An Alternate View Of Special Relativity

[Doctordick]

A rough quote of a simple correspondence between myself and Paul Martin.

 

Dick, 11/19/11, 9:19 AM PST

 

I have just posted a new essay at http://paulandellen.com/essays/essay159.htm and, if you get the time and inclination to read it, I would greatly appreciate your comments.

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Hi Dick, 11/20/11, 9:50 AM PST

 

Thank you for reading and commenting on my essay.

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So, in spite of my errors, I arrive at the same conclusion:

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Something is clearly wrong.

 

Yeah Paul, I agree with you. In fact, we talked about the solution to that very difficulty long long ago.

 

It is my opinion that Einstein's solution to the relativity problem is just wrong. In 1947 my dad bought a book by Gamow called “One Two Three Infinity” the subject of which was to explain relativity to uneducated people. (Gamow often wrote books about physics for the uninitiated.) At any rate, his book contained no advanced math and was, more or less, a description of the issues relativity explained; essentially explaining why the correct clock settings required by the Newtonian picture of the universe were impossible to achieve. Well, I read that book and ended up with my own impression of what Gamow was saying.

 

I was just a ten year old kid and had utterly no idea of non-Euclidean geometry. As a consequence, I thought that there were three issues being talked about. First, the universe was four dimensional (time being the fourth dimension); second, clocks didn't measure time (time, for me, being defined by the old Newtonian and pre-Newtonian notion of simultaneity); and third, we couldn't see that fourth dimension because it was being projected out. That third one was not expressed by Gamow but was rather a consequence of Plato's comments about trying to understand the universe when all we had were but shadows on the wall in a dark cave. (I might have read that somewhere else or it might even have been a comment in Gamow's book.)

 

Anyway, in my mind, that fourth dimension was as real as the other three; it was just projected out such that all we could interact with was the projection into a three dimensional space (the shadows on the wall). Now, check out how the world would look if that picture were valid. A Newtonian picture of circumstances in such a space is actually quite simple.

 

Call that fourth (Euclidean) dimension tau. If we are standing still, we are simply moving in time (tau being time). If we are moving we are moving in tau and in the x,y,z space. If the four dimensions are exactly equivalent, not moving with respect to another thing is simply moving in exactly the same direction as the other thing. We interpret our movement in that direction as time so, as long as we are at rest with respect to one another, our impression is that we are moving at the same rate through time.

 

But that picture suggests that moving through space causes us to move into the future also. So time must be essentially the distance we move through that four dimensional space. If the laws of physics are required to be the same in every rest frame, and we are looking at experiments performed by someone moving with respect to us, we must include the fact that their movement with respect to us requires them to move into the future in accordance with the extent of that motion. Since clocks actually measure rate of change in position in tau in one's frame of reference (the presumption made in the above definition of time) the fact that the moving observer thinks he is at rest implies he thinks his clock is measuring time. (This is where “clocks don't measure time” issue comes into the discussion.)

 

The whole thing ends up being quite simple. If things are standing still, they go into the future at some defined rate. If they are moving, they go an additional distance into the future proportional to how far they move (as seen from our rest frame). The expected results of this picture match exactly with standard special relativity. The whole subject is discussed in chapter 3 of my old “Foundations of Physical Reality” which used to be on my web site. I think I gave you a hard copy. If not, let me know and I will send you one.

 

So, when I was ten years old, I thought I understood relativity. When I went off to college and studied Einstein's relativity, I discovered I was wrong. However, since both pictures gave exactly the same answers to any problem, I used them both. (Most problems were easier to solve in one perspective or the other so I used the most convenient one for the problem under examination.) I didn't study quantum mechanics until I got to graduate school (I went to college at a small liberal arts school and their physics dept just didn't cover quantum mechanics back then).

 

So it was in graduate school where I came to understand the Heisenberg uncertainty principal.

 

See:

 

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qt-uncertainty/

 

and or the discussion of the uncertainty principal in,

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_constant

 

This implied that if there were no uncertainty in the momentum of an object in some direction, the position of that object in that direction was infinitely uncertain. There was the projection mechanism required by my picture given above. We live in a mass quantized world and do all our experiments in a mass quantized laboratory, working with mass quantized instruments so quantized mass need be nothing but momentum in the tau direction.

 

All one need do is see mass (or rather mc to keep the units right) as momentum in the tau direction. If this is added to my picture, it turns out that I can prove, mathematically, that my picture gives results exactly identical to special relativity. More advantageous than that is the fact that my representation, being totally consistent with quantum mechanics (due to the Euclidean geometry) from the get go, makes the representation of general relativity (the transformation of experimental results when acceleration is taken into account) totally consistent with quantum mechanics. That is an issue still not resolved in Einstein's picture. That result is also consistent with Einstein's General Relativity (to the accuracy of experiments).

 

That demonstration is also discussed in chapter 3 of my old “Foundations of Physical Reality”. Again, if you have lost that old hard copy I sent you so many years, let me know and I will send you another one.

 

Have fun -- Dick

[Rade]

Hello DD. There are many alternative points of view for SR that expand on Einstein 3+1 dimensional approach: 5, 8, 11 dimension points of view have been raised, most likely others.

 

Here is yet another point of view by G. 'tHooft to reduce dimensions:

 

http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/9310026

 

DD, I suggest you put your thoughts into a manuscript and send them to Dr. 'tHooft for peer review.

[Doctordick]

There are many alternative points of view for SR that expand on Einstein 3+1 dimensional approach: 5, 8, 11 dimension points of view have been raised, most likely others.

Yeah, but none of them are both consistent with GR and quantum mechanics except mine.

 

DD, I suggest you put your thoughts into a manuscript and send them to Dr. 'tHooft for peer review.

I have been around these people for two thirds of a century and it is becoming quite obvious that I have no peers save Anssi. :lol:

 

Have fun -- Dick

[Qfwfq]

I have been around these people for two thirds of a century and it is becoming quite obvious that I have no peers save Anssi.

Well then you and him could become Zen Buddhist monks and found your own new monastic order.......:shrug: