• MrCypress
    9
    The problem is as I see it is that when a space craft is traveling at 99.999 % the speed of light physicists say anyone in the space craft will not be able to tell that they are traveling near the speed of light. They say that the people on board will not be able to detect that the clock on board has slowed down. This cannot be right. They say that everything they experience onboard the ship will seem normal. They will not notice a contraction in length or an increase in mass. I believe this interpretation to be incorrect. Let's talk it out and see if this interpretation is correct. My question is: "Is the modern day interpretation of Special Relativity correct?"
  • Kippo
    130
    when a space craft is traveling at 99.999 % the speed of light physicists say anyone in the space craft will not be able to tell that they are traveling near the speed of light.MrCypress

    That is not what physicists say. You would be able to know how fast you are travelling by measuring how long it takes to reach a star or planet of known distance. Your clock would be ticking away normally as far as you are concerned. What physicists say is that all the laws of physics look the same to you regardless of how fast you are travelling. So you would not know how fast you are travelling by looking for anomalies - there would be none.
  • Kippo
    130
    "Is the modern day interpretation of Special Relativity correct?"MrCypress

    Given that experiments hold up the theory, maybe it would be more interesting to discuss how to visualise it all and get a handle on it?
  • christian2017
    1.4k


    That is not what physicists say. You would be able to know how fast you are travelling by measuring how long it takes to reach a star or planet of known distance. Your clock would be ticking away normally as far as you are concerned. What physicists say is that all the laws of physics look the same to you regardless of how fast you are travelling. So you would not know how fast you are travelling by looking for anomalies - there would be none. -Kippo

    tests have been shown in airplanes traveling for several days (P-3) that the clocks slow down or tell time slower than the clock on the earth's surface. This is due to each particle within the clock (each particle has a x vector, y vector, z vector) has vectors and when you combine the 3 vectors the sum can never exceed C (speed of light). When you increase the clock in one direction (at higher speeds over a long period time for analysis purposes) you are slowing each particle down in one or two of it's other vectors. The net result is the clock loses its ability to accurately tell time. A good book on this is "a brief history of time" by Stephen Hawking. Alot of Physicists write bad books, this is not the case with that book.
  • boethius
    2.2k
    My question is: "Is the modern day interpretation of Special Relativity correct?"MrCypress

    Yes. The predictions of special and general relativity come true at the scale of a space ship that goes anywhere in the universe other than inside a black whole (...in which, if a prediction goes wrong, conveniently for relativity the occupants can't come back and tell us about it), according to every experiment we have so far.

    If you want to know how special and general relativity works and the experimental evidence for them, there's plenty of resources.

    What might be more suitable for a philosophy forum is a short discussion of what general principles are preserved in Einsteinium relativity from Galilean relativity and which change, and sort of the general epistemological questions we can discuss.

    In Galilean relativity, velocities commute. If you through anything, a ball or light particles/waves, from a moving train, what you through will move at the velocity of the train plus how hard you threw it. This is how things behave in our everyday experiences. This simple rule as developed further by Newton, leads to what's called universal time. What universal time means is that all observers will be able to agree on when two events happen simultaneously (they may need to wait for signals, but everyone can work out and will agree that two events A and B happened simultaneously or not). If we lived in a Newtonian universe, we'd also all agree on what speed something is going.

    The philosophical relevance of this is first that there's no really good reason we couldn't live in a Newtonian universe, as far as I know. Not only is it consistent theoretical, it's consistent with what we experience in our part of the universe (on a planet with weak gravity where nothing goes terribly fast), and, I'd say for both these reasons, is easy to imagine. Everything that happens, happens at the same time, and the universe progresses from one instant to another like a giant film.

    However, there's also a deeper relativity principle that Newtonian mechanics obeys, which is that all observers can agree on causation (what events caused other events) and what laws governed that causation (if observer A calculates a given force moved object B, observer C will calculate the same force from any other perspective). If we didn't agree on what causes what and / or we didn't agree on what laws of physics are at play in a event ... we'd be in an epistemological place that would be difficult to deal with.

    We don't live in the universal time and simple velocity addition version of relativity, but we do live in a universe where observers will agree on what causes what (that A caused B, and no one will calculate B caused A) and why (that the caused event makes sense to everyone employing the same rules). What we lose from Galilean and Newtonian relativity is universal time (observers don't generally what is happening simultaneously, and if they try they end up in paradoxes) and we also lose simple velocity addition relativity (if you're on a train at 90% the speed of light relative point A, or any speed, and you shine a flash-light forward, you'll see the speed difference between you and the train as the speed of light ... but someone at point A will not see a speed of light difference, but only the 10% difference).

    This is extremely difficult to imagine and no one was even pondering such a possibility until experiments started making problems for Newtonian physics. Electro-magnetic experiments and Maxwell's equations led to paradoxes. Basically 2 big ones: that light is a wave and not a particle, and so from this we predict there is a medium for the wave to vibrate in (they didn't have quantum mechanics of wave-particle duality, just electromagnetic fields where light oscillates in); this medium must be "fixed in space" and so we should expect results of experiments to change depending on how fast we're going with respect to the electromagnetic medium. For instance, if two magnets are going through the medium faster, then we'd expect the force they communicate to each other to start to miss, just like two boats side by side don't hit each other with waves if they are going fast enough (they cannot tell the other boat is there, by observing the water, after a certain speed), and so fast magnets should lose force and at some point no longer repel or attract as they can't "see" the other magnet is there. And especially the waves in this medium will be going at different speeds, relative oneself, depending on how fast one is travelling, just like a surfer can catch-up to a wave on the ocean.

    It turns out magnets don't behave differently between themselves no matter how fast they go, and even more bizarre, you will always measure light at the same speed regardless of how fast you are moving or from which direction you measure.

    This is bizarre, but, thinking fairly deeply, Einstein realized that it's only a really big problem if causality and physical laws don't make sense from different reference frames, and that maybe there's a way to maintain causality in this bizarre setup (this wasn't obvious, other physicists were trying to develop "fixes" to light and magnets and Maxwell's equations that would make everything work out; for instance, in my boat analogy, maybe a different kind of medium than water will have some sort of compensation effect with speed to keep the force the same, so the boats are always affecting each other the same way regardless of speed; maybe they "get less force" but going faster happens to make the affects of waves greater, so it stays the same, these sorts of ideas; for the speed of light, the experimental evidence that it went the same speed in all directions wasn't super strong, most physicists assumed it was experimental error or some similar compensation scheme would work it out).

    So, keeping in mind that simple mass-particles don't have any of these wave problems, so this problem doesn't arise in Newtonian mechanics equations, and even adding fields there's no a priori reason that the electromagnetic field wouldn't be like a big fixed fabric through space and we could easily tell when we are moving or stationary to the electromagnetic fabric by observing how our magnets change.

    What I find philosophically interesting is that the above Newtonian + Electromagnetic fabric is conceptually simple, but would make physics way more complicated. For instance, as your rocket ship goes faster it may just fall apart, or (even before) that your bio-chemical reactions would stop working properly. Results of experiments would change depending on what direction the earth is moving relative the medium, which would depend the earths rotation, the season as well as the sun's direction in the galaxy and the galaxy's momentum relative the medium. Astrophysics would be ridiculously more complicated as we'd need to take into account how fusion changes depending on the rotational and current velocity of gas in the start, velocity of a star in the medium etc.

    So, what I find really interesting, philosophically, is that conceptually Einstein relativity is harder to grasp ... but it describes a universe in which it is far easier to understand what's happening since electromagnetic and nuclear forces don't change with speed relative a fixed frame of reference.
  • leo
    882
    The problem is as I see it is that when a space craft is traveling at 99.999 % the speed of light physicists say anyone in the space craft will not be able to tell that they are traveling near the speed of light. They say that the people on board will not be able to detect that the clock on board has slowed down. This cannot be right. They say that everything they experience onboard the ship will seem normal. They will not notice a contraction in length or an increase in mass. I believe this interpretation to be incorrect. Let's talk it out and see if this interpretation is correct.MrCypress

    If they're traveling at 99.999% at the speed of light, presumably they would be going very fast towards galaxies in one direction, and very fast away from the galaxies in the opposite direction. Then considering that when we're going towards something we receive its light with higher frequency and when we're going away from it we receive its light with lower frequency (in a similar way that when a ambulance moves towards you you hear its siren with a higher frequency and when it moves away from you you hear its siren with a lower frequency), they would be able to tell that they're moving really fast
    relative to the galaxies.

    Now what if they don't have any window and they only observe things from within the spacecraft? I believe that they would still be able to notice gravitational effects that wouldn't be present if they weren't moving in that way relative to the galaxies, considering there is an asymmetry in the way they are moving relative to the matter around the spacecraft.

    Then if these gravitational effects are small enough that they wouldn't detect them, special relativity says that they couldn't make an experiment inside the spacecraft that would allow them to know how fast they are going relative to other galaxies. Einstein postulated that this was the case, because many experiments were carried out and didn't give any different result when done at different velocities. Now you could argue that maybe there are experiments that would give a different result, and that's possible.

    For instance, supposedly if we were onboard that spacecraft we wouldn't notice that the clock has slowed down, because all our biological processes would have slowed down at the same rate, but there is an implicit assumption here that hasn't been tested in experiments. We haven't conducted an experiment to see how our experience of time changes when we are traveling close to the speed of light, there could very well be effects on our consciousness itself that would allow us to say we're traveling really fast.

    Then length contraction is not something that we have observed directly in experiments, and it's possible to explain experiments in a different way without invoking length contraction. But as the standard story goes, even if the spacecraft is length-contracted you wouldn't notice it from within, but there again there is the implicit assumption that it would have no effect on our conscious experience, which we haven't tested.
  • MrCypress
    9


    Good we have some agreement. You would be able to detect your absolute motion by determining your motion relative to other slower frames of reference that you are traveling toward or away from via the doppler shift. I agree.

    Okay here you give me a more correct statement about what physicists say.
    What physicists say is that all the laws of physics look the same to you regardless of how fast you are traveling. — Kippo

    This is what I intend on proving is incorrect. Thank you for stating that more clearly than I did.


    Your clock would be ticking away normally as far as you are concerned. What physicists say is that all the laws of physics look the same to you regardless of how fast you are travelling. So you would not know how fast you are travelling by looking for anomalies - there would be none. — Kippo

    Here is where the the incorrect interpretations start to breakdown. We have both just agreed that you can tell you are moving at 99% the speed of light by using Doppler effect. It does not matter that you are just moving 99% the speed of light compared to some frame of reference like the planet earth you left behind. That frame of reference is moving so slow relative to the speed of light that it is essentially stationary. So in reality if you are moving at the speed of light relative to the earth you are essentially moving at the speed of light relative to everything else in the Universe. The only differences will be slight because of their relative motions relative to you and the stationary back ground of space. The Doppler measurement is the first anomaly that gives the person in the spacecraft a clear indication they are moving at 99% the speed of light.

    Modern day physicists assumption there would be no other anomalies is woefully incorrect. Let us take "time" for example. The claim is that the person in the spaceship traveling at 99% speed of light would not notice anything different about their clock rate slowing down. It is assumed that the space travel would still be conscious. I doubt very seriously that he would be. The same real physical effects that are causing the clock to slow down are also effecting the brain processes of the space traveler. The inertial effects at moving at this speed relative the stationary spatial background would also be very apparent. The space traveller would be pinned to the back of his chair even if he were no longer accelerating. The space traveller and his space ship would also be flattened like a pancake and the ship would have acquired nearly infinite mass. If the space traveler could survive all of this he would very definitely notice all kinds of anomalies indicating the high rate of absolute motion relative to the stationary background of space. The original Lorentz transformations were discovered by Lorentz and his model for those transformations was based on a quasi-elastic stationary ether. If the equations are right and I assume they are in the special circumstances of Special Relativity then what is important is the relative motion versus the ether and not the relative motion relative to other moving frames of reference.

    We assume that none of these things would be noticeable because the changes are so small relative to the speeds we are able to achieve using rockets and our puny thrust capabilities. This assumption is woefully incorrect. It would be fatal mistake trying to accelerate to the speed of light without taking the proper precautions. The only way to safely achieve light speed velocity is to use a spatial bias drive.

    The first question in this argument is to determine whether it is time that is slowing down when we accelerate to the speed of light or is it the clock that is slowing down and not time. To me the answer is obvious. It is all of the physical processes that we use to measure time that are slowed. Time itself is not a real thing so it cannot be physically slowed or sped up.

    There are many responses here and I have limited time to respond. Over time I will try and address every argument that is made. The overall point that I am going to prove is that the experiments done so far backup my interpretation of Special Relativity. Physicists have badly misinterpreted the meaning of Special Relativity. The laws of physics will not look the same regardless of how fast you are traveling. The time measurements and experiments performed have already proven what I am saying.
  • fdrake
    5.8k
    Rather than trying to undermine relativity using classical or folk-theoretic intuitions about motion, space and time, isn't it more honest to update the accounts of all of them to be consistent with relativity? Time dilation has already been demonstrated experimentally, as has the constancy of the speed of light in all reference frames.
  • Kippo
    130

    What
    The space traveller and his space ship would also be flattened like a pancake and the ship would have acquired nearly infinite mass.MrCypress

    Is this an anomaly though? Surely it would be a conformation that the laws of physics are holding up. I'm not sure anyone is saying that moving at near light speeds won't be calamitous to life are they?
  • christian2017
    1.4k
    WhatThe space traveller and his space ship would also be flattened like a pancake and the ship would have acquired nearly infinite mass. — MrCypress
    Is this an anomaly though? Surely it would be a conformation that the laws of physics are holding up. I'm not sure anyone is saying that moving at near light speeds won't be calamitous to life are they?
    Kippo

    When flying P3s for several days and having digital and non digital clocks on board. The clocks on the P-3 showed a significant or verifiable slower time than clocks on the earth's surface. Check out "A brief history of time" by Stephen Hawking, if you like.
  • noAxioms
    1.3k
    Now what if they don't have any window and they only observe things from within the spacecraft? I believe that they would still be able to notice gravitational effects that wouldn't be present if they weren't moving in that way relative to the galaxies, considering there is an asymmetry in the way they are moving relative to the matter around the spacecraft.leo
    SR says that local experiments would not be able to detect the speed, meaning no differences. Looking out of the window constitutes a non-.local test, but there is no way to tell if you're moving or the galaxies you see are moving fast.
    Anyway, there would be no local gravity differences. There is no asymmetry. In the frame of the 'ship', the ship is stationary and the galaxies are moving incredibly fast and their clocks are the ones running slow.

    Here is where the the incorrect interpretations start to breakdown. We have both just agreed that you can tell you are moving at 99% the speed of light by using Doppler effect.MrCypress
    Speed is relative to something, so this is correct. The galaxy and I have a .99c difference, but in the frame of either, it is the other that is moving.
    That frame of reference is moving so slow relative to the speed of light that it is essentially stationary.
    This is totally wrong. Frames don't move relative to light. Light moves at c relative to any frame. This has been experimentally confirmed.
    So in reality if you are moving at the speed of light relative to the earth you are essentially moving at the speed of light relative to everything else in the Universe.
    Again, not true. Earth moves at the same speed as only a few relatively local things. If you are going that fast relative to Earth, you're stationary relative to some other galaxy that happens to move at about that velocity. The expansion of space assures that there is a galaxy that is stationary relative to you. Hence you're not moving fast at all. You're just far away from the stuff which is also stationary.
    The only differences will be slight because of their relative motions relative to you and the stationary back ground of space. The Doppler measurement is the first anomaly that gives the person in the spacecraft a clear indication they are moving at 99% the speed of light.
    If you were at that stationary galaxy going the same speed, the background would be isotropic: no doppler difference in any direction.

    Wayfarer is right: This thread belongs in a physics forum. It has philosophical implications, but none of them were brought up by anybody.
  • I like sushi
    4.3k
    I think the forum you want is https://www.physicsforums.com/ — Wayfarer

    My sentiments too :)
  • boethius
    2.2k
    It has philosophical implications, but none of them were brought up by anybody.noAxioms

    What are the philosophical implications of relativity? For myself, I don't see any other than the question of whether the universe is somehow a priori logically constrained to be as it is or fits some a priori expectations of simplicity, such as causality, cosmological principle and such. Though, mostly I feel the main philosophical implication is simply to refute unfounded philosophical implications of modern physics (i.e. people widely misinterpreting the theories).

    I also find it interesting from a history of philosophy perspective, how world views changed from Galilean to Einsteinian relativity. You disagree that there's anything interesting philosophically there?
  • MrCypress
    9
    Is this an anomaly though? Surely it would be a conformation that the laws of physics are holding up. I'm not sure anyone is saying that moving at near light speeds won't be calamitous to life are they?Kippo

    In the past on the physics forum it has been claimed that the inhabitant of the space craft traveling near the speed of light will not be able to notice any difference in this rapidly moving frame of reference. According to the physicists on that forum everything will appear unchanged and the only people that would notice that the Lorentz transformations are in effect is people who are stationary relative to the motion of the rapidly moving space ship.
  • MrCypress
    9
    Given that experiments hold up the theory, maybe it would be more interesting to discuss how to visualise it all and get a handle on it?Kippo

    That is exactly what I want to do in this discussion!
  • MrCypress
    9
    MrCypress I think the forum you want is https://www.physicsforums.com/Wayfarer

    Already been there. Believe me when I say alternate dissenting theories to accepted main stream theories are not welcome on that website. They refuse to have this kind of discussion there. This topic really is a matter of deciding what the proper interpretation is. It is a philosophical difference I have with the physics community. At least here an open discussion is welcomed and appreciated.
  • Mariner
    374
    This is the best video I've seen explaining the theory of relativity. Give it a look.

  • MrCypress
    9
    tests have been shown in airplanes traveling for several days (P-3) that the clocks slow down or tell time slower than the clock on the earth's surface. This is due to each particle within the clock (each particle has a x vector, y vector, z vector) has vectors and when you combine the 3 vectors the sum can never exceed C (speed of light). When you increase the clock in one direction (at higher speeds over a long period time for analysis purposes) you are slowing each particle down in one or two of it's other vectors. The net result is the clock loses its ability to accurately tell time. A good book on this is "a brief history of time" by Stephen Hawking. A lot of Physicists write bad books, this is not the case with that book.christian2017

    I agree with this paragraph. This is an excellent description of exactly what I am saying happens. This example is a wedge that can be used to prove all of the other transformations will also be physically observable when the spaceship gets close to the speed of light. What slows down when we accelerate a frame of reference is all of the devices that we use to measure time. My spin on that is that time itself is not a real thing and cannot be affected by anything we do regarding accelerated motion. The mechanics of particle motion is affected and that causes the clocks to slow down and things will age slower as a result of the increased motion relative to a stationary spatial background. The relative motion versus some other slower moving frame of reference is not the big deal. The apparent time slowing phenomena is caused by motion relative to the stationary ether. This is just exactly what Lorentz calculated and that is really what the time dilation formula is saying. Lorentz thought this was so strange at first that he didn't believe it.
  • MrCypress
    9
    but it describes a universe in which it is far easier to understand what's happening since electromagnetic and nuclear forces don't change with speed relative a fixed frame of reference.boethius

    That statement is primarily what I intend on proving is not true. I think this is a misinterpretation of what is really physically happening. Nuclear forces and the motion of electromagnetic particles will be affected just as Stephen Hawking says in his book. Einstein in his speech on the "ether" in 1920 said that General Relativity proved that there is an ether. Unfortunately because of the misinterpretation of the null result of the Michelson & Morley experiment he came to believe that you cannot sense motion relative to it. Einstein said, "But this ether may not be thought of as endowed with the quality characteristic of ponderable media, as consisting of parts which may be tracked through time. The idea of motion may not be applied to it." The confusion about this was created by the failure to detect the ether wind. The design of this experiment was incorrect. Looking for a difference in the motion of light will never be detectable relative to the emitting source motion. This is true because light moves autonomously relative only to the medium it is moving within. The density and tension of the medium is what determines the maximum velocity. It moves at this velocity and will be measured at the maximum speed no matter how fast you are moving in any particular direction. You can detect what your motion is relative to another moving frame of reference by using the doppler shift. Still it is hard to determine your velocity relative to the ether. In order to successfully determine an absolute velocity relative to a stationary ether back ground we will have to use clock motion. The fastest moving clock will determine that you are not moving at all relative to the ether. This I believe is the same conclusion that Lorentz came to many years ago. Unfortunately after the Michelson & Morley experiment people stopped listening to talk about the ether.
  • MrCypress
    9
    Light moves at c relative to any frame. This has been experimentally confirmed.noAxioms

    I don't argue with this statement above. This fact of reality does not have any impact on what I am claiming is wrong with the interpretation of Special Relativity. What physicists say is that all the laws of physics look the same to you regardless of how fast you are traveling. I interpret that to mean as I have been told by others that you cannot tell that your clock is slowing and you cannot notice that your length in the direction of motion is shrinking and that your increase in mass is also not noticeable. The constancy of light speed is maintained regardless of anyone else's motion. While the speed of light is maintained the light incoming to your space ship is effected by your increase in speed and you can see the Doppler effect in play when you accelerate to the speed of light. It is everything else that is affected within the accelerating frame of reference. It is my belief that as one gradually accelerates and approaches the speed of light a person on board that space ship they will be flattened and pressed back into their chair. The ship length will be compressed and it will require more and more thrust to continue to accelerate to the speed of light. Eventually the human brain will not be able to function because the electrons in their brain will no longer be able to move forward in the direction of motion that the ship is traveling. This will then stop the person from aging and will freeze the clocks in their motion. It will appear to us that time has stopped for the space travelers. Time has not stopped. The motion of all the particles that exist in the clocks onboard the space ship have stopped. Now in this moment all the particles on the ship and in the people within the ship are all already moving at the speed of light in the direction that the ship is moving. Maybe a person could survive this but I doubt it. Even if they could the instruments used to slow the ship down will be frozen and in accessible. No automated timer will work unless it is programmed to run at the just below the speed of light. Then after a short duration of a second or two local space ship time the ship can be slowed down. This would most likely put them light years away from where they started.

    If on the other hand if they could actually reach the speed of light there would be no escape. They would be unable to slow down. The only way to slow down would be to collide with something and that most certainly would end in a spectacular explosion.
  • christian2017
    1.4k


    i agree. I have my own theories but they are probably just folk explanations.
  • Wayfarer
    20.6k
    Fair enough. I know they give philosophical debate very short shrift over there.
  • Kippo
    130

    Yes but everything else accompanying the clocks aged less too. During the "fast" motion all was appearing normal on board. I think maybe the "anomaly" you are thinking of is "why should the plane/rocket be the one to have the clock with less ticks if all motion is relative.. after all one could say the Earth was moving "fast" realtive to the rocket/clock so wht don't all earth clocks show some missed ticks relative to the rocket/plane clock when the rocket/plane lands back on Earth"? I believe I read a while back the answer is something to do with the fact that the rocket/plane was the one to accelerate and not the Earth ... v confusing though!
  • Kippo
    130
    According to the physicists on that forum everything will appear unchanged and the only people that would notice that the Lorentz transformations are in effect is people who are stationary relative to the motion of the rapidly moving space ship.MrCypress

    Well I am inclined to agree with them, but I agree the huge mass thing that is implied by the equations of motion is difficult to grasp. Do they say that mass is relative somehow?
  • christian2017
    1.4k


    I'm just going by what i read in "a brief history of time" by Stephen Hawking and tests done in the past 30 years.
  • noAxioms
    1.3k
    What are the philosophical implications of relativity?boethius
    The primary one is the philosophical interpretations of time: presentism and eternalism. The former was always the default until relativity gave equal if not better footing for the latter, but scientifically (empirically), the two are not distinct. SR does not assert a block universe even if the assumption of one makes the calculations simpler. Hence the difference is philosophical.
  • noAxioms
    1.3k
    Light moves at c relative to any frame. This has been experimentally confirmed.
    — noAxioms

    I don't argue with this statement above. This fact of reality does not have any impact on what I am claiming is wrong with the interpretation of Special Relativity. What physicists say is that all the laws of physics look the same to you regardless of how fast you are traveling. I interpret that to mean as I have been told by others that you cannot tell that your clock is slowing and you cannot notice that your length in the direction of motion is shrinking and that your increase in mass is also not noticeable
    MrCypress
    You make it sound like speed is a property of an object. It isn't. I am not moving at some speed. I can only have speed relative to an arbitrary reference. So for instance, relative to a muon in the upper atmosphere, I am moving at .995c which is the only reason I can get to and measure that stationary muon before it decays in a couple microseconds. At that speed, the distance between myself and that stationary muon is decreased by a factor of about 10, as is my height, and yet I don't notice anything weird about that compression except that I get to the muon before it decays, something that I would no be able to do if I had to travel a 10x longer distance.
    This experiment has been done countless times, and makes for a nice empirical test with a significant dilation factor.

    So I agree with what you say above, despite the nonexistence of the implied property of speed.

    It is my belief that as one gradually accelerates and approaches the speed of light a person on board that space ship they will be flattened and pressed back into their chair. The ship length will be compressed and it will require more and more thrust to continue to accelerate to the speed of light. Eventually the human brain will not be able to function because the electrons in their brain will no longer be able to move forward in the direction of motion that the ship is traveling.
    So this is completely wrong. Again, it uses the concept of a property of speed. There is no such thing. In the frame of the ship, the occupant will notice nothing and his brain works just fine. There is no contraction at all since the occupant is stationary in this frame. He is not going fast at all, but the stuff outside the window certainly is, which accounts for its red and blue shifts.
  • Metaphysician Undercover
    12.3k

    You make it sound like speed is a property of an object. It isn't. I am not moving at some speed. I can only have speed relative to an arbitrary reference.noAxioms

    This is a problem with even the earliest forms of relativity theory. In relativity, velocity is not a statement concerning a property of an object, it is a statement concerning the object in relation to something else. So it is possible that there is something moving at 99.999% the speed of light relative to yourself right now, and therefore we could model you as moving at 99.999% the speed of light relative to this thing.

    As I said, it's a problem with relativity theory, and that's because it robs us the capacity to determine real motions. Notice that relativity theory arose from the realization that the motions of the sun and planets could be modeled equally as heliocentric, or as geocentric. In reality, one model is more accurate than the other, and that's the case with all motions, and why relativity is deficient in its capacity to give us an accurate modeling of motions.
  • andrewk
    2.1k
    As I said, it's a problem with relativity theory, and that's because it robs us the capacity to determine real motions.Metaphysician Undercover
    If you believe in real motions then you will have a problem with relativity theory. It is your problem, not the theory's problem.
  • Metaphysician Undercover
    12.3k
    It is your problem, not the theory's problem.andrewk

    That depends on your ontological perspective, doesn't it?
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