Hijack from Length contraction in a block universe must be an illusion

[steveupson]

4 hours ago, 34student said:

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As for your diagram, I understand what you are saying.  But my argument implies that there is only 1 distance.  The diagram fails to be a proper analogy of my issue because there is not ever only 1 direction.

At the risk of being accused of another thread hijack, I am going to put in my two cents, mainly because nobody has mentioned how a meter is currently defined in SI units (or, if they did, I missed it.) For the past couple of years, the meter is defined in terms of speed of light, or in other words, the unit is the distance that light travels in something like 3(10^-8)seconds someone needs to check that because I'm still having difficultly adjusting to the metric system,  i know a foot is the distance light travels in one ns.   The old Heathkit oscilloscopes had timing delays that were just  long rraces runing back and forth on a pcb. They were able to promote this long trace as a "look ahead" feature because it allowed the sweep to trigger ahead of the vertical  amplifier such that no information was lost at the beginning of the sweep which is where glitches liked to hide.  So the standard unit that we use to define distance is based on light travel time in a vacuum.  So, if  we take another look at the coordinate system for your block universe (3D+t ), we know that traditionally the 3D are the spatial coordinates or distance along the orthogonal x-,y-,z-axes; or, in other words. we have light travel time in x, y and z directions for three of our coordinates and then time t for the fourth.   so, since the speed of light has been adopted for the relativistic constant, we have two trains, with one being 10 times as many femtoseconds long as the other, such that one is 10m long and  the other is 100m.   This type of coordinate system seems totally ill-suited for relativistic spacetime since establishing proper time is critical to being able to observe the property of distance.   I just thought that i would mention this since no one else has noted it here.  You used the word "direction in your response and that was all tha it took for me too instantly connect my pet theory with your op.  in case you haven't heard, my pet theory is that "direction is a physical property that can be observed independently from time or distance.  This "heresy' has become a taboo subject at many fora that cater to this kind of dialog that we are having here,  But that's a whole nuther topic having more to do with religious dogma than science,  although one could argue that religion has become a mercenary science  science  deducated to the redistribution of capital.  Ive been working with others to initiate development of a new model which we are calling timespace,  Mathematically, the major difference is that we've begun using direction rather than distance as the metric.  jIt  is worth  pointing out that direction isn't really limited by the speed of light. For example, if you were to shine a spotlight at the moon, and then pass your finger in front of the beam, there is no limit to how fast the shadow could travel across the lunar surface.  Of course the photons are governed by universal speed limit, but the shadow isn't. In the timespace model, there is no block universe.  Instead, the timespace universe contains only energy and time,  that's all there is; energy can be present in the form of bound energy (matter) or unbound energy (light)  as weird as it sounds, there are many deep symmetries between the new model and the standard model.  Almost every observable phenomonon can be explained using only the law of conservation,  theory of relativity, and the equivalence  principle.  In the new model, there are three base quantities:(1) time, (2)distance, and (3) direction.

That's right in this new look around, directoin is a quantity having a scalar value instead of being a vector quantity based on ratios between lengths.   to support the argumant that direction is a property, I'll say a few words about chirality, sure, the standard model can explain chirality as handedness whatever that means does the standard model tell us how chirality comes about? is there somewhere in the universe where it might be reversed such tha when you pass a magnet through a loop of wire that the electric current flows backwards to what we are used to?  inthe new model, it is slightly more  accessable, because the three base quanities can be set up conceptionally like ro sham bo, and the question becomes analogous to what happens if steel scissors can cut rock or rock can puncture paper, and so on.  

 

Having written this, it's my guess that you are more likely to run across someone who plays rock paper scissors backwards than you are to run across a place where electricity flows backwards, (opposite chirality).  Also, and this may sound impertinent to those members who are sick and tired of reading my thoughts about my pet theory. But, It is CRITICAL  to observe that chirality.. ,whatever it is,  cannot be observed as existing  without at least three spatial dimensions.  Hmmm three spatial dimensions are required in order to manifest chirality.  oh yeah, and chirality needs no additional prooperties or parameters it is a  stand-alone phenomonon based solely on direction.

oh yeah, welcome to the op and to any new members that aren't familiar with my crack-pottery, umm.. (eccentricities.)   let me just say that I feel your frustration with the length contraction question.  it seems arbitrary to me that the meter would be based on light  travel time instead of basing the second on how long it takes to travel a meter.    But ,the history is clear, atomic clocks were developed decades before the meter was ever defined this way. In  2019, I think.

 

 

 

 

 

[swansont]

10 hours ago, steveupson said:

At the risk of being accused of another thread hijack

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in case you haven't heard, my pet theory is that "direction is a physical property that can be observed independently from time or distance.

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Moderator Note

From rule 2.10: Posting pet "theories" in mainstream science forums is considered thread hijacking. So it's "black letter law" that what you did here was hijacking.