Tim88

Yes, exactly. In my earlier post that I also linked to, I presented a reference frame according to which the traveling clock ticks faster than the stay at home clock on that part of the trip. OK, I will do a retake (maybe not now but tomorrow), with a little rephrasing to clarify that it's just a perspective that should not matter for your argument.

Ok I finally got around to watching that video. To my surprise, I see that Richard Carrier's opinion was swayed by Earl Doherty, just as it also happened to me. And he next produced an additional book which supports Doherty's theory. He presents some of Doherty's arguments, and I think that he adds some of his own, for example I think that Doherty had not noticed that Philo of Alexandria had written about a similar Jesus already - that was also new to me. Maybe I should clarify that in a one hour speech, it isn't feasible to present all, or even many, arguments; he presented only a small fraction of the facts that should be considered. For example when discussing Paul and "the Lord's supper", he didn't find the time to point out that Paul's details of the actual ritual not only were "received from the Lord" but may be based on the same source as the Didache. And the Didache is a topic on itself, I was shaken when I read it. http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/didache.html Also he didn't have time to elaborate on the denial by some early Christians of some basic features of the "historical" Jesus. e.g. from the phrase "central case of the crucified man and his cross" on https://web.archive.org/web/20070704232342/http://pages.ca.inter.net/~oblio/CritiquesGDon-2.htm And Carrier discovered, after considering Doherty's arguments, many new pieces of evidence that strengthen that opinion. Similarly I noticed a few pieces of the puzzle myself, as they relate to things that had been bothering me when I still believed that Jesus was historical - such as how the New Testament can have so many passages that are ambiguous about which lord is meant, some even obviously confounding Jesus with the Father. One may say that is normal, it's the Trinity - but there is evidence that the Trinity doctrine was not established at the start, and I find it improbable that a religion that was started by a preacher on Earth so quickly confounds the Jewish God with that man. If instead the New Testament started with mystery teachings about heavenly beings that did not take much care about who is who, then the initial vagueness as well as the following development of a Trinity teaching is more natural (compare https://www.ucg.org/bible-study-tools/booklets/is-god-a-trinity/how-ancient-trinitarian-gods-influenced-adoption-of-the ). And I was struck by apparently very ancient Christian paintings of "the mother of God with her child". Compare for example http://www.earlychristians.org/index.php/origins/item/678-the-devotion-to-the-virgin-mary-in-the-early-church/678-the-devotion-to-the-virgin-mary-in-the-early-church and http://www.albatrus.org/english/religions/pagan/pagan_origin_mary_worship.htm The explanation of a so early mother and child worship in the church, in my opinion does not (arguably, this is a "protestant view") fit well with the bible account, following a historical Jesus. It fits, I think, better with an originally mystery-based Jesus, and a diverse Christian community that had Greek and Egyptian influences mixed with the Jewish prophecies right from the start. The effortless findings of additional supporting materials is in my opinion a feature of a good, promising theory. Back to the video, while it was interesting for me, I do not expect much convincing power from such a video (and insufficient to be "compelling"), compared to a book such as by Doherty with over 300 pages of discussion of evidence (and possibly Carter's own book). But it's a good "primer" So, contrary to my intention, I stayed on a little here and did give some of my ideas about this topic, as I ended up spending time on it again. [edit: rephrase, added better links, repaired link]

Retake for clarity: OK, your next description has some similarities with the last part of my post #116 : http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/97466-clocks-rulers-and-an-issue-for-relativity/page-6#entry940714 But I'll continue with your description here, doing just as with the preceding part: I think that with "method" you effectively mean interpretation, or explanation. [..] Here I perceive a possible inconsistency. The keyword is "overall": the average clock rate over the whole voyage is obviously and factually reduced. The "absolute", the fact that everyone agrees on, is the retardation of the traveling clock, for reasons that are judged differently by choosing different reference systems. You should not expect agreement between different systems about where in its journey that retardation occurs, just as you did not expect the coach and you to agree on who has a good ruler. I temporarily stop here, for in what follows it looks as if you assume that according to everyone, "the real loss in time is due to the travelling clock’s time running slow, during the trip to the half-way point". Not so; that is not an "absolute" on which everyone agrees. Anyway, I like your analysis, it's this kind of analysis that enhances physical understanding.

Hi Robin, as your post is long and consists of two, or even three parts, I'll answer in two posts. I quickly read your whole post and now will slightly improve some of your phrasings in bold. Possibly that already matters for what follows. If you agree with the modifications, I will next consider your contradiction arguments.

Good point. It's very difficult to always avoid it, for "the car is moving relatively, and hence length contracted" is similarly suggestive of multiple realities, as it is equally true that "the ground is moving relatively, and hence length contracted". To avoid that impression I had added "according to the ground frame" to "the car is length contracted". I also did not copy here above a sentence with which I see issues, but that is subject of another discussion that we are already having in another thread (and out of scope here). By chance I now came back here for just the same reason as you. I suddenly recalled that I had forgotten to explicitly clarify the "reality" part of Michel's sentence in my last post, but it's too late to edit that so I do the edit of post #24 in this post: [after-edit of post #24:] It is also true that according to the "ground frame" the car "lives" in what one may call a "contracted reality", in the figurative sense (such as the saying "that person is living in his own reality"). To emphasize how it is a single reality in SR, I added the last picture. Observers of both reference systems can determine (in principle, there are serious practical issues) that "10m" of the car corresponds to "15m" of the ground frame between those events; that is a single reality, with different interpretations, as elaborated. [edit: typo, grammar, phrasing] PS. funny enough, but maybe not surprising, the topic of "Langevin's phrasing" turned out to be not much different from the other parallel threads on clocks and rulers, and realities.

I see that my completion was ambiguous, sorry for that. The example of the car here above corresponds to the ground being the frame that Langevin says to be "in relative motion", and which I therefore labeled as "moving", just as in my earlier post: The spatial distance of two events that are simultaneous for a certain group of observers, is shorter for them than for all other observers in arbitrary motion relative to them. Also, the (measured) spatial distance, is shorter for those who see it passing by as for those who are attached to it. I suppose that you can now agree with that phrase as well. It is also true that according to the "ground frame" the car lives in a contracted reality. But - and I insist - in fact that does not directly follow from what Langevin said; what directly follows is that according to the "car frame", rulers in the ground frame are length contracted. I'll combine the pictures, maybe that will be clearest. I also correct a subtle drawing error that I now notice. We assume, as usual, that the car is "Einstein synchronized"; in other words, the car is assumed to be in rest according to the "car observer". According to the car observer: __________________________ | | | | | c1 c2 | / \--- ----1m---- ---/ \ \__/ o o \__/ As you see, I added the distance measurement according to the car in red. According to the car, the balls were dropped simultaneously at 1 m distance, so that they also hit the ground at 1 m distance. The ground is similarly synchronized with the assumption to be in rest (in perfect disagreement with the car observer). Therefore, according to the ground, not only is the car contracted, but the balls are not dropped at the same time so that they arrive at different times: ______________________ | | | | | | ----> / \--- --------o---/ \ ____________\_/___o____________\_/_____________________________________ ______________________ | | | | | | -----> / \--- -------- ---/ \ __________________o__\_/___1.5m_____o___\_/____________________________ Distance between the corresponding events as measured with a ruler on Earth in blue. The ground observers measure a distance of for example 1.5 m between the events. How is this difference of opinion explained with the different measurement systems? According to the car observer the balls were dropped at the same time so that the distance between the balls is 1 m when they are dropped, and also 1 m when the touch the ground. But he notices that the distance between the balls on the ground according to a ruler on the ground is 1.5 m. He infers that the Earth ruler is length contracted, because from his perspective, a "1.5 m" Earth ruler is only 1 m long. Full situation from the car's perspective: __________________________ | | | | | c1 c2 | / \--- ----1m---- ---/ \ ____________\__/___o__"1.5m"__o___\__/___________________ And as Langevin remarks, it's easy to understand how length contraction can be reciprocal so that each system "sees" the other as length contracted (and blames the other for giving a distorted account of reality): According to the ground observers, the car is length contracted but the effect of the synchronization error by the car operator is greater, so that the distance between the events was more than 1 m. [edit: added one more sketch and improved the "proper car sketches"]

My confusions have nothing to do with relativity; just with inversions.

A decade ago I was there too, even though I was supposed to know the theory. Probably most of us where there. My objection, as I tried to illustrate, is really about the phrasing. I gave three illustrations, one of which you apparently interpreted inversely of how I meant it (is the rotating frame according to classical mechanics suited for not just geometrical, but also for physical descriptions?); the other two are in that same post and in a following one. - post 247, the "PS" http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/97466-clocks-rulers-and-an-issue-for-relativity/page-13#entry942987 - post 251 http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/97466-clocks-rulers-and-an-issue-for-relativity/page-13#entry943345

I added some missing words for clarity in bold; I hope that that is what you meant. If so, I think that it is correct. That is good. However the reason for the "so" is not clearly stated, nor the connection to the statements by Langevin. Moreover you did not comment on most of the foregoing explanations. Thus it is unclear to me if you may have "missed" something; but probably you did. PS. A silly matter that always confused me, and which perhaps confuses you as well, is that if you use a ruler that is shrunk (and as a result it is shorter than before), you will measure longer distances with it, for example the distance between two walls appears longer. It's very logical but it's easy to mix up the "shorter" and the "longer" - I still sometimes go wrong there.

Indeed, I now think that he may have written the space-time equation: ds2 = invariant = (dx2 + dy2 + dz2) - c2dt2 on the blackboard during his speech, when stating what is then immediately obvious: "It is noteworthy that, while the spatial distance of two events can not be canceled, it reaches a minimum precisely for reference systems in which the two events are simultaneous." I'm now considering to add such images as illustrations to my own translation of that paper.

That notion is explored in the references. But I suppose that Mohammed really existed, is that also in doubt? Historians now also reject the historicity of Guillaume Tell... Another simple explanation for there being Christians, is the strong expectation of his coming in that time period. It's a natural later development of thoughts of believers that he thus must have come in that time, in one way or another. We know for fact similar developments in later times, such as early Christians expecting the kingdom of God on Earth and then the Catholic Church claiming that God's kingdom has come through the Church; or the later Bible students predicting Jesus' coming in or around 1914, and then concluding and even announcing that Jesus has been present since that time. PS. Indeed, those two contrary explanations are perhaps at the heart of the discussion, for these lead to contrasting theories that "predict" different developments of the portrayal of Christ in Christian and related writings as function of time and place.

I'm not sure what you mean with "tangible"... I agree with the physical arguments by Langevin and Einstein in the references I gave. Those arguments support the existence of the Lorentz ether which originally served, together with the relativity postulate, as the basis on which the Lorentz transformations were derived (note that that simple fact debunks Petkov, except if the derivations of SR by both Lorentz and Einstein were faulty). For a somewhat inaccurate discussion see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Lorentz_transformations Einstein explained how GR has more need for it than SR, and he enhanced the properties of the Lorentz ether accordingly. However, those arguments can just as well be used in favour of Minkowski's block universe concept (which was similarly enhanced for GR), so that there is a choice of at least two physical models that have not been disproved by measurements. I think that it can be useful and interesting to discuss arguments for and against both concepts, as well as other issues such as what block universe implies about time as physically different from length, or not. But before that, it would be appropriate, I think, to first consider the arguments that SR and GR (and perhaps QFT) imply something more than only mathematical space, in other words, the arguments that physical space (and by extension, spacetime) must contain more than nothingness. It seems to me that that main point of this thread has not yet sufficiently been addressed here. Only if several of us think that space or space-time implies more than math, is it useful to consider if we should next distinguish between space and time as substantial entities or as a single physical entity (if those are the right terms!), and in what way.

No, that is exactly what he assumes to be correct to start with. He does not at all hypothesize a single, great conspiracy but instead a natural development of ideas from different sources over a large time period, as born out by the archaeological evidence (or, I should say of course, his interpretation of that evidence; that's for anyone of us to judge). That's what makes it so difficult to be sure about exact timing. Indeed, since evidently some parts of Luke and Matthew were copied from other manuscripts, how can we know that no similarly messy things happened to John? Therefore it's probably better to not rely on a precise dating of the Gospels for the question if there was a historical Jesus Christ who started Christianity. PS. This gives of course some leeway to theories. For Doherty's theory, the Gospel of John (or maybe the original part of it) fits best as the earliest of the Gospels, as it is closest to Paul's letters in its portrayal of the Christ. However, Doherty notices that there is a difference in view of Christ between that writer and Paul: Christ the Revealer vs. Christ the Sacrifice. Also, while the new website of Doherty is trying to sell his book, with the webarchive a lot of interesting discussions can be unearthed: https://web.archive.org/web/20070205161003/http://pages.ca.inter.net/~oblio/whatsnew.htm And in addition, linked from the Jesus Mysteries forum I came across another site that could be useful as basis for the discussion here as it presents and compares a variety of ideas, in addition to many manuscripts of that time: http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/theories.html

The first phrase is intended to be more general I think, but as applied to the special case it looks correct to me. Maybe the issue is with what he means with "spatial distance", very similar to what happened in the muon discussion ("distance" vs "atmosphere"). See the sketch in my post #7 of the physical situation according to the rest system. [edit:] I'll paste it back in here, with slight improvement of precision: moving ruler: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 v -> ruler in rest: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 As I interpret his words and applied to length contraction, the spatial distance between the laser flash events (in red) is 10 m according to the ruler in rest. The distance between the same events is measured (marked) as 12 m on the moving ruler, as you see. Langevin says then (for my example) that 10 m is the minimum distance determination possible, and all other frames that are in relative motion will measure a greater distance (e.g. 12 m). In the "moving" frame this is explained by observing that, according to the moving frame, the laser flashes were not simultaneous. [edit: the relation between "not simultaneous" and "measuring a greater spatial distance" is nicely sketched by bvr in his post, although his interpretation of another phrase by Langevin is different from mine. And when browsing back to Langevin's p.40, don't forget that on that page he discusses classical mechanics, as introduction to the more complicated SR.] This is obviously true in general for two events in space and time. By means of this example I thus "reverse engineered" the generalization with which Langevin started (personally I would have concluded with that). Slightly rephrasing: The spatial distance of two events that are simultaneous in an inertial reference system, is shorter according to that system than according to another system that is in relative motion to the first.

[edit]: No for the first, yes for the marked length in the second question. I'm afraid that here we face a technically very simple issue that I myself also found confusing except when adding a picture (first time I try this here with ASCII): 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 v -> 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 This is how it looks for the ruler with lasers; the top ruler is the "moving" ruler and the laser positions are indicated in red on the bottom ruler. In this picture the 10 m nominal distance on the "stationary" ruler is marked by the lasers as a nominal distance of about 12 m on the "moving ruler" (fat black burn marks), and so the marked ruler is observed as being length contracted by the system with lasers. Does that help? PS: the main drawback of Langevin's presentation, apart of being rather long winded, is that it apparently was a speech* with little or no visual aids such as pictures, equations and calculations. * https://www.u-paris10.fr/recherche/le-paradoxe-des-jumeaux-deux-conferences-sur-la-relativite-690614.kjsp He is talking about spacial distances between events that are measured differently with different FORs.

I think that that is correct; I'll try to elaborate with a specific, hypothetical example with ultra fast moving rulers. [edit: VandD beat me to this, but it can still be helpful to explain the same idea in different ways. And by chance I understood the intention of Langevin a little differently, so that here I do not present "a different story" but, as it should, "a particular case" of the same story.] Suppose that each ruler is nominally 12 m long, and one ruler has powerful lasers at the points 1 m and 11 m. If the two events are marked ("at the same time" according to the laser system) by means of those lasers into the other, relatively moving ruler when the two rulers are aligned in the middle, then those marks will appear at for example 0.99 m and 11.01 m. This result can be phrased in two ways, corresponding with the two statements of Langevin: 1. The 10 m (proper) distance between the lasers is marked as 10.02 m distance on the relatively moving ruler. And 10 m is less than the 10.02 m distance on the relatively moving ruler. 2. As that 10.02 m distance on the relatively moving ruler corresponds to the 10 m laser distance, the relatively moving ruler is measured as being length contracted.

Hi Celeritas, this has nothing to do with methods or figures and we clearly agree about the physical explanation. It's mainly about the meaning of words, and how to phrase things when we explain physics. The issue came up in the spun off thread, when Michel remarked that he understood from some posts the contrary to what I explained. I thus started looking for phrasings that I consider improper, inconsistent physical descriptions which can be misunderstood as implying the contrary of what you and I clearly agree on. However the discussion belongs to two different threads: this thread concerning consistent physical descriptions, and the spun off thread concerning suggested multiple realities. Also, you understood my illustrations wrongly: for example, I did not suggest that anything is caused by a fictitious force, but argued that your way of explaining corresponds to such descriptions which are not physically sound (fictitious things are things that do not exist in physical reality). I will ponder about replying in detail in this thread or in the other thread; it depends in part on robinpike, if he comments on this issue or not. And I will wait for your comments on my two other illustrations. Best Regards, Tim88

Too late to edit that update in, so I add it. It turns out that some 15 years ago I stumbled on the website of Earl Doherty, and after some discussions with him he directed me to the Jesus Mysteries Yahoo group, which, I think, was mainly used by bible scholars. Apparently the group still exists. Activity is reducing but old posts can be accessed, there is even a database : http://thejesusmysteriesforum.blogspot.ch/

Do you use Google or DuckDuckGo? I read that paper a week ago as I was looking for the technical terms about concepts of time. It is useful for understanding how very different "space" and "spacetime" concepts are, and I found there the term "presentism" that I was looking for, and which I also mentioned here. Apart of that, it seems that Petkov understands the block universe concept which he advocates - but regretfully, he has not understood a thing of what Langevin and Einstein explained. Was that paper peer reviewed? [edit:] as a matter of fact, anyone who knows SR and the history of SR, also knows that his conclusion is definitely wrong. Difficult to access, perhaps you can summarize? It will be similarly interesting to read the refutations of the block universe which incited Petkov to write his paper.

That's worrying of course, but in all likelihood the people who manipulated those materials took care not to spill any stuff on the floor, in their own interest. Medical radio isotopes are meant for use inside the body of patients, it's not comparable to plutonium or so. In particular, their half life is very short so that even if they spilled some of that, it's very unlikely that any harmful radiation was left when you came there. This link may be useful: http://hc-sc.gc.ca/dhp-mps/brgtherap/activit/fs-fi/isotopes-med-faq-eng.php edit: one more link that confirms that we are talking about the same thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiopharmacology

You are right, I oversimplified it too much. [edit:] An original, short version of Mark (without such additions as the ones you mentioned) was probably written many years after Paul's letters and perhaps years before John's gospel; however the estimations are more speculation than science. One scholar argues that the early version of Mark was written after that of John. Just now I refreshed my memory on this topic, so I edit this post accordingly. The estimated timeline of the different manuscripts - not limited to those found in the bible - was a guide for the development of Doherty's theory. A cornerstone of that development is the assumed historicity of Paul, and the fact-based assumption that his writings are the oldest bible writings about Christ that have been found.

I did not forget to tell anything and my answer on your questions is no. [edit: and note that the traveler can freely choose his reference system; but that's again another topic!] Regretfully, I see that you totally missed my point... in my earlier illustration the pilots were also seeing real coastlines. I'll try a last illustration. Two men are standing on the ground, and one is asking the other how classical mechanics works, as he has some doubts if the theory is self consistent. The other man explains it as follows: look, he says, if I now turn around then in my reference system the Earth is circling around me, and also the planets are swirling about wildly. I see it and I can plot this in a space-time diagram, so the wild acceleration of the planets is real. Do you think that such is a good physical description of what happens according to classical mechanics, and that it serves to convince the other that classical mechanics is self consistent?

Yes, exactly.

These discussions are bound to continue due to a combination of causes, such as: - too incomplete consideration of evidence (we do have much material!) - differences in appreciation of evidence (and influenced by personal bias) It's more than a decade ago and I forgot the name of that forum, but maybe they are still discussing! I'll see if I can dig it up and then I'll put that information here. Bold face mine. Yes, much of Doherty's book consists of comparing his hypothesis with the real Jesus hypothesis. But in detail, the part in bold face is not at all the idea; that was not supposed to be the case. Nevertheless it's a real puzzle, and different people fit the pieces together in different ways. John's gospel is estimated to have been written more than half a century after the (real) letters by Paul. And the other gospels were finalized much later, it seems, when the church already was matured.

I came late to this thread; but after scrolling through it, it turns out that there is still some more that can be added. The general consensus among physicists is perhaps "shut up and calculate"; the discussion has been redirected to philosophy journals. Nevertheless there are strong arguments that the "vacuum" is more than just emptiness. At first SR and GR were interpreted as relating to a physical space (a relativistic ether), as argued first by Langevin, based on SR [1] and next by Einstein, based on GR [2]. And although Einstein originally considered Minkowski spacetime as nothing more than a mathematical model to describe phenomena [3], it appears that he later adopted Minkowski's concept of a block universe [4]. I think that there is convincing evidence for either physical space or physical spacetime; there seems to be no reasonable alternative to one of those two concepts [edit: although it is always possible that someone will come up with another alternative]. It should be realized that these two physical models or interpretations correspond to very different, even opposing views of time: the one implies presentism, the other suggests eternalism. The choice of which model one prefers depends on what one thinks makes most sense. [1] p.47 of https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Translation:The_Evolution_of_Space_and_Time [2] https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Ether_and_the_Theory_of_Relativity [3] https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Relativity:_The_Special_and_General_Theory/Part_I#Section_17_-_Minkowski.27s_Four-Dimensional_Space [4] http://quotingeinstein.blogspot.ch/2013/06/einstein-and-michele-besso.html