# Category Archives: Anti-Relativity

Discussions in the Anti-Relativity forum

# Unreal Time

Farsight wrote:Time is a velocity-dependent subjective measure of event succession rather than something fundamentalthe events mark the time, the time doesn’t mark the events. This means the stuff out there is space rather than space-time, and is anaetherveiled by subjective time.

I like your definition of time. It is close to my own view that time isunreal.It is possible to treat space as real and space-time as something different, as you do. This calls for some careful thought. I will outline my thinking in this post and illustrate it with an example, if my friends don’t pull me out for lunch before I can finish.

The first question we need to ask ourselves is why space and time seem coupled? The answer is actually too simple to spot, and it is in your definition of time. Space and time mix through our concept of velocity and our brain’s ability to sense motion. There is an even deeper connection, which is that space is a cognitive representation of the photons inputs to our eyes, but we will get to it later.

Let’s assume for a second that we had a sixth sense that operated at an infinite speed. That is, if star explodes at a million light years from us, we can sense it immediately. We will see it only after a million years, but we sense it instantly. I know, it is a violation of SR, cannot happen and all that, but stay with me for a second. Now, a little bit of thinking will convince you that the space that we sense using this hypothetical sixth sense is Newtonian. Here, space and time can be completely decoupled, absolute time can be defined etc. Starting from this space, we can actually work out how we will see it using light and our eyes, knowing that the speed of light is what it is. It will turn out, clearly, that we seen events with a delay. That is a first order (or static) effect. The second order effect is the way we perceive objects in motion. It turns out that we will see a time dilation and a length contraction (for objects receding from us.)

Let me illustrate it a little further using echolocation. Assume that you are a blind bat. You sense your space using sonar pings. Can you sense a supersonic object? If it is coming towards you, by the time the reflected ping reaches you, it has gone past you. If it is going away from you, your pings can never catch up. In other words, faster than sound travel isforbidden.If you make one more assumptionthe speed of the pings is the same for all bats regardless of their state of motionyou derive a special relativity for bats where the speed of sound is the fundamental property of space and time!

We have to dig a little deeper and appreciate that space is no more real than time. Space is a cognitive construct created out of our sensory inputs. If the sense modality (light for us, sound for bats) has a finite speed, that speed will become a fundamental property of the resultant space. And space and time will be coupled through the speed of the sense modality.

This, of course, is only my own humble interpretation of SR. I wanted to post this on a new thread, but I get the feeling that people are a little too attached to their own views in this forum to be able to listen.

Leo wrote:Minkowski spacetime is one interpretation of the Lorentz transforms, but other interpretations, the original Lorentz-PoincarÃ© Relativity or modernized versions of it with a wave model of matter (LaFreniere or Close or many others), work in a perfectly euclidean 3D space.

So we end up with process slowdown and matter contraction, but NO time dilation or space contraction. The transforms are the same though. So why does one interpretation lead to tensor metric while the others don’t? Or do they all? I lack the theoretical background to answer the question.

Hi Leo,

If you define LT as a velocity dependent deformation of an object in motion, then you can make the transformation a function of time. There won’t be any warping and complications of metric tensors and stuff. Actually what I did in my book is something along those lines (though not quite), as you know.

The trouble arises when the transformation matrix is a function of the vector is transforming. So, if you define LT as a matrix operation in a 4-D space-time, you can no longer make it a function of time through acceleration any more than you can make it a function of position (as in a velocity field, for instance.) The space-time warping is a mathematical necessity. Because of it, you lose coordinates, and the tools that we learn in our undergraduate years are no longer powerful enough to handle the problem.

# Of Rotation, LT and Acceleration

In the “Philosophical Implicationsforum, there was an attempt to incorporate acceleration into Lorentz transformation using some clever calculus or numerical techniques. Such an attempt will not work because of a rather interesting geometric reason. I thought I would post the geometric interpretation of Lorentz transformation (or how to go from SR to GR) here.

Let me start with a couple of disclaimers. First of, what follows is my understanding of LT/SR/GR. I post it here with the honest belief that it is right. Although I have enough academic credentials to convince myself of my infallibility, who knows? People much smarter than me get proven wrong every day. And, if we had our way, we would prove even Einstein himself wrong right here in this forum, wouldn’t we? Secondly, what I write may be too elementary for some of the readers, perhaps even insultingly so. I request them to bear with it, considering that some other readers may find it illuminating. Thirdly, this post is not a commentary on the rightness or wrongness of the theories; it is merely a description of what the theories say. Or rather, my version of what they say. With those disclaimers out of the way, let’s get started

LT is a rotation in the 4-D space-time. Since it not easy to visualize 4-D space-time rotation, let’s start with a 2-D, pure space rotation. One fundamental property of a geometry (such as 2-D Euclidean space) is its metric tensor. The metric tensor defines the inner product between two vectors in the space. In normal (Euclidean or flat) spaces, it also defines the distance between two points (or the length of a vector).

Though the metric tensor has the dreadedtensorword in its name, once you define a coordinate system, it is only a matrix. For Euclidean 2-D space with x and y coordinates, it is the identity matrix (two 1’s along the diagonal). Let’s call it G. The inner product between vectors A and B is A.B = Trans(A) G B, which works out to be $a_1b_1+a_2b_2$. Distance (or length of A) can be defined as $\sqrt{A.A}$.

So far in the post, the metric tensor looks fairly useless, only because it is the identity matrix for Euclidean space. SR (or LT), on the other hand, uses Minkowski space, which has a metric that can be written with [-1, 1, 1, 1] along the diagonal with all other elements zeroassuming time t is the first component of the coordinate system. Let’s consider a 2-D Minkowski space for simplicity, with time (t) and distance (x) axes. (This is a bit of over-simplification because this space cannot handle circular motion, which is popular in some threads.) In units that make c = 1, you can easily see that the invariant distance using this metric tensor is $\sqrt{x^2 - t^2}$.

Continued

# Chống thuyết tương đối và siêu số,,en,Leo đã viết,,en,Tôi có một số vấn đề với phần giới thiệu mặc dù,,en,khi bạn đối mặt với các hiệu ứng du hành ánh sáng và các phép biến đổi tương đối tính,,en,Bạn tuyên bố một cách chính xác rằng tất cả các ảo tưởng tri giác đã được xóa bỏ trong quan niệm của Thuyết Tương đối Đặc biệt,,en,nhưng bạn cũng nói rằng những ảo tưởng tri giác này vẫn là cơ sở tiềm thức cho mô hình nhận thức của Thuyết Tương đối Đặc biệt,,en,Tôi hiểu ý bạn hay tôi hiểu sai,,en,Các hiệu ứng tri giác được biết đến trong vật lý,,en,chúng được gọi là hiệu ứng Thời gian di chuyển nhẹ,,en,nấu một từ viết tắt,,en,Những hiệu ứng này được coi là ảo ảnh quang học về chuyển động của vật thể đang quan sát,,en,Sau khi bạn loại bỏ các hiệu ứng LTT,,en,Bạn nhận được,,en,chuyển động của đối tượng,,en,Chuyển động thực này phải tuân theo SR,,en

Leo wrote:I have some problems with the introductory part though, when you confront light travel effects and relativistic transforms. You correctly state that all perceptual illusions have been cleared away in the conception of Special Relativity, but you also say that these perceptual illusions remained as a subconscious basis for the cognitive model of Special Relativity. Do I understand what you mean or do I get it wrong?

The perceptual effects are known in physics; they are called Light Travel Time effects (LTT, to cook up an acronym). These effects are considered an optical illusion on the motion of the object under observation. Once you take out the LTT effects, you get the “real” motion of the object . This real motion is supposed to obey SR. Đây là cách giải thích hiện tại của SR,,en,Lập luận của tôi là các hiệu ứng LTT tương tự như SR đến mức chúng ta nên nghĩ SR chỉ là một hình thức hóa LTT,,en,một hình thức hóa hơi sai lầm.,,en,Nhiều lý do cho lập luận này,,en,Chúng ta không thể làm trái ý,,en,ảo ảnh quang học,,en,bởi vì nhiều cấu hình cơ bản làm phát sinh cùng một nhận thức,,en,đi từ những gì chúng ta thấy đến những gì đang gây ra nhận thức của chúng ta là một trong nhiều vấn đề,,en,Phép biến đổi tọa độ SR một phần dựa trên các hiệu ứng LTT,,en,Hiệu ứng LTT mạnh hơn hiệu ứng tương đối tính,,en,Có lẽ vì những lý do này,,en,những gì SR làm là để nói rằng những gì chúng tôi thấy là những gì nó thực sự như thế nào,,en,Sau đó, nó cố gắng mô tả toán học những gì chúng ta thấy,,en,Đây là những gì tôi có nghĩa là một chính thức,,en,khi chúng tôi phát hiện ra rằng các hiệu ứng LTT không hoàn toàn phù hợp với SR,,en.

My argument is that the LTT effects are so similar to SR that we should think of SR as just a formalization of LTT. (In fact, a slightly erroneous formalization.) Many reasons for this argument:
1. We cannot disentagle the “optical illusion” because many underlying configurations give rise to the same perception. In other words, going from what we see to what is causing our perception is a one to many problem.
2. SR coordinate transformation is partially based on LTT effects.
3. LTT effects are stronger than relativistic effects.

Probably for these reasons, what SR does is to say that what we see is what it is really like. It then tries to mathematically describe what we see. (This is what I meant by a formaliztion. ) Later on, when we figured out that LTT effects didn’t quite match with SR (như trong quan sát của,,en,chuyển động siêu hạng,,en,chúng tôi nghĩ rằng chúng tôi phải,,en,đưa ra,,en,các hiệu ứng LTT và sau đó nói rằng chuyển động cơ bản,,en,hoặc không gian và thời gian,,en,tuân theo SR,,en,Điều tôi đề xuất trong cuốn sách và các bài báo của mình là chúng ta chỉ nên đoán không gian và thời gian cơ bản là như thế nào và tìm ra nhận thức của chúng ta về nó,,en,bởi vì đi theo hướng khác là một vấn đề có một-không-nhiều,,en,Dự đoán đầu tiên của tôi,,en,là không-thời gian Galilean,,en,Phỏng đoán này dẫn đến một sự giải thích khá gọn gàng và đơn giản của GRB và DRAGN như sự bùng nổ chói sáng và hậu quả của chúng,,en,Trên diễn đàn Daily Mail,,en,một người tham gia,,en,gọi là,,en,những gì trong một cái tên,,en,bắt đầu nói về,,en,vào tháng bảy,,en,Nó bị tấn công khá ác ý trên diễn đàn,,en,Tôi tình cờ nhìn thấy nó trong một lần tìm kiếm trên Web và quyết định tham gia và bảo vệ nó,,en,có tên gì trên,,en,Bánh ngọt,,tr “apparent” superluminal motion), we thought we had to “take out” the LTT effects and then say that the underlying motion (or space and time) obeyed SR. What I’m suggesting in my book and articles is that we should just guess what the underlying space and time are like and work out what our perception of it will be (because going the other way is an ill-posed one-to-many problem). My first guess, naturally, was Galilean space-time. This guess results in a rather neat and simple explantions of GRBs and DRAGNs as luminal booms and their aftermath.