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Black holes

You're oddly fixated on the idea of having to arbitrarily define the second first.
It's not a fixation, it's getting the physics right. Frequency is cycles per second, so before you've defined the second you can't say what the frequency is.

Why can't you accept that we can arbitrarily define a uniquely identifiable signal as having a specific frequency, and calculate the duration of the second from that?
Because it's wrong. We use a uniquely identifiable signal to define the second, and then say that this signal has a frequency of x cycles per second.

Your entire argument about this amounts to little more than asserting "but you just can't do it that way", and accusing us of circular reasoning solely because you insist it must be done the other way around.
I'm sorry Brian, but it really is a counting exercise, and I don't know what else I can say to get this across to you.

It doesn't really matter. At some altitude, it was exactly 9,192,631,770 counts. As we're now using the caesium clock to determine the second, we're automatically measuring time by that definition as applied to that unknown (and irrelevant) altitude.
Relativity matters, Brian. And don't forget that when I change your altitude, you get a different second. We call it time dilation, but you can't actually see any time being stretched.

Bigger by what metric? Slower by what measure?
By your own measure. You define the second, and you use it to calibrate your clock. You note that your clock ticks at the same rate as some pulsar. Then I press my button to send you to a lower gravitational potential, and you repeat the whole exercise. This time you find that your clock doesn't tick at the same rate as the distant pulsar. You're smart enough to work out that I haven't changed the pulsar, and that what's changed is your local environment.

If it's only the speed of light that's affected, then we'd need a smaller wavelength to excite the caesium, and the slower light with smaller wavelength would take exactly the same amount of time for 9,192,631,770 cycles to pass. The length of the second remains unchanged.
It doesn't. We call it gravitational time dilation.

But if it's everything that's slower, then to you it might appear that my second is longer, but to me my second is exactly the same. Locally, the length of the second remains unchanged.
Because you're an electromagnetic animal, and when the light slows down so do you.

So in what circumstances would this change the local length of the second? If you're going to claim that the local length of the second is different, please explain how we would demonstrate this locally (without relying on non-local references).
You can't detect it locally. It's like asking some guy in a movie to notice when the movie is being played in slow-motion. And note that in that analogy, the motion is slower, not time.

"A surface acoustic wave (SAW) is an acoustic wave traveling along the surface of a material exhibiting elasticity, with an amplitude that typically decays exponentially with depth into the substrate." A SAW doesn't need to propagate on a piezoelectric substrate, as it doesn't use the piezoelectric effect to filter the wave. Piezoelectric transducers are used to generate and detect the wave (which makes building the whole thing on a piezoelectric substrate convenient), but the frequency of oscillation depends on mechanical properties of the device, not the piezoelectric effect.
The material is made of electrons etc. Those mechanical properties depend on electromagnetism.

If I'd suggested using a tuning fork with a inductive transducer to detect the rate of vibration and trigger a counter at the same rate, would you say that this would also be subject to variations of the speed of light on the grounds that the inducer was using electromagnetism (photons) to detect the vibration of the tuning fork?
Yes and no. The vibrating fork is vibrating because of electromagnetic interactions within the metal.

You could make the same argument about the quarks from which protons and neutrons are made.
You could, that's why I told you about the low-energy proton-antiproton annihilation.

The mechanical properties of all material depends on electromagnetic bonds. Are you suggesting that no matter how low the local value of C becomes, that the physical properties of everything will change so that so the value of C appears unchanged?
Yes. It's an "immersive scale change".

And if so, exactly how is this different from time slowing down?
Things move slower. You can see things moving, you can't see time flowing.
 
See above. That's trivial too. It doesn't matter which coordinates you use, the light in the upper clock gets to the end first. There is nothing you can do to make it get to the end second!
There is no upper clock!
Originally Posted by Reality Check
The hard scientific evidence you have posted so just states that GR is correct, e.g. that the coordinate speed of light varies according to the coordinates used. That is trivial.

And at the event horizon c is zero!
And that is idoitic because c is the speed of light in vacuum. It is constant. It is always c :eye-poppi!


The coordinate speed of light does vary as GR states:
  • In Schwarzschild coordinates the coordinate speed of light is zero at the event horizon (there is a coordinate singularity there).
  • In Kruskal–Szekeres coordinates the coordinate speed of light is the same everywhere (there is no coordinate singularity at the event horizon).
Hence the gravitational time dilation goes infinite at the event horizon.
We are talking about the coordinate speed of light at the event horizon. This depends on the cooridinate system used.

And that doesn't. It's science fiction, RC. It contradicts the patent evidence.
In Kruskal–Szekeres coordinates the coordinate speed of light is the same everywhere (there is no coordinate singularity at the event horizon).
That is the science - to be more exact the math but also is the "In Schwarzschild coordinates the coordinate speed of light is zero at the event horizon (there is a coordinate singularity there) ".

There is no "patent" evidence because no one has observed what happens when they fall into a black hole (and cannot communicate this to anyone!).

The evidence is that GR works and does not depend on the coordinate system used. It is expressed in coordinate free math. This is what as Einstein stated and everyone who has read anything about GR knows.


Come on RC, surely you can see the problem?
Yes:
The first problem is that there is no event horizon in your example.
The second problem is that there is not even a black hole in your example!
The main problem seems to be that you have the delusion about GR only being correct in Schwarzschild coordinates
 
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Let's try it another way. Let's say we've got two trains on parallel tracks. They start off at the same time, and one reaches the end before the other. Like this:

|-----------------|
|-----------------|

Which train is going faster? Easy. The top one.
Easy - you are too vague about your example to be even wrong.
It depends on the velocity. Read some SR.

Now repeat this with two light beams in parallel-mirror clocks:

|-----------------|
|-----------------|

Which one's going faster?

It's that simple, it really is.
You are right . It is really, really simple. Both beams travelling at the speed of light (c). Two identical distances (d). Thus physically impossible!
So hopefully you have missed something out rather then failing high school physics :rolleyes:.
 
A -4m by -4 m carpet does exist. You just measure in the opposite direction. So... fail.
No it doesn't Zig. Like I said, there is no such thing as a negative distance. A negative displacement is no problem, but not a negative distance. To appreciate this, start with a carpet measuring 4m by 4m. No problem with that. Now make it smaller, such that it measures 3m by 3m. Again, no problem. Now make it smaller again, 2m by 2m. And again: 1 m by 1m. Now go the whole hog, and make it 0m by 0m. Now you've made it so small that you've got no carpet. Now try making it smaller. You can't. If you insist you can, I'm sorry but, you're lost in maths. Anybody want to try backing Zig up and calling me a crackpot?
 
A negative -4m by -4m carpet sounds like an ace way to scam someone on ebay if you sell carpets.
 
It gets even better. If you measure a 4m x -4m carpet, you're only measuring the opposite way along one direction. Which means when you install it, you're actually going to install it upside down. Which is how you get a negative area. Measuring the opposite direction along both sides flips it back right side up. The math works, you just need to know how to use it.
Cringe. Sorry guys, but this just takes the breath away. Would any of those who are conspicuous by their absence care to chip in at this point?

Future psychology students: note how conviction is like a bone. You break it, then you turn your back for a couple of days, and it's healed right up. Deconditioning is not easy. You have to keep at it.
 
I'm going to get my Wacky Ruler Collection out of storage. According to my measurements, the carpet has one edge that runs from u=-3 to u=infinity (that's on my special "1/x" ruler) and another edge that runs from v=0 to v=3 (that's on my special "sqrt(9-x^2)" ruler)...
Oh FFS, this is getting surreal. Ben, you're an experimental physicist. Surely you know the difference between distance and displacement? There is no such thing as a negative distance.

Too bad there's not a way to transform from one ruler-choice to another---I'm tempted to try, but that'd be a "hop skip and a jump" over the truth, as revealed by my original choice of rulers.
The hop skippety jump over the truth is to suggest that square carpets can be 4m on a side, or 3m, or 2m, or 1m. Or 0m. Or even shorter than that.

Jesus H Christ, fellas. This is getting bizarre. Ever been to a party or something, and some guy starts talking to you? Whilst initially you think he's a lively spark, it gradually dawns on you that he's stark raving mad. I'm sorry, but that's how I'm feeling right now. It's possible that I may have to cough politely, see somebody I need to talk to across the room, and make my excuses.

Sheesh ben, get a grip.

Next!
 
Farsight said:
You can measure the temperature of the surface of a star, but temperature is an emergent property of motion. It's a measure that gives, for example, a measure of the average kinetic energy of gas molecules. See temperature on wikipedia. Temperature exists like heat exists: grab hold of the wrong end of a red-hot poker, and it burns you.
You are wrong. Temperature is an abstraction, that involves entropy and its derivative.
Like I said, it's an emergent property of motion. You change the motion of them atoms, and you change the temperature of the gas. You change your motion, you change your reference frame.

You cannot measure temperature directly...
Oh boy. Tell that to a nurse.

...you can only ever infer it from other properties through the use of theory. And you're wrong about what that theory is: the average kinetic energy of a gas molecule being proportional to temperature is a result of the true definition of temperature which only holds true given a number of other assumptions which are not always true. Temperature is no more real than a reference frame is.
I can point to a red hot poker and say: That's hot. See that red glow? That's steel at a high temperature. But it's OK, Zig has told you that this high temperature isn't real, so put down that reference frame and go ahead and suck the ******.

FFS guys, this is getting really bizarre.

Next.
Edited by Tricky: 
Do not circumvent the autocensor in public threads.
 
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ETA: And since you could use these formulae to calculate the speed of light by measuring the impedance of space, this brings us back to DeiRenDopa's question. How do you measure the impedance of space?

If you're trying to find the speed of light by measuring the impedance of space, the response "measure the speed of light" is less than helpful.

Sorry Brian, but it's a "triangle", and μ0 and ε0 are two sides of the same coin. When you pin c to a constant value of 299,796,458 m/s you pin impedance to a constant value of 376.73031 ohms.

But the whole point of the question is that we haven't pinned C to a constant value. We're trying to work out the value of C by measuring the impedance of space.

This brings us back to DeiRenDopa's question. How do you measure the impedance of space?

Why would this be relevant for measuring the second? If you were trying to directly determine the length of the metre, sure, but not for measuring time.

It's like the boat example. You can't say how fast the waves are coming at you, and you can't say what their wavelength is, because you haven't defined the second or the metre yet. You count some number of up-and-down bobs and declare that duration to be the second. Then you watch how far a wave moves in some fraction of that duration, and declare that distance to be the metre. Then you can say how fast the waves are moving and what their frequency is.

Your response makes no sense. In the example you gave, you told us we already know the frequency because we measured it before the clock broke down. Since our objective is to determine the duration of a second, and we already know the cycles per second of the signal, all we need to do is count the cycles to define the second. It doesn't matter how fast the light is traveling, or the wavelength of the signal.

In the boat analogy, if you already know how many times per second minute the waves are passing by your boat, and you want to find the duration of the second minute, you simply count the waves as the go past. How large the waves are, and how fast they're moving is irrelevant.

No, we defined our second using the frequency of light. The exact motion or velocity of the beam of light that passed us was irrelevant...

You don't use frequency. You count.

:confused: Are you trying to be funny?

If you're trying to determine the duration of a second, there'd be no point counting the cycles of the signal unless you knew the frequency, because it's the frequency that determines how many cycles you need to count.

But counting is just one possible method of determining the length of the second. Instead, you could multiply the observed duration of a single cycle by the frequency of the signal to get the same result.

Either way, it's frequency that's being used to determine the duration of the second.

... unless you're suggesting that the frequency of the 21cm hydrogen line varies with the speed of light?

No. When a light wave is emitted it has a given energy. Conservation of energy tells you that it isn't going to change, so the frequency isn't going to change either.

But since this line is the result of photons with a specific energy level interacting with hydrogen, slower light would need a smaller wavelength to get the same level of energy.

That's what's said to happen in refraction. The energy and frequency remains constant, but the wavelength is reduced. But don't apply this to the hydrogen atom, because we're talking about a hyperfine transistion. It's an electromagnetic spin flip, and anything that changes the propagation of light changes this in equal measure.

I'm sure I must be misunderstanding you somewhere. It seems as if your saying that both frequency and wavelength remains the same regardless of how fast the light is traveling?
:confused:
 
Cringe. Sorry guys, but this just takes the breath away. Would any of those who are conspicuous by their absence care to chip in at this point?

Let's go back to what you said:

For example if you need to carpet a square room which has a floor area of 16m², you can employ mathematics and work out that you need a carpet measuring 4m by 4m. However there is another solution to √16, namely -4. Mathematics does not tell you that a carpet measuring -4m by -4m is a non-real solution. It doesn't tell you that such a "negative carpet" does not actually exist. Whilst there's no problem with a negative displacement, distance is a scalar, and there is no such thing as a negative distance.

First off, there is no other solution to √16. √16 is, by definition, 4. Not -4, but only 4. -4 is a solution to x2=16, but that equation yields x=+√16 or -√16 as the solutions.

Second, you're still wrong: this IS a displacement. It must be a displacement and not a distance, because otherwise you can't specify that it's a square. Because if you cut out a rhombus with sides of 4 m, you won't get 16 m2.

Third, even in regards to distance, you are wrong. The math DOES tell you that distances can only be positive, and that negative distances are not real solutions - if you handle the math correctly. Which you seem incapable of doing.

No it doesn't Zig. Like I said, there is no such thing as a negative distance. A negative displacement is no problem, but not a negative distance. To appreciate this, start with a carpet measuring 4m by 4m. No problem with that. Now make it smaller, such that it measures 3m by 3m. Again, no problem. Now make it smaller again, 2m by 2m. And again: 1 m by 1m. Now go the whole hog, and make it 0m by 0m. Now you've made it so small that you've got no carpet. Now try making it smaller. You can't. If you insist you can, I'm sorry but, you're lost in maths. Anybody want to try backing Zig up and calling me a crackpot?

Try cutting out a square of carpet without reference to direction. I think you'll find it rather difficult.

This is a displacement, not a distance.

Future psychology students: note how conviction is like a bone. You break it, then you turn your back for a couple of days, and it's healed right up. Deconditioning is not easy. You have to keep at it.

You got that part right, though not in the way you intended.
 
It wouldn't. Work it through. Imagine you're in that bobbing boat, and you define your second and your metre. Then imagine I snap my gedanken fingers and halve the wave speed, also halving the speed of waves in your body and brain so you don't notice directly. You repeat your exercise, and then your second is now twice as big, not that you know it. But your metre is the same.

I thought this one was important enough to merit it's own separate post. It's possible that the main point of contention between you and... everyone, might simply be due to some confusion in the terms being used.

To clarify, are you saying that the rate of all physical processes vary in direct proportion to the local speed of light, so that any possible (local) means of measurement will (mistakenly?) show the speed of light to be unchanged?
 
But you're not supplying evidence. Every bit of evidence that you have supplied matches the predictions of standard textbook theory which you claim is wrong. But how can you prove the theory is wrong if its predictions match the experimental evidence you provide? Obviously, you cannot.
I'm not proving the theory is wrong. I'm proving that charlatan quacks who have hijacked the theory are wrong.

If you want to prove that the standard interpretation of the theory is wrong, you need to provide evidence that contradicts the predictions of the theory. You have not done so.
I've provided evidence that the speed of light isn't constant. Everything unravels from there. So you can kiss your precious Hawking radiation goodbye.

All you've done is present your interpretation of the evidence, and claim that since your interpretation contradicts the standard interpretation, the standard theory is wrong. But it doesn't work that way. The evidence itself still matches, the standard theory still stands.
In your dreams, Zig. It's a busted flush. Those two trains on the tracks aren't going at the same speed. Nor is the light, just like Einstein said. Give it up. You're digging yourself into a hole. And sheesh, that negative distance: cringe. Now watch my lips: stop digging. And note that sol, who started this argument with his stupid "sky's falling in" waterfall garbage, has done a runner. Don't you be the fall guy. I'm John Duffield by the way. I live in Poole, in England. What's your name?
 
Like I said, it's an emergent property of motion.

No, it's an emergent property of entropy. Motion is not actually required, though entropy accounts for it.

Oh boy. Tell that to a nurse.

When a nurse uses a standard alcohol thermometer, what is it that she's actually measuring? The volume of alcohol inside the thermometer. The temperature of the thermometer is inferred from this, but the actual measurement is a volume measurement. There's a further step required to relate this thermometer temperature to the patient's temperature, which I'll let you puzzle out on your own if you're able to. The nurse may not care about these distinctions, but they are still real.

You know far less about thermodynamics than I do. You really don't want to play this game with me, because you're in far over your head.

I can point to a red hot poker and say: That's hot. See that red glow? That's steel at a high temperature. But it's OK, Zig has told you that this high temperature isn't real, so put down that reference frame and go ahead and suck the f*cker.

That red hot poker has lots of internal energy. But how do you determine the temperature from the thermal energy? Why, you need to use a theory which relates the two.

You have made exactly the wrong conclusion here. The truth is not that abstract theory-defined quantities don't have physical consequences, the truth is that they do.

Oh, and that's a great display of class too, Farsight. Keep it up and you'll deprive us all of your insight by getting banned. That seems to happen to a lot of internet cranks when they get frustrated at their inability to convince people of their pet theories and start lashing out.

FFS guys, this is getting really bizarre.

If everyone you meet is crazy, perhaps it's you.
 
Jesus H Christ, fellas. This is getting bizarre. Ever been to a party or something, and some guy starts talking to you? Whilst initially you think he's a lively spark, it gradually dawns on you that he's stark raving mad. I'm sorry, but that's how I'm feeling right now. It's possible that I may have to cough politely, see somebody I need to talk to across the room, and make my excuses.

Sheesh ben, get a grip.

When you feel like you're the only sane one and everyone else is crazy... well, I hope you're not so far gone you can't draw the obvious conclusion from that.

I'm still waiting for you to explain why you are so confident you understand the Schwarzschild metric and that every GR textbook is wrong, and yet you can't answer even the most basic questions about a simpler metric - one that coincides with Schwarzschild near-horizon.
 
I'm not proving the theory is wrong. I'm proving that charlatan quacks who have hijacked the theory are wrong.

You haven't done that either. You can't point to a single person who has made a prediction which contradicts your evidence.

I've provided evidence that the speed of light isn't constant.

That's very much a matter of definition.

Everything unravels from there.

Except that it doesn't, because the basis for your claim (the increasing redshift observed at a distance of an object approaching the event horizon) matches exactly the prediction one would get using alternative coordinates in which the speed of light remains constant. You claim that conversion to Kruskal coordinates is invalid, but you have no basis for this claim: its predictions agree exactly with the predictions from Schwarzchild coordinates for what a distant observer will see.

So you can kiss your precious Hawking radiation goodbye.

Hawking radiation isn't strictly general relativity. If we restrict ourselves to general relativity alone, then Hawking radiation wouldn't exist. But you are claiming that general relativity itself, as taught, is wrong. That claim goes beyond a disbelief in Hawking radiation.

And note that sol, who started this argument with his stupid "sky's falling in" waterfall garbage, has done a runner.

He isn't at your beck and call. Perhaps he's busy, perhaps he's simply bored with you. What I know he isn't is scared of you. Nobody with a clue about general relativity is.

Don't you be the fall guy. I'm John Duffield by the way. I live in Poole, in England. What's your name?

My name, for these purposes, is Ziggurat. I value my anonymity on this board for a variety of reasons, none of which have any bearing on this conversation, and I'm not going to give up my anonymity to try to prove something to you. You aren't worth it to me, and it would prove nothing even if I did.
 
When you feel like you're the only sane one and everyone else is crazy... well, I hope you're not so far gone you can't draw the obvious conclusion from that.

Uh oh. I think you might have just convinced him that we're all pod people.
 
Farsight said:
Just as it's a "delay" if your train spent part of its journey travelling at 50mph rather than its usual 60mph. Just take the evidence at face value.
Or if the train took a longer route than expected. Or a combination of those possibilities.
Your train didn't take a detour. Check that out. So you're there on the platform, fuming because you're going to be late for your presentation, then South West Trains announce We are sorry to report that the 7:55 from Weymouth to Waterloo is running 15 minutes late. This is due to a time warp in the Dorset region.

Phooey!

But I shun such clocks, and elect to use a combination of weak and strong decay processes to measure time. Still, I get a result that agrees with the rest of humanity's primitive electromagnetic-interaction clocks. Coincidence?
No. They decay to simpler nuclei, like unbalanced machines. Then you can chop them up further and annihilate them to photons. E=mc² and all that.

It's not that I don't understand what you're driving at, it's that it doesn't work as an argument. We know about the Shapiro delay, and we know that local measurements of light speed always yield 299792458 m/s. The two facts are perfectly consistent with each other, and perfectly consistent with "MTW" GR. So, these facts cannot serve to show that your point of view is superior to the "MTW" one.
You don't understand it. What you don't understand is that at the fundamental level, matter has a wave nature, and pair production says something important. And annihilation. I know people told you that electrons and quarks are fundamental particles, but they'e not. You can destroy an electron if you've got a positron handy. Ditto for a proton if you've got an antiproton up your sleeve. You're left with photons. Or neutrinos, but they travel at c, so don't sweat it. Not quarks. Not gluons. Any pions you saw are ephemera. It's to do with the wave nature of matter. If you're made of waves, you always measure wave speed to be the same.

You disagree that it is possible for c and μ0 to vary in a way that leaves Z0 constant? If that's the case, you're demonstrably wrong...
No I'm not. Because permittivity and permeability are two aspects of the electromagnetism.

Yawn. Please, somebody give me something worthwhile that challenges what I've been saying instead of all this desperate you're wrong because my book says you're wrong garbage. I really am starting to lose patience here.

With all due respect, it doesn't matter to me what Einstein believed almost 100 years ago during the development of GR. It has no bearing on the current discussion.
Yeah yeah. Einstein was wrong. And the patent evidence is wrong. Beam me up Scottie.

And so to bed.
 
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Your train didn't take a detour. Check that out. So you're there on the platform, fuming because you're going to be late for your presentation, then South West Trains announce We are sorry to report that the 7:55 from Weymouth to Waterloo is running 15 minutes late. This is due to a time warp in the Dorset region.

Phooey!

No. They decay to simpler nuclei, like unbalanced machines. Then you can chop them up further and annihilate them to photons. E=mc² and all that.

You don't understand it. What you don't understand is that at the fundamental level, matter has a wave nature, and pair production says something important. And annihilation. I know people told you that electrons and quarks are fundamental particles, but they'e not. You can destroy an electron if you've got a positron handy. Ditto for a proton if you've got an antiproton up your sleeve. You're left with photons. Or neutrinos, but they travel at c, so don't sweat it. Not quarks. Not gluons. Any pions you saw are ephemera. It's to do with the wave nature of matter. If you're made of waves, you always measure wave speed to be the same.

No I'm not. Because permittivity and permeability are two aspects of the electromagnetism.

Yawn. Please, somebody give me something worthwhile that challenges what I've been saying instead of all this desperate you're wrong because my book says you're wrong garbage. I really am starting to lose patience here.
Yeah yeah. Einstein was wrong. And the patent evidence is wrong. Beam me up Scottie.

And so to bed.
Let us know when you win your Nobel prize. The highlighted part is worthy of a stundie. I have rarely come across someone with so little knowledge of particle physics yet claims to know all about it.
 
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It's not a fixation, it's getting the physics right. Frequency is cycles per second, so before you've defined the second you can't say what the frequency is.

Because it's wrong. We use a uniquely identifiable signal to define the second, and then say that this signal has a frequency of x cycles per second.

I'm sorry Brian, but it really is a counting exercise, and I don't know what else I can say to get this across to you.

I don't think you quite grasp the concept that units of measurement are purely arbitrary by nature. The duration of the second isn't the product of some law of nature. It's something humans have invented for our own convenience.

The number of cycles are an observable phenomenon, the subject of what you refer to as a counting exercise.

But seconds are made up. Invented. Arbitrary.

We can make the duration of the second whatever we want to. As long as everyone uses the same value, it makes no difference what value we assign it.

If we want to say that the duration of one second is equal to the duration of X cycles of radiation Y, we can. There's no logical reason why we shouldn't. We don't need to know what the frequency of radiation Y is, we just have to be able to identify it.

But saying that one second is equal to X cycles is exactly the same thing as saying X cycles per second, and cycles per second is frequency.

So we're essentially calculating seconds from a signal with an arbitrarily assigned frequency.

By your own measure. You define the second, and you use it to calibrate your clock. You note that your clock ticks at the same rate as some pulsar. Then I press my button to send you to a lower gravitational potential, and you repeat the whole exercise. This time you find that your clock doesn't tick at the same rate as the distant pulsar. You're smart enough to work out that I haven't changed the pulsar, and that what's changed is your local environment.

My clock hasn't slowed down, you've just changed my frame of reference to one where the pulsar oscillates at a faster rate. :p
 
I know people told you that electrons and quarks are fundamental particles, but they'e not. You can destroy an electron if you've got a positron handy.
Sorry, Farsight, but your ignorance is showing again :D!

A fundamental particle is not a particle that cannot be destroyed:
In particle physics, an elementary particle or fundamental particle is a particle not known to have substructure; that is, it is not known to be made up of smaller particles.

All particles can be destroyed if you put them in contact with their antiparticle. For example photons are their own antiparticle and annihilate with each other.
 

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