A child's perspective on relativity!

[Doctordick]

In 1947, George Gamow published a book called "One, Two, Three … Infinity". His book became available a short time after my father's discharge from the Army following WWII. My father had a strong interest in Science Fiction and sometimes bought books mentioned in the books he read. As the war had been ended via the nuclear bombs dropped on Japan and credited to Einstein's E=mc^2, he had an interest in understanding what it was all about. At any rate, he purchased Gamow's book. I don't think my father had much of an understanding of the presentation as he never talked about it.

I was about nine years old when I first saw that book. At the time, I was interested in what this "relativity" thing was all about and read what I could (though I understood very little of most of it). One thing central to Gamow' discussion of relativity was his discussion of two people measuring the speed of light (one on the ground next to a railroad track and the other on board a train moving down the track).

Gamow made it quite clear that they should get different answers because of a problem setting the correct time for the reflection at the other end of the measured path. He pointed out that both parties could easily make the erroneous assumption that they were at rest and thus their relative velocities should generate differences in their measurements.

He also brought up the fact that scientists had tried to use that situation to measure the speed of the earth through space: i.e., by looking for directional variations in c due to exactly the problem mentioned above (see the Michelson-Morley experiment). They obtained zero for the earth's velocity. In essence it amounted to experimental verification that the measurable velocity of light was a constant independent of the motion of the experimentalists coordinate system. That assumption that they were at rest would give the correct experimental answer. Of course, it was clear that such an experimental result was simply inconsistent with the newtonian picture of physical dynamics.

According to Gamow, Einstein's "space time continuum" solved the problem. So I will give you my interpretation of Gamow's explanation as I saw it at the time. Remember, I was an ignorant child.

The first issue Gamow brought up was the idea that we lived in a four dimensional universe, not the simple three dimensional universe we perceived. Now I knew nothing of geometry but I did comprehend the "three" different directions being discussed. To me they were essentially forward and backwards, right and left and up and down. I think he used the word "orthogonal' together with his explanation. At the time, I had no knowledge of geometry to speak of.

Now Gamow added a fourth axis "orthogonal" to those three well understood directions. He called that fourth axis time and asserted that it was imaginary. Now, at the time, I had utterly no concept of imaginary numbers (I also had no idea as to what a square root was so the square root of minus one was totally meaningless expression.) In my child's mind, imaginary simply meant I couldn't see it.

In my mind he was essentially asserting that reality was four dimensional structure though we could only see three of them. I saw it as related to Socrates' "shadows on the wall". I suspect Gamow must have mentioned Socrates idea as I clearly remember associating it with that unobservable dimension. AT any rate, I understood the idea that our understanding arises from limited knowledge of reality and is thus analogous to trying to figure out what is happening when the only information available are shadows projected on a wall.

At any rate, I used that idea as the explanation of our inability to see that fourth axis; in my mind that four dimensional universe was simply being projected in the time direction onto the three dimensional world we could see. Now shadow projection was easy for me to understand. As children, we often used lamps to project our hands on the wall and could make those shadows look like dogs, birds, bats and other things that they certainly were not.

As I said, I couldn't picture a four dimensional geometry but it was quite easy to just leave out the "x" axis and picture a three dimensional universe (y, z and t) where the "t" axis was being projected out yielding a two dimensional (y,z) shadow universe. That circumstance was easy to picture in my mind and it was easy to comprehend the consequences of such a projection.

First of all, in my head. the units of measure in the direction of t should actually be the same as the measures on the other axis. As far as I saw it, we clearly used a different measure as, because it was being projected out, we had no means of measuring it. It seemed clear to me that, since reality was actually four dimensional, everything was moving in both space and time. And quite clearly two entities could only interact when they were at the same position in that four dimensional space; i.e., at the same place and at the same time. It absolutely followed that when two entities interacted in that actual four dimensional universe they also had to be in the same position in the three dimensional shadow universe.

Clearly, if an entity was at rest in the shadow universe, it meant that (in the actual four dimensional universe) it must be moving directly in the "t" direction. If an entity was not at rest in the shadow universe, it meant it had some motion in a direction orthogonal to the "t" direction in the actual four dimensional universe. In my head, the correct measurement in the "t" direction should be exactly the same as measurements in the other directions. As I saw it, hours, minutes and seconds were being used for changes it time only because we couldn't actually measure "t' distances because of the projection.

Clearly, the fastest motion in the shadow universe had to occur when that motion was orthogonal to the "t" direction. Since things were clearly moving in the time direction it seemed to me that, if the velocity of light was the fastest velocity and thus orthogonal to the "t" direction, things at rest should be seen as moving at the velocity c in a direction parallel to the "t" direction: i.e., every second they would move 186,000 miles in the t direction.

However, since the "t" direction was being projected out, where an entity was (in the "t" direction) was totally unknowable. Furthermore, as it's velocity orthogonal to the time direction could be changed by interactions, it's rate of travel in the "t" direction could change from time to time.

That picture yields some very interesting effects. Photons are clearly not moving in the time direction (since clocks measure change in time, if you could put a clock on a photon it would read the same at both ends of it's path). If you accelerate something at rest in the shadow universe, you are actually adding a component of velocity orthogonal to "t" in the actual four dimensional universe thus, (if it is indeed moving at c through that universe) it's velocity changes direction and not actual magnitude. In essence, it's velocity in the "t" direction is less and a clock mounted on that entity would appear to run slower.

In fact, if you think about it a bit, you will realize that you get exactly the effects predicted by Einstein's special theory of relativity including the increase in mass as seen when an object acquires relativistic velocities. That is a direct consequence of the fact that force is defined as what is required to change the velocity by a fixed amount. Since all we can actually do here is change the direction of that velocity in the actual four dimensional universe, adding a fixed change in velocity in the shadow universe becomes impossible. As the path becomes close to being orthogonal to the t axis: i.e., even an infinite force can only make a small change in that velocity. That fact is presumed to indicate mass increasing towards infinity.

At any rate, I thought I understood relativity when I was ten years old. Now, prior to 1956 relativity wasn't even mentioned in high school physics. Thus I presumed my view of relativity was correct until Einstein's special relativity was brought up in a college physics. It was clear to me immediately that my explanation was a totally incorrect presentation of Einstein's thoughts.

On the other hand I was quite surprised that the mathematical results of my picture gave exactly the same answers as his theory. That issue so interested me that I almost always did every problem I had to work out from both perspectives. My picture was so much simpler than his that it was as easy to work out both pictures as it was to work out his prediction. In my whole life I have never found a circumstance where the two pictures gave different results.

By the time I graduated from college, I was actually quite astounded by the fact that both approaches always gave exactly the same answers. I knew that my explanation had to be wrong because I could come up with no mechanism for that projection I had presumed existed.

Even after I got into graduate school, I continued to use my representation as it was so much easier and quicker than his. I could get the answers a lot quicker and the equations looked a lot like his so, unless explaining the procedure was important, I didn't bother with his attack. But I was nonetheless continually bothered by the fact that I could not come up with an explanation for that projection.

I think it was in 1966, my second semester in graduate school, that I took a class which introduced quantum mechanics. Back in those days, quantum was not brought up in undergraduate physics (at least not where I went to school anyway). It was within the first couple of weeks that the Heisenberg uncertainty principle was brought up. That was the fact that the product of the uncertainty in position times the uncertainty in momentum of an entity could not be zero. This is commonly written [latex]\Delta x \Delta p_x\geq \frac{h}{2\pi}[/latex] where "h" is the "Heisenberg constant".

My immediate reaction was, "my god, there is the projection mechanism!" If the momentum in the "t" direction is quantized (that is, there is zero uncertainty in [latex]p_t[/latex]) the uncertainty in the "t" position has to be infinite! Since momentum and kinetic energy are, by conventional definition, proportional to half the relevant entities velocity, [latex]\frac{1} {2}mv^2 \rightarrow mv \frac{v}{2}[/latex] , it should be clear that quantized momentum in the "t" direction can be seen as mass and the uncertainty in actual "t" is infinite.

Clearly light, which is moving in a direction orthogonal to "t", must have zero momentum in the "t" direction: i.e., photons are massless entities.

I was so excited about that realization that, after class, I went to the professor teaching that class and explained my view of special relativity to him. It took three hours before he finally agreed that my view did indeed yield all the standard consequences of special relativity. His position was nonetheless that my presentation was of no interest, as I had not reproduced the consequences of general relativity which was directly built on Einstein's concept of the fabric of "space time". He further insisted that I not show it to any of the other graduate students as "it would just confuse them".

Since, at the time, I had no understanding of general relativity, I couldn't argue with him on that issue. Essentially he held that, even though it gave all the correct answers for special relativity, I couldn't possibly be correct. He also made it quite clear that he had no interest in thinking about the issue. A side comment here, very few graduate students (or college professors) I have met have even bothered to learn general relativity. By 1970 I had extended my picture to something which covered all possibilities but I could not solve the resulting equation.

Anyway I received my Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Vanderbilt University on January 19th, 1971.

(My thesis consisted of a theoretical scattering calculation for the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.) I learned that experimentalists do experiments and theoreticians calculate the supposed results presuming the theories are correct -- no one thinks about theories.

By that time I was pretty well disappointed in the physics community and ended up earning my living outside the field. I still thought about things and, around 1980, discovered a perturbation attack which yielded solutions to that equation.

I presently feel that my attack is far superior to the accepted relativistic theory and that the conflict between quantum mechanics and relativity theory is entirely due to Einstein's invalid perception of the problem. But I can not obtain professional publication.

Physics journals assert that what I am presenting is philosophy and of no interest to physicists, the philosophy journals assert that what I am presenting is mathematics and of no interest to philosophers and, finally, mathematicians tell me what I am presenting is physics and of no interest to them (there is no math above undergraduate level in my presentation). I suspect none of the editors could find a referee competent to review my work.

So I post to physics forums in hopes that someone on earth might find what I have discovered interesting. It appears there is no interest here either! If anyone has any interest in understanding me, please let me know.

Have fun -- Dick

 

[nobox]

Time is clearly an artificial invention. We are fooled all along. Imagine if time is taken out of all physics equation! What's left is just geometry!

[ajb]

Just a couple of comments, some you probability already know.

 

i) The 'time axes' is made to have the same units as space, i.e. length by using ct or maybe ict depending on what you are doing. This is essential if we are going to mix space and time.

 

ii) The momentum in the 't' direction is energy. Photons carry energy.

 

iii) Write up you ideas carefully and place them on the arXiv.

 

 

Imagine if time is taken out of all physics equation! What's left is just geometry!

We are left with mostly geometry even when we include time.

Edited April 19, 2015 by ajb

[studiot]

 

"One, Two, Three … Infinity".

 

It is easy to think that a being confined to a single space(like) axis would have more difficulty conceiving of multiple spatial axes.

We have three so the idea of more does not raise any eyebrows, just questions like 'what observations support this idea'?

 

However we only have one time axis so imagining additional ones is more difficult.

 

By why stop at four?

[John Cuthber]

Time is clearly an artificial invention. We are fooled all along. Imagine if time is taken out of all physics equation! What's left is just geometry!

What happened before we invented it?

[Doctordick]

Nobox, you make the comment "Time is clearly an artificial invention" I would ask, what makes you think that any of your thoughts are not artificial inventions?

Studiot, what makes you think that I ever stopped at four?

And John Cuthber, please define "before" without using the concept of "time". Your post is a meaningless circular thought construct.

And finally, ajb (ha ha, my computer wanted to change your name to jab), you seem to be the only person here who manages to show some signs of thought. Your comments i) and ii) are exactly the standard perspective as seen in any decent presentation of Einstein's relativity and "not at all the perspective I held in my childish interpretation". And, regarding ii) photons carry no energy in the form of mass, the energy they do carry is in the form of momentum within the (x,y,z) space.

As I commented, I have an earned Ph.D. in theoretical physics from a respected institution and I am well aware of both special and general relativity as presented at that institution.

You assert that you understand mathematics and like the subject. If that is the case and you have the ability to think, you should be interested in my thoughts (not that I really expect such a thing).

The following expresses a rather simple fact absolutely overlooked by the scientific community.

It is quite simple to prove that absolutely all internally consistent explanations of absolutely any conceivable collection of facts is perfectly represented by the following rather concise mathematical expression:

[latex]\left \{\sum _i\vec{\alpha_i}\cdot\vec{\nabla_i}+\sum_{i\neq j}\beta_{ij}\delta(\vec x_i-\vec x_j) \right \}\Psi = \frac{\partial \;}{\partial t}\Psi=im\Psi[/latex]

The issue standing behind that expression is the fact that our knowledge, from which we deduce our explanations, can not consist of an infinite body of facts. This is an issue modern scientists have absolutely no interest in considering (Zeno's paradox has been ignored for almost three thousand years). My analysis effectively uncovers some deep and significant implications of the fact that human understanding is built on a finite collection of knowledge.

Note also entire collection of languages ever spoken by mankind is also a construct based on a finite number of concepts. Normal scientific analysis of any problem invariably ignores the issue of learning (and understanding) the language in which the problem is expressed. Large collections of concepts are presumed to be understood by intuition or implicit meanings long before any thought is put into the issue.

One should comprehend that they can not even begin to discuss the logic of such an analysis with a new born baby. In fact I suspect a newborn can not even have any meaningful thoughts before creating some concepts to identify their experiences.

The central issue of my deduction is the fact that once one has come up with a theoretical explanation of any phenomena (that is, created a mental model of their understandings of the relevant experiences) the number of concepts they use to think about the issue is finite (it may be quite large but must nonetheless be finite).

Any idiot should be capable of comprehending that, being a finite collection, a simple list of the relevant concepts could be created, at least in the abstract. (Think about the total collection of all libraries, museums and other intellectual properties together with an inventory log of the entire collection of facts.)

Once one has that inventory log, numerical labels may be given each and every log entry. Using those numerical labels, absolutely every conceivable circumstance which can be discussed may be represented with the notation [latex](x_1,x_2,\cdots,x_n)[/latex]. Note that learning a language is exactly the process of establishing the meaning of such a collection from your experiences. Anyone who had at their disposal all of the circumstances they have experienced expressed in the form [latex](x_1,x_2,\cdots,x_n)[/latex] could use that data to construct the meaning of each and every [latex]x_i[/latex] as that is exactly what learning a language is all about.

I would like to point out that, just because people think they are speaking the same language does not mean their concepts are semantically identical. Each of them possess what they think is the meaning of each specified concept. What is important here is that "what they think those meanings are" was deduced from their own experiences; i.e., what they know is the sum total of their experiences (that finite body of facts referred to above by my notation [latex](x_1,x_2,\cdots,x_n)[/latex]).

The above circumstance leads to one very basic an undeniable fact. If one has solved the problem (that is, created a consistent mental model of their experiences) then they can express those beliefs in a very simple abstract form: [latex]P(x_1,x_2,\cdots,x_n)[/latex] which can be defined to be the probability that the specific circumstance represented by [latex](x_1,x_2,\cdots,x_n)[/latex] is true. In essence, if they had an opinion as to the truth of the represented circumstances, the collection of relevant probabilities [latex]P(x_1,x_2,\cdots,x_n)[/latex] could be thought of as representing their explanation of the relevant circumstance [latex](x_1,x_2,\cdots,x_n)[/latex].

It is at this point that a single, most significant, observation can be made (perhaps not by the unthinking idiot who moved this thread to "Speculation"). Those labels, [latex]x_i[/latex], are absolutely arbitrary. If any specific number is added to each and every numerical label [latex]x_i[/latex] in the entire defined log, nothing whatsoever changes in the patterns of experiences from which the solution was deduced.

In other words the following expression is absolutely valid for any possible solution representing any possible explanation (what is ordinarily referred to as one's belief in the nature of reality itself) so long as that explanation is internally consistent; i.e.,

[latex]\lim_{\Delta a \rightarrow 0}\frac{P(x_1+a+\Delta a,x_2+a+\Delta a,x_n+a+\Delta a)-P(x_1+a,x_2+a,x_n+a)}{\Delta a}\equiv 0.[/latex]

What is important here is that, if this were a mathematical expression, it would be exactly the definition of the derivative of [math]P(x_1+a,x_2+a,\cdots,x_n+a)[/math] with respect to a.

If [math]P(x_1,x_2,\cdots,x_n)[/math] were indeed a mathematical expression the above derivative would lead directly to the constraint that

[latex]\sum_{i=1}^n\frac{\partial\;}{\partial x_i}P(x_1,x_2,\cdots,x_n)\equiv 0.[/latex]

(That result arises from the simple fact that [latex]\frac{\partial x_i}{\partial a}=1[/latex] in absolutely all cases.) However, it should be evident to anyone trained in mathematics that the expression defined above above still does not satisfy the definition of a mathematical expression for a number of reasons.

The reader should comprehend that there are two very significant issues which must be handled before even continuing this deduction. First, the numerical labels [math]x_i[/math] are not variables (they are fixed numerical labels) and second, the actual number "n" of concepts labeled by those [math]x_i[/math] required to represent a specific circumstance of interest is not fixed in any way. (Consider representing a description of some circumstance in some language; the number of words required to express that circumstance can not be a fixed number for all possible circumstances.)

The rest of my deduction is devoted to handling all the issues related to transforming the above derivative representation into a valid mathematical function. To begin with, any attempt to handle the two issues just brought up above will bring up additional issues which must be handled very carefully. The single most important point in that extension of the analysis is making sure that no possible explanation is omitted in the final representation: i.e., if there exist explanations which can not be represented by the transformed representation the representation has to be erroneous.

There is another very important aspect of the above representation. Though the number of experiences standing behind the proposed expression [latex]P(x_1,x_2,\cdots,x_n)[/latex] is finite, the number of possibilities to be represented by the explanation must be infinite (the probability of truth must be representable for all conceivable circumstances [latex](x_1,x_2,\cdots,x_n)[/latex].

There are a number of other serious issues to handle before the above can be transformed into a mathematical expression. If anyone here possesses the intellect to comprehend the above let them start a non-speculative thread to cover the discussion.

And oh yes, years ago I submitted a presentation to arXiv which was simply rejected with no comments as I was categorized as not a publishing scientist!

Have fun guys -- Dick

[ajb]

You seem very verbose and this is distracting from the points you are trying to make.

 

Why are the seeming mathematical expressions you have written down not mathematical expression? (Up to ambiguities in your definitions, which you have not made clear at all).

 

Is that the Dirac equation you have written down? It looks a bit like it in rather archaic notation.

 

The arXiv does not usually reject articles, unless they are very very bad. More often they will get placed in 'general physics'. Today the system requires a sponsor, that is someone who has posted enough to be considered competent. You should write your ideas down carefully, trying not to be too verbose and see if experts in something similar will sponsor you for the arXiv. From there you may get some attention and be able to clean up your preprint and submit it to a proper journal.

 

Good luck.

[swansont]

And finally, ajb (ha ha, my computer wanted to change your name to jab), you seem to be the only person here who manages to show some signs of thought.

 

!

Moderator Note

 

Insulting folks (directly or indirectly) is not going to fly. You username should not also be a description of your behavior.

 

Do not respond to this in the thread.

 

[studiot]

 

Studiot, what makes you think that I ever stopped at four?

 

 

I didn't, one way or the other.

 

I was offering a spin-off point that I don't think you made or denied.

 

Feel free to comment on what I actually said.

[Doctordick]

Sorry ajb (again the stupid spell check rolled your name over to jab; you don't happen to know how to fix that do you?) I misunderstood the comment by swansont. I also just read that pinned thread about the purpose of the "speculations" category so I don't feel quite as insulted as I did before. But, if I don't get some serious comments I will probably quit posting. Meanwhile, I will move the essence of my answer to you to this thread.

Yes, I agree that my posts are somewhat verbose but that is a consequence of my attempts to clarify some things most people fail to comprehend. As you yourself comment, you didn't find what I said to be clear. Perhaps this over simplified example will clear things up. The question is "what constraints on an explanation stem from the fact that the number of known facts is finite?"

is not a mathematical expression for the very simple reason that the are not variables. They are mere numerical labels of the concepts necessary to express the circumstance of interest. For example, the circumstance expressed in your first comment, (You seem very verbose and this is distracting from the points you are trying to make.) could be represented by

where the list of concepts (expressed in english) are:

0.--"."

1.--to

2.--is

3.--and

4.--the

5.--are

6.--this

7.--seem

8.--very

9.--from

10.--make

11.--points

12.--trying

13.--verbose

14.--distracting

15.--you

Of course, the actual issue is that the entire basis must include enough circumstances to allow deduction of the english language: i.e., the words shown above are not given. You can think of the problem of learning as being equivalent to deciphering a secret code. What is important is the simple fact that the total number of required concepts is finite and the total number of known circumstances is also finite (someone tell me if they think that assertion is a theory or a fact).

The second failure to satisfy the definition of a mathematical function is that the number of arguments is not fixed: you should comprehend from my example above that suggesting "n" is a fixed number is a ridiculous presumption. It would require every sentence describing every conceivable circumstance be expressible via a fixed number of words in every possible language.

The third failure is clearly the fact that the result is meaningless under the given definition of .

That is not the Dirac equation though I will admit it very much resembles Dirac's equation. As I said in my "SPECULATIVE" post, I can PROVE that equation (the one which looks like Dirac's equation) is valid for all possible internally consistent explanations of all possible collections of circumstances (facts, information, knowledge…). That proof quite easy but is not short and solving the thing is subtle as the indices end up being infinite.

AS you commented, today arXiv requires a sponsor and nothing is published without one. I tried to find a sponsor and utterly failed. Oh, I got some polite rejections but they were rejections nonetheless. There are not any experts in anything similar to what I am talking about and the reaction of professionals are exactly the same as swansont's. They universally reject it as baloney without reading a word of it.

One thing people don't seem to comprehend is the fact that my presentation is not a theory. Most scientific fields are based on two very different intellectual categories: first, the theory behind the fields (the issue is do experiments agree with it) and second what are the logical consequences of that theory (what kinds of things does it predict). What is important here is that errors in the logic are not found by experiment. If I can get no one to step through my logic, posting this thing (or publishing it) is of no value at all.

At the moment I only have one person seriously trying to understand my proof and the solution. He is a programer and has a strong interest in AI. His understanding of mathematics is quite limited. Right now I am trying to explain the Fourier transform to him.

If there is no one here with an interest in examining my logic I will just quit posting.

Have fun -- Dick

[studiot]

 

The third failure is clearly the fact that the result is meaningless under the given definition of

 

 

Not so. Perhaps you should revise some mathematics, rather than insulting me (and others), since this is the second time you have done it, in this thread.

Edited April 21, 2015 by studiot

[Doctordick]

 

 

Not so. Perhaps you should revise some mathematics, rather than insulting me (and others), since this is the second time you have done it, in this thread.

 

Please explain that comment!!

[ajb]

is not a mathematical expression for the very simple reason that the are not variables. They are mere numerical labels of the concepts necessary to express the circumstance of interest.

I still don't quite see why this is not a mathematical expression. What is the difference between 'numerical label' and 'real variable' in this context? I don't know if what you have written is well-defined or exactly what it is, you have not said what it is. From your notation it looks like we have a function on R^n that is at least C1. What this function represents and how we interpret whet we can get from it, you will have to spell out.

[studiot]

 

Please explain that comment!!

 

Which one?

By my count I made two in my post you referred to.

Edited April 22, 2015 by studiot

[michel123456]

If there is no one here with an interest in examining my logic I will just quit posting.

 

Have fun -- Dick

Dear Doctordick.

Your mind is under too much pressure, you have a lot of things to say, please don't try to put everything under the same post.

I was disgusted by your wall of text. Too much, too much.

I returned reading your first post after noticing a +1 reputation number. I thought, how bizarre, someone else read all this?

I read it. I added another +1.

But your second post ruined everything.

Please be concise.

The history of your life interests nobody. Yet.

Make your points. On one subject at a time.

And people will read you.

Edited April 22, 2015 by michel123456

[Doctordick]

I still don't quite see why this is not a mathematical expression. What is the difference between 'numerical label' and 'real variable' in this context? I don't know if what you have written is well-defined or exactly what it is, you have not said what it is. From your notation it looks like we have a function on R^n that is at least C1. What this function represents and how we interpret whet we can get from it, you will have to spell out.

 

As I said, "they are mere numerical labels of the concepts necessary to express the circumstance of interest". They are simple references to your solution. The specific concepts required to express the facts, information, knowledge, --whatever-- which you have come to hold as necessary to understanding your mental image of reality. When you have found what you think is a solution (that is, there is some aspect of reality you feel is true) the final issue is to express that solution via a language. The language is part of the solution! The elements of that language are not variables, they do not change, they are fixed concepts.

 

There are two very important issues here. First, the number of concepts required to express anything you know is finite and, second, once you have decided what those concepts are, they can be listed and labeled, but they do not change. Being "arbitrary" and "changing" are two totally different concepts.

 

Consider your statement (You seem very verbose and this is distracting from the points you are trying to make.)

represented by the circumstance (15,7,8,13,3,6,2,14,9,4,11,15,5,12,1,10,0) in my notation.

 

Then P(15,7,8,13,3,6,2,14,9,4,11,15,5,12,1,10,0) would represent the probability (in your understanding) that the circumstance was true.

 

Given that meaning of the representation, please explain to me what you think could possibly mean.

 

Have fun --Dick

 

(By the way guys, that is my real name and not a comment. And "Doctor Dick" has been my nickname most all of my adult life.)

[xyzt]

 

 

Given that meaning of the representation, please explain to me what you think could possibly mean.

 

It means that the sum of the partial derivatives of a function is zero. What does this have to do with relativity?

[Mordred]

Not sure myself, I found most of the tangents of this post far too distracting to wade through.

(Which is rather amusing considering the articles and materials I typically wade through). Some of them being arxiv articles, by posters on this forum. ( Though I won't divulge whose)

[ajb]

Everything here is just too vague to really understand.

 

If your x's are "mere numerical labels of the concepts necessary to express the circumstance of interest" and this labelling is not useful, which I think is what you are implying, then what is the point of all this?

 

But then you say "Then P(15,7,8,13,3,6,2,14,9,4,11,15,5,12,1,10,0) would represent the probability (in your understanding) that the circumstance was true." How do you assign this probability?

 

Anyway, you are waffling on too much. Make clear statements and maybe we can discuss this properly.

 

 

Some of them being arxiv articles, by posters on this forum. ( Though I won't divulge whose)

That arXiv or viXra?

Edited April 23, 2015 by ajb

[studiot]

It means that the sum of the partial derivatives of a function is zero. What does this have to do with relativity?

 

It means more than that, which was my earlier point in post#11.

Edited April 23, 2015 by studiot

[michel123456]

 

(...)

First of all, in my head. the units of measure in the direction of t should actually be the same as the measures on the other axis. As far as I saw it, we clearly used a different measure as, because it was being projected out, we had no means of measuring it. It seemed clear to me that, since reality was actually four dimensional, everything was moving in both space and time. And quite clearly two entities could only interact when they were at the same position in that four dimensional space; i.e., at the same place and at the same time. It absolutely followed that when two entities interacted in that actual four dimensional universe they also had to be in the same position in the three dimensional shadow universe.(...)

Nobody seemed to react to this statement of yours. Maybe because

1. it is diluted in a long text

2. maybe it seems correct

 

And yes I agree that according to Relativity, "everything is moving in both space and time". Which looks as an inoffensive statement.

But if you take the example of an object standing at rest (relative to you), it follows directly hat this object is moving only in time.

 

Moving. Not extending, not stretching. Changing coordinates in time. Moving.

Edited April 26, 2015 by michel123456

[Doctordick]

No one posting to this thread seems to understand the issue behind my presentation. I brought up my "child's perspective on relativity" for a very simple reason. I read George Gamow's book long before I had any concept of scientific analysis. Thus my interpretation bore almost no resemblance to Einstein's theory. Then in college physics (some ten years later) I realized my explanation was totally incorrect. Since I knew it was wrong, I was quite astonished by the fact that it gave exactly the same mathematical results as Einstein's theory.

Even then, I knew my picture was wrong because I could find absolutely no justification for that projection I was using. I kept using my picture because I was trying to find a circumstance where it gave the wrong answer. I have never found such a circumstance.

As a graduate student, I was taught the Heisenberg uncertainty principle (something never brought up in Einstein's theory of special relativity). I immediately recognized that, in my picture, momentum quantization directly provided that projection through mass quantization (via the connection between kinetic energy and momentum).

At that point, a very strange realization occurred to me. I had two very different explanations of a phenomena (both totally justifiable) which yielded exactly the same mathematical results (thus experiment can not prefer one over the other). That brings up an issue not recognized by any scientist I have ever talked to. To me, the interesting issue was, "obtaining the same answers is no evidence that your explanations are the same".

The question in my head was then, what possibilities does that observation open up? That is the issue I have been trying to talk about in this thread. In order to logically analyze that question, I need a representation capable of representing absolutely any internally consistent explanation of any collection of facts.

That is what I was in the process of setting up when ajb wanted to know how I assign the relevant probability (see post #19). His question, as to how these probabilities are obtained, is totally beside the point. They are a direct consequence of the explanation which, in my representation, is not to be constrained in any way.

My abstract definition of an explanation is: "it provides [latex]P(x_1,x_2,\cdots,x_n)[/latex] for all relevant circumstances, [latex](x_1,x_2,\cdots,x_n)[/latex]". Clearly, the moment one assigns the relevant probabilities, one has constrained their consideration to a specific explanation.

My only real concern here is, exactly what constraints exist which arise only from internal consistency itself.

Mathematics is a very powerful tool for logical analysis. Thus my first step is to alter the representation such that it satisfies the definition of a mathematical function while, at the same time, placing absolutely no constraints on the represented explanation beyond "internal consistency". That is not a trivial task though it involves no advanced mathematics beyond the college level.

If anyone is willing to follow me, I will show some rather astounding constraints imposed on all possible explanations of absolutely all possible collections of facts.

If anyone is interested, I will continue to post. If no one is interested, just forget my verbose posts, I am gone.

Have fun -- Dick

Please let me know if you are interested!

[Mordred]

Some people are I interested but are having difficulty following your line of thought.

 

I've read George Gamows "one,two,three infinity". I still have a copy as some of his mathematics I find useful.Though that book is very basic math (I also tend to collect a lot of textbook in physics subjects, my earliest was written on 1921)

 

You might try showing how the formulas you posted thus far compare to the GR methodology.

Edited April 30, 2015 by Mordred

[studiot]

 

doctordick

 

No one posting to this thread seems to understand the issue behind my presentation.

..........................................

..........................................

If anyone is interested, I will continue to post. If no one is interested, just forget my verbose posts, I am gone.

 

So the little boy starts by stamping his foot yet again and insulting the rest of the membership here, myself included, and ends on a typical playground threat.

 

In my post 14 I made two comments.

 

One was a technical one about your summation of partial derivatives, which seem to play a central role in your theory.

 

The second was a complaint about your rude style towards others.

 

Your response, quite reaonably, was to ask me to clarify my point.

Unfortunately you failed to state which one requires clarification and I am still waiting on that.

 

I actually (probably like others here) find your ideas interesting and am quite intrigued by the claim that the two approaches always result in the same answers.

 

But I am assuming, with your doctorate and all, that when one of your technical statements, is challenged then you will take the appropriate technical action and reappraise it.

 

So I say again,

 

Quote

 

The third failure is clearly the fact that the result is meaningless under the given definition of

 

 

Not so.

 

To try to break this impasse I also offer a further explanation.

 

There is a difference between being equal to and being identical to.

Edited April 30, 2015 by studiot

[xyzt]

If anyone is interested, I will continue to post. If no one is interested, just forget my verbose posts, I am gone.

Have fun -- Dick

Please let me know if you are interested!

 

Don't let the screendoor hit your backside on the way out.