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Second triplets paradox (muons)

esbo

By esbo
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swansont

swansont

Posted
Posted

After just a quick scan I suspect the issue is going to come down to simultaneity. The author has assumed that simultaneity is absolute, and it isn't.

 

 

esbo, on 13 Jun 2013 - 14:29, said:

For people who believe in special relativity, this produces the

paradox that it is impossible to say how many muons there really are in

the box, consequently the muons cannot actually exist.

It actually means that it is impossible to say how many muons there really are in

the box at a particular time, because time, length and simultaneity are relative, not absolute.

 

 

 

———

 

If a SR thought experiment hits a contradiction, that contradiction is going to be found in the incorrect way the person solved the problem. The underlying math is not at fault, and a made-up scenario is not a real experiment, so it's not a test of the theory. There is no way for a thought experiment to actually show relativity to be wrong. Only an actual, physical experiment can do that.

esbo

esbo

Posted
  • Author
Posted

After just a quick scan I suspect the issue is going to come down to simultaneity. The author has assumed that simultaneity is absolute, and it isn't.

 

 

 

It actually means that it is impossible to say how many muons there really are in

the box at a particular time, because time, length and simultaneity are relative, not absolute.

 

 

 

———

 

If a SR thought experiment hits a contradiction, that contradiction is going to be found in the incorrect way the person solved the problem. The underlying math is not at fault, and a made-up scenario is not a real experiment, so it's not a test of the theory. There is no way for a thought experiment to actually show relativity to be wrong. Only an actual, physical experiment can do that.

 

 

But surely some thought is required in determining the experiment?

 

Or is no thought required in determining the experiment?

 

Which is the case?

 

Or is it both or neither?

1
ajb

ajb

Posted
Posted

But surely some thought is required in determining the experiment?

 

Or is no thought required in determining the experiment?

 

Which is the case?

 

Or is it both or neither?

You maybe confusing the issues here.

 

A thought experiment is a hypothetical situation that you study on paper. You then use whatever theory you have at hand to analyse the situation. It can be a useful way to clear up your misunderstandings or indeed point to new physics. Einstein used thought experiments to help him devise special relativity, for example.

 

However, as a hypothetical situation it is not necessarily true that nature will agree with your thought experiment. A theory can only truly be tested against nataure with a real experiment.

 

Of course, lots of though and effort goes into planning and executing a real experiment. Also the analysis of the results and comparing with theory requires lots of effort. But this is not what we mean by "though" in thought experiment.

imatfaal

imatfaal

Posted
Posted

Further to SwansonT and ajb - and hoping they/others will correct me if I have this wrong - Special Relativity is entirely mathematically self-consistent and this maths is pretty simple and well agreed. This implies that there is no scenario which can be thought up that can produce a self-contradictory answer. Thought experiments are useful in situations where this is not the case - in other parts of science you can posit a physically realistic scenario within the terms of application of the theory and get silly answers, self-contradictions, or breaches of other physical laws; these "bad" answers may show a flaw in the theory. However due to the simplicity and rigor of Special Relativity there is no possibility of a sensible scenario, within the bounds of application, which will provide a paradox or a problem. Most problems with SR are due to a mis-understanding of the theory, a mis-application of the rules, or the use of a scenario specifically outside the application of the theory.

esbo

esbo

Posted
  • Author
Posted

You maybe confusing the issues here.

 

A thought experiment is a hypothetical situation that you study on paper. You then use whatever theory you have at hand to analyse the situation. It can be a useful way to clear up your misunderstandings or indeed point to new physics. Einstein used thought experiments to help him devise special relativity, for example.

 

However, as a hypothetical situation it is not necessarily true that nature will agree with your thought experiment. A theory can only truly be tested against nataure with a real experiment.

 

Of course, lots of though and effort goes into planning and executing a real experiment. Also the analysis of the results and comparing with theory requires lots of effort. But this is not what we mean by "though" in thought experiment.

 

 

I don't think a study has to be carried out on paper, in my opinion though can only occur in the mind, paper can be be used to aid memory

but thought occurs only in the mind.

People can make mistakes in their maths and thought can be used to determine a thought has occurred.

 

I am confident I know in my own mind what though and though experiment mean..

 

Einstein used thought to make sense of experimental data/results.

 

Further to SwansonT and ajb - and hoping they/others will correct me if I have this wrong - Special Relativity is entirely mathematically self-consistent and this maths is pretty simple and well agreed. This implies that there is no scenario which can be thought up that can produce a self-contradictory answer. Thought experiments are useful in situations where this is not the case - in other parts of science you can posit a physically realistic scenario within the terms of application of the theory and get silly answers, self-contradictions, or breaches of other physical laws; these "ba d" answers may show a flaw in the theory. However due to the simplicity and rigor of Special Relativity there is no possibility of a sensible scenario, within the bounds of application, which will provide a paradox or a problem. Most problems with SR are due to a mis-understanding of the theory, a mis-application of the rules, or the use of a scenario specifically outside the application of the theory.

 

 

Mathematics is derived from thought. #Well agreed' is not the same as proven, and even proven often turns out to not proven in some cases.

Indeed SR itself unproven much of what was thought to be proven.

 

I wonder how Einstein would have responded to someone saying the maths of classical physical is self-consistent , pretty simple and well agreed?

 

There seems to be an attitude in this forum that everything is understood and agreed and cannot be challenged.

 

If it were not for people rebelling against that attitude we would still be living in the dark ages, and indeed some say we still are!!

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swansont

swansont

Posted
Posted

esbo, on 14 Jun 2013 - 15:16, said:

Mathematics is derived from thought. #Well agreed' is not the same as proven, and even proven often turns out to not proven in some cases.

Indeed SR itself unproven much of what was thought to be proven.

Mathematics can be proven, though. Whether (or how) it applies to nature has to be confirmed by experiment.

 

esbo, on 14 Jun 2013 - 15:16, said:

I wonder how Einstein would have responded to someone saying the maths of classical physical is self-consistent , pretty simple and well agreed?

I suspect he would have agreed.

 

 

esbo, on 14 Jun 2013 - 15:16, said:

There seems to be an attitude in this forum that everything is understood and agreed and cannot be challenged.

Pointing out that your challenge is flawed (and how it is flawed) is not the same thing as saying things cannot be challenged.

Delta1212

Delta1212

Posted
Posted

By all means, question everything. Questioning is how we learn, but just because you've thought of a question you don't know the answer to doesn't mean there isn't an answer, and someone else answering the question is not suppressing your ability to question things; it just means other people thought of those questions before you and figured out what the answers were. To find a flaw or gap in current knowledge of a subject, you have to find a new question.

esbo

esbo

Posted
  • Author
Posted (edited)

The above is a crackpot website written by a person that is in denial of mainstream physics.

 

 

A lot of scientist have been though of as crackpots in their time.

 

 

 

Here is a list of a few of them.

 

 

 

"
Concepts which have proved useful for ordering things easily assume

so great an authority over us, that we forget their terrestrial

origin and accept them as unalterable facts. They then become

labeled as 'conceptual necessities,' etc. The road of scientific

progress is frequently blocked for long periods by such errors."

- Einstein

 

 

 

 

 

I never put people down for asking questions, it is a good thing.

Something to be encouraged.

I will always try to answer questions so they can understand them.

I think it is people who lack confidence in their own understanding who seek to put people

down to deter them from asking questions they can't answer.

 

There has always been a bit of that in science, people do not want to lose their reputation etc..

 

And even if the crackpots are wrong at least they are provoking discussion.

 

Remember one thing science constantly does is prove old theories wrong or improve on them.

 

The mainstream is not always right, but they do fear being proved wrong.

 

.

 

Here is just one example of a crackpot who was right, so do not be to quick to putt hem down!!

 

J Harlen Bretz

Endured decades of

scorn as the laughingstock of the geology world. His crime was to insist

that enormous amounts of evidence showed that, in Eastern Washington

state, the "scabland" desert landscape had endured an ancient catastrophy:

a flood of staggering proportions. This was outright heresy, since the

geology community of the time had dogmatic belief in a "uniformitarian"

position, where all changes must take place slowly and incrementally over

vast time scales. Bretz' ideas were entirely vindicated by the 1950s.

Quote: "All my enemies are dead, so I have no one to gloat over."

 

 

You can just imagine the amount of ridicule he had to endure.

Edited by esbo
1
xyzt

xyzt

Posted
Posted

 

 

 

 

You can just imagine the amount of ridicule he had to endure.

The difference is that the website you linked is truly crackpot.

swansont

swansont

Posted
Posted

A lot of scientist have been though of as crackpots in their time.

 

Not that I accept the list as being accurate, but so what? What weird failed logic leads you to conclude that being called a crackpot means you are right?

 

"When the law is on your side, pound on the law. When the facts are on your side, pound on the facts. When neither are on your side, pound on the table." You're pounding on the table.

 

The bottom line is that the author made an invalid assumption about relativity, and that's the source of his contradiction. He didn't work through the actual example, but he assumes that both observers are agreeing on the start and end of the experiment, and that's a violation of relativity. If you assume relativity is wrong, you will conclude relativity is wrong. It's a circular argument.

 

The mainstream is not always right, but they do fear being proved wrong.

 

No, not so much.

ajb

ajb

Posted
Posted

Indeed SR itself unproven much of what was thought to be proven.

Though please be aware that special relativity has passed all direct and indirect tests asked of it. Take into accound the domain of validity and experimental errors, there is no reason to doubt special relativity.

I wonder how Einstein would have responded to someone saying the maths of classical physical is self-consistent , pretty simple and well agreed?

I doubt he would have disagreed. Do you think he would disagreed, if so why?

There seems to be an attitude in this forum that everything is understood and agreed and cannot be challenged.

Not at all, but you have to make sure you have a real challange.

 

Anyway, I wonder now if this thread is diverging from the opening post. Swansont's suggestion that simultaneity, or really the lack of, is the root of the paradox seems very reasonable to me.

1
uncool

uncool

Posted
Posted (edited)

I'd like to point out that "squish theory" (which is the main point of the full site to which you linked) is actually something originated by one of the members here (newts) if I remember correctly; there have been several threads about it already; most of them were full of blatant mischaracterizations of modern physics (meaning anything newer than 1900) and an inability to discuss the actual "theory". In the end, they boiled down to a lack of any answer to why we should accept squish theory other than (paraphrased) "It's simpler than what we have now!"

 

To add to the above:

 

The main points are the following:

 

At the start of his experiment, Professor Jack has 100 muons in a box in his lab, and 100 muons flying towards him at almost the speed of light. A fraction of a second later, Professor Jack records that there are 50 flying muons, but only 1 muon left in the box.

 

However to carry out his observation, John jumped into a spaceship and jetted alongside the flying muons. This means that for John, the flying muons were stationary relative to him, so he should only have recorded 1 of them; whilst the boxed muons were moving at nearly lightspeed relative to him, so he should have recorded 50 of those.

 

Furthermore their triplet sister Joanne, also got into a spaceship, and flew along with the muons, but at only half the speed of light. So relative to Joanne, all the muons were moving at half lightspeed, meaning that she should have observed equal numbers of both boxed and flying muons.

 

Which is entirely accurate.

 

The problem is that the author presumes that these are contradictory. They are not, due to the relativity of simultaneity. Jack measures that there are 50 muons flying at the same time as 1 muon still in the box. John measures 50 muons in the box at the same time as 1 muon flying. Joanne measures 25 muons flying at the same time as 25 muons in the box. The problem is that because of the relativity of simultaneity, at the same time means different things to the different observers - and so these do not contradict each other.

=Uncool-

Edited by uncool
1
esbo

esbo

Posted
  • Author
Posted

Though please be aware that special relativity has passed all direct and indirect tests asked of it. Take into accound the domain of validity and experimental errors, there is no reason to doubt special relativity.I doubt he would have disagreed. Do you think he would disagreed, if so why?Not at all, but you have to make sure you have a real challange.

 

Anyway, I wonder now if this thread is diverging from the opening post. Swansont's suggestion that simultaneity, or really the lack of, is the root of the paradox seems very reasonable to me.

 

 

But I don't consider that a sufficient answer, he needs to explain precisely how simultaneity is the paradox. indeed you say 'suggests', basically

it all seems to vague to be an adequate answer. More details is needed.

1
Arete

Arete

Posted
Posted

Not that I accept the list as being accurate, but so what?

 

I would especially call into question Pasteur as being a " crackpot". Not only was he not the first proponent of germ theory, he was a dean at the University of Lille at the time, and the Pasteur Institute was developed while he was still alive. Pasteur was extremely celebrated for his scientific discoveries. To try and depict that he was marginalized would be extremely dishonest. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Pasteur

imatfaal

imatfaal

Posted
Posted

I would especially call into question Pasteur as being a " crackpot". Not only was he not the first proponent of germ theory, he was a dean at the University of Lille at the time, and the Pasteur Institute was developed while he was still alive. Pasteur was extremely celebrated for his scientific discoveries. To try and depict that he was marginalized would be extremely dishonest. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Pasteur

 

 

Yep. In the same vein; I looked up this claim : Steen-McIntyre, Virginia (southwest US indians villiage , 300,000BC) And frankly her ideas and those of her colleagues were argued with and correctly dismissed - possibly with some ridicule. Moreover; 30 years later the scientific consensus is that she is still wrong and has become a single issue fanatic. People still take the time every so often to revisit, refute and debunk her claims (which if true would completely change the out-of-africa etc history of humanity) and she dismisses their work. More recently she seems to appeal directly to the public via television programmes - hardly the sign of a true researcher. She is more a prototypical example of a crackpot who was rightly dismissed rather than a lone voice of sense in the wilderness.

swansont

swansont

Posted
Posted

But I don't consider that a sufficient answer, he needs to explain precisely how simultaneity is the paradox. indeed you say 'suggests', basically

it all seems to vague to be an adequate answer. More details is needed.

 

The burden of that detail is on the proposer who claims relativity is wrong. You don't get a pass because you didn't follow the proper rigor in presenting the problem. Do the simultaneity calculation.

1
esbo

esbo

Posted
  • Author
Posted

The burden of that detail is on the proposer who claims relativity is wrong. You don't get a pass because you didn't follow the proper rigor in presenting the problem. Do the simultaneity calculation.

 

 

The proposer has in effect provided his proof, you are saying it is wrong, I think the onus is you to prove he is wrong by

say specifically where he is wrong.

 

It's like in a maths question and you saying he has done his maths wrong, you need to provide a correction to the detail

ie say in which specific line of maths there is an error.

 

Just saying "you need to check your maths' is a bit of a cop out, I because anyone could say that irregardless of whether

they knew were the error was.

 

So if anyone can provide that specific detail I would be very grateful grateful.

 

If they can't I guess I will be forced to look elsewhere.

1
swansont

swansont

Posted
Posted

The proposer has in effect provided his proof, you are saying it is wrong, I think the onus is you to prove he is wrong by

say specifically where he is wrong.

The proposer is deficient in not doing a rigorous analysis. This is the old trick of shifting the burden of proof. If you skip the hard work, it's too easy to come up with outlandish and complicated scenarios and come to any convenient conclusion you wish, and then you leave all the hard work to the debunker. It's a fundamentally dishonest approach. You are not right until proven wrong.

 

 

It's like in a maths question and you saying he has done his maths wrong, you need to provide a correction to the detail

ie say in which specific line of maths there is an error.

 

Just saying "you need to check your maths' is a bit of a cop out, I because anyone could say that irregardless of whether

they knew were the error was.

It's also the only way to learn. people doing your work for you doesn't provide the same result.

Mike-from-the-Bronx

Mike-from-the-Bronx

Posted
Posted (edited)

I don’t usually post to these forums because I don’t have time to do a back and forth dialog. But I have to reply to this thread. The “paradox” presented by the author that esbo referenced is so basic it could be given as a homework problem to a student taking “Introduction to Special Relativity”. The key to the resolution, as has already been mentioned, is Relativity of Simultaneity.

 

Let me walk thru the homework problem.

 

Given:

You are sitting on the surface of the Earth monitoring a box of decaying muons with a clock. I am monitoring an identical box of decaying muons with my own clock. But I am at an altitude of 10 light-seconds above hurtling toward you at .866c. (10 light-seconds is the distance light travels in 10 seconds). We both start monitoring at the same time according to you.


As far as you are concerned, when I reach you, 11.55 seconds will have elapsed on your clock (10c/.866c). But only 5.77 seconds will have elapsed on my clock since my clock is running at 50% of yours. Since less time has elapsed for me, you expect that I will have more muons in my box than you have in your box.

 

Assignment:

Analyze the problem from my reference frame. What do I expect?


Solution.

From my point of view, the distance to you is only 5 light seconds (50% length contraction). So I expect to meet you when 5.77 seconds have elapsed on my clock (5c/.866c) and I expect to have an amount of muons in my box consistent with that time. That’s the same time (and the same amount of muons) as you expected for my clock and my box. So far, no contradiction.


Now for the hard part.
I believe your clock is running at 50% the rate of my clock. So if 5.77 seconds elapsed on my clock, only 2.89 seconds will have elapsed on your clock between the time I started monitoring and the time we met. But it was given that 11.55 seconds elapsed on your clock when we met. I’m standing right next to you. I have to see the same number on your clock or there is a paradox. How do I resolve that? Well, you must have started monitoring 17.33 seconds before I started monitoring. Since your clock was running at 50%, 17.33 /2 means 8.67 seconds already elapsed on your clock before I even started my clock. Add 2.89 more seconds while both of us were monitoring and I will expect 11.55 seconds elapsed on your clock when we meet. That eliminates the contradiction. If you’re thinking I invented my answer just for this problem, I didn’t. It’s part of the theory.

 

To Summarize:

From your point of view we both started monitoring our boxes of muons at the same time. From my point of view you started monitoring your muons 17.33 seconds before I started monitoring mine. What is simultaneous to you is not simultaneous to me. That’s how Length Contraction, Time Dilation and Relativity of Simultaneity work together to eliminate any contradiction.

 

Can I show that using actual calculations? Sure. I could post some equations with the right numbers on the other side of the “equals” sign. Would you then be convinced? I doubt it.



Edited by Mike-from-the-Bronx
esbo

esbo

Posted
  • Author
Posted

esbo, have you read my post earlier in this thread?

 

 

I have now but it basically boils do to "Do the simultaneity calculation." and I don't believe that is a good enough answer it is too vague.

You need to highlight the error.

I mean you are basically say there is an error, go find it.

However, my basic question is "where is the error in this?"

So it's your job to find it!! Not mine!!

 

 

The proposer is deficient in not doing a rigorous analysis. This is the old trick of shifting the burden of proof. If you skip the hard work, it's too easy to come up with outlandish and complicated scenarios and come to any convenient conclusion you wish, and then you leave all the hard work to the debunker. It's a fundamentally dishonest approach. You are not right until proven wrong.

 

 

 

It's also the only way to learn. people doing your work for you doesn't provide the same result.

 

 

As I said before, that is basically a cop out answer.

You are basically saying you won't or rather can't find a specific fault in it.

 

It is you who is using the old trick of telling me to find my own solution.

 

Nice try but I am not falling for it.

 

You can basically 'answer' all questions with that kind of response.

 

And form what I have discovered this is not the first time you have failed to provide and answer which *proves* the proposition wrong.

Delta1212

Delta1212

Posted
Posted

 

 

I have now but it basically boils do to "Do the simultaneity calculation." and I don't believe that is a good enough answer it is too vague.

You need to highlight the error.

I mean you are basically say there is an error, go find it.

However, my basic question is "where is the error in this?"

So it's your job to find it!! Not mine!!

It's really not anyone's job, although Mike seems to have provided a pretty detailed answer anyway.

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