and doing all kinds of supernatural things.
Time really IS relative, because, as with any measuring system, it can only be expressed in terms RELATIVE to what it is measuring!
To encourage my readers to think more critically about what non-scientifically sound "theories" from "scientists" (theoretical scientists, especially) are so commonly feeding us in the media, I encourage you to read the full article from which I am quoting below:
"One can hardly turn around in a bookshop without seeing titles about black holes, worm holes, the big bang, quarks, anti-matter... very largely a new form of speculative science escapist literature that confers virtually nothing more of practical or human value to struggling mankind than does sheer science fiction fantasy. As a reviewer of one of those tedious big-bang-black-hole books once concluded, 'somehow one would wish for something more'. Wish, but not expect, while many scientists today hold a schoolboy philosophy that could well be derived from the satirical science fiction series 'Red Dwarf'... without the self-irony, that is!
In both micro- and macro-physics the public are repeatedly wooed with any number bizarre and even absurd ideas on the nature of time or on the existence and possible nature of parallel and 'negative' physical universes. A sound training in strict philosophical analysis would help to avert such nonsense. Self-contradictory ideas are adopted in all seriousness, like time travel. Stephen Hawking asserts such ideas6, which are based on intellectual confusions about the concept of time of the sort demolished long since by Ludwig Wittgenstein, but are only partly supported by speculative mathematical acrobatics. That it could ever be technologically possible for matter of any appreciable mass to move faster than light (which Einstein saw as an ultimate velocity) is preposterous, yet anti-experiential ideas about this are regularly bandied about by persons apparently deranged by abstruse mathematics... or, for all we know, by subconscious teenage fantasies about fleeing this awful world to the stars. All this serves to keep the sciences of astro-physics and cosmology in the forefront of the public eye, where they have the flagship role among sciences. Yet these sciences are largely useless both as regards arriving at ideas or knowledge that will help solve the real problems of humanity. It is successful mainly only for the publishing business, which publishes anything that sells. And that it sells says nothing of its truth or relevance, as the history of publishing proves beyond all possible doubt. Nor can they be propounding the truth about the universe, not least because the theoretical claims and counter-claims change almost monthly and major radical reevaluations are not uncommon. This may well demonstrate the critical spirit of competition of radical hypotheses so seldom seen in other more crytallised or ossified sciences."
Well said, Mr. Priddy. Well said.
As any TRUE scientist knows, junk science is often mistaken for real science, even by those who fancy themselves as experts on recognizing it.
A.
