Kwalish Kid
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Is it insincere to enter into an analysis of general relativity without learning general relativity?
Mashuna
Ovis ex Machina
This is good advice, and why I have Farsight on ignore.
RobDegraves
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Sadly, it does seem as though Farsight is irony impaired.
Yes Farsight, most here do seem to think you are a crank. This is not an ad hominem nor really an insult and it is completely separate from the actual arguments against your ideas. It is based on several instances where you advance crankish ideas, debate endlessly without any serious science and declare yourself the winner at every turn. It's annoying and pointless as a debate.
Perhaps this is not the best forum for your ideas. How about a peer reviewed journal? You could contact the physics dept of any one of many universities and tell them how they are doing it wrong. I am sure there are several people here who could show you how to contact them.
Good luck.
xtifr
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When it comes to Farsight's version of physics, the "creationist naysayer" problem is a little broader than just JREF--it includes all physics journals, for example (Farsight's total number of peer-reviewed, published papers = 0), and pretty much everyone with an actual degree in physics. Only the long-dead Albert Einstein (who, conveniently, can't be asked his opinion) agrees with Farsight--at least, according to Farsight.
keyfeatures
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Does anyone actually want to discuss the thread topic? Or do you just want to discuss Farsight?
I want to discuss the thread topic. Somebody mentioned Amrit Sorli, if you search google on From spacetime to spacemotion you can see an essay he wrote where I gave him a hand polishing the translation - I'm John Duffield, and the google title comes up with RELATIVITY+ because that's what was left in the document! I don't quite agree with every last little thing Amrit says, but I agree with the main thrust of the argument. Also have a google on "Time Explained" along with Farsight for various versions of an essay I first wrote in 2006. The first version was rubbish, but I got feedback and correction and the latest version is pretty slick. Once you see how simple time is you realise just how much twaddle some of these celebrity "physicists" pump out.
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Would be helpful if you were to provide direct links to the content. You know the exact search results you are talking about but we don't
Sorry ynot, here's Amrit's space-motion paper and here's time explained.
keyfeatures
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Yes, that was me. Thanks for the links. I was trying to find more background explanation and detail. Lorenz transformation certainly seems to make sense in terms of space (TSA) - this appears to be one facet of Sorli's argument? And with this approach we can see why time travel is necessarily a science fiction.
Yes it does, see post #140.keyfeatures said:
I guess so. But I think the main facet is that you can see space and motion, but not time. It's a matter of looking at what's there and taking the scientific evidence at face value instead of being blinded to it by preconception and conviction. Not just new-age types, people who take pride in being rational too.keyfeatures said:
Yes, absolutely. Amazingly though this "time is change" stuff goes way back to the ancient Greeks. But people have a nasty habit of wallowing in mystery. They like things like the possibility of time travel. They cling to that sort of thing instead of seeing the obvious. The reason why there's so much woo in the world is that people love it.keyfeatures said:
So Amrit basically says in that link that time cannot be "touched" and so the concept should be discarded, distance and motion can be "physically understood" so should be retained, ict should be replaced with ct because you need to make the "imaginary" time in relativity "real" ... then he talks about how he thinks this is a thing that should be done but not actually how to do it.
No justifications (other than sound bites)
No maths
No real demonstrations of new physics
No new evidence
Indeed no evidence backing up this change
No real study of the existing explanation
You could probably do a 'search and replace' with swapping time with space in that document and still have the same level of meaning.
No justifications (other than sound bites)
No maths
No real demonstrations of new physics
No new evidence
Indeed no evidence backing up this change
No real study of the existing explanation
You could probably do a 'search and replace' with swapping time with space in that document and still have the same level of meaning.
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keyfeatures
Critical Thinker
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No you couldn't. Try the following as an example.
Relativity and Time
With a concept of time cofounded with motion rather than space, a new interpretation of relativity emerges. In the Special Theory of Relativity, the rate of clocks and material change is reduced within a fast-moving inertial system. In the General Theory of Relativity, the rate of clocks and material change is similarly reduced within a gravity well. This understanding easily resolves the Twins Paradox. They do not live in time, they live in space. They are made up of atoms and electrons, and as evidenced by pair production and annihilation, they are quite literally "made of light". Each twin might observe reduced local motion in his brother and so reduced ageing, but the twin in the spaceship returns younger than his brother on Earth because his travelling motion through the universe was at the cost of local motion within his body. His reduced rate of local motion was labelled as time dilation, but time is merely a by-product of motion. Clocks "clock up" motion, not time.
My apologies... humour doesnt come across so well in the written format... I was being sarcastic.
My point was that was not anything I read that really hit home with a valid reason for the (what seem to me) arbitrary changes or statements.
There was no more real evidence presented for holding up distance or motion as the paragon of virtue than there was for maintaining that time (or the illusion of time) was a useful construct in mathematics and physics.
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RobDegraves
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How exactly?
I have read Julian Barbours work when it first came out and found it to be interesting but popular science rather than academic. I am still awaiting something more concrete.
I have recently been reading about Brouwer ... and something here about time reminded me of some comments that I had read:
"Mathematics, Brouwer says, is also built up from our experience of time, as
in Kant—hence the name ‘intuitionism’ for Brouwer’s philosophy of mathmatics,
referring to the pure intuition of time. The discrete (the natural numbers) arises
from our awareness of successive ‘nows’, the continuous (e.g. the straight line)
from our awareness that time is a flow and hence there is something ‘in between’
the discrete ‘nows’. In what Brouwer calls the unfolding of this basic intuition,
all of mathematics is created."
I will be the first to agree that any physicts will have a devil of a job explaining the concept of time... but that does not mean that the useful construct of time, as used in maths and physics to great effect in, say, relativity, is not an incredibly useful and succesful idea.
I have noted before that Einstein no more defines his "rods" of distance measurement than he does his "clocks" of time measurement in the initial mathematics of SR/GR.
Having read a great deal recently about mathematics, the foundations of mathematics, its applicability to real life or not, I think we are treading on dangerous ground if we dismiss out of hand the concept that time is not tangible but distance and motion is...
I have recently been reading about Brouwer ... and something here about time reminded me of some comments that I had read:
"Mathematics, Brouwer says, is also built up from our experience of time, as
in Kant—hence the name ‘intuitionism’ for Brouwer’s philosophy of mathmatics,
referring to the pure intuition of time. The discrete (the natural numbers) arises
from our awareness of successive ‘nows’, the continuous (e.g. the straight line)
from our awareness that time is a flow and hence there is something ‘in between’
the discrete ‘nows’. In what Brouwer calls the unfolding of this basic intuition,
all of mathematics is created."
I will be the first to agree that any physicts will have a devil of a job explaining the concept of time... but that does not mean that the useful construct of time, as used in maths and physics to great effect in, say, relativity, is not an incredibly useful and succesful idea.
I have noted before that Einstein no more defines his "rods" of distance measurement than he does his "clocks" of time measurement in the initial mathematics of SR/GR.
Having read a great deal recently about mathematics, the foundations of mathematics, its applicability to real life or not, I think we are treading on dangerous ground if we dismiss out of hand the concept that time is not tangible but distance and motion is...
Kwalish Kid
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The document by "Amrit" was quite obviously written by Farsight. It makes that same stupid mistake that he makes: he thinks that he can measure or even describe motion without having some notion of time. Newton explained why this wasn't possible. Maxwell very clearly and carefully went over why this wasn't possible. Einstein replaced the Newtonian notion of time with one that did better but that preserved everything Maxwell said.
In order to purse this fantasy about clocks only responding to motion one has to have some means of saying what counts as the same amount of motion and this requires that we have some idea of what counts as the same interval of time and what counts as the same interval of space.
If someone can show how to do even the simplest of physics applications without these notions, then they might be able to begin to present this wild hypothesis with some degree of plausibility.
In order to purse this fantasy about clocks only responding to motion one has to have some means of saying what counts as the same amount of motion and this requires that we have some idea of what counts as the same interval of time and what counts as the same interval of space.
If someone can show how to do even the simplest of physics applications without these notions, then they might be able to begin to present this wild hypothesis with some degree of plausibility.
Just look at a clock. You don't see time flowing, you see cogs moving. Or a pendulum swinging. Or a crystal oscillating. In the parallel-mirror light-clock used in relativity it's light moving. In an atomic clock it's an electron spin flip and microwaves. There's always something moving, usually in some regular cyclic fashion. A clock tots up this regular cyclic motion and shows you a cumulative count divvied up into hours minutes seconds. Or if it's an old fashioned clock the hands move, and the internal mechanism isn't called a movement for nothing.This doesn't mean t no longer features in mathematical physics, it just means you put the emphasis on the motion. Once it clicks it seems really odd to hear people talking about the flow of time. There's no evidence for that whatsoever.
Perhaps it is because I have more of a background in theoretical physics and mathematics... but what you describe can be difficult to discuss without defining some of the key terms... sometimes English is too flexible.
So if I 'look' at a clock that has stopped, motionless, does that mean there is no 'motion'?
What 'change' is there that we are measuring that denotes motion.
If I look at a pen on a table, look away, look back, and the pen is not there, what does that say about motion?
I am not being deliberatly annoyning, I am trying to question the fundamental notions we have and making them ultra clear.
More worryingly for me, I have to think about what that means conceptually for the mathematical framework that we will use to describe this...
What I mean is that just talking in everyday layman's terms no more puts motion on the pedestal than time...in fact for the layman motion and time cannot be teased apart...
Is the argument circular?
Does motion mean the object is in a different position at a different time?
How do we define motion?
I can accept there is a change in spatial coordinates but how exactly did that change occur?
Are we allowing an arbitrary change in coordinates?
Can I say that if A is the point (3,2) that if I now decide A is the point (3,4) I have induced motion? or measured motion?
Do we have to have two spatial "pictures" to compare?
How do we 'look' at those two pictures side by side to find any change?
Does motion mean the object is in a different position at a different time?
How do we define motion?
I can accept there is a change in spatial coordinates but how exactly did that change occur?
Are we allowing an arbitrary change in coordinates?
Can I say that if A is the point (3,2) that if I now decide A is the point (3,4) I have induced motion? or measured motion?
Do we have to have two spatial "pictures" to compare?
How do we 'look' at those two pictures side by side to find any change?