Relativity! Just A Story Some Might Be Interested In.

[Doctordick]

In 1947-48 when I was nine years old and, shortly after my fathers discharge from service in WWII, he purchased a book by George Gamow called "One Two Three [math] \cdots[/math] Infinity". I am quite sure the event was triggered by the a-bomb dropped on Japan. In any event, it was essentially a presentation of relativity for the uneducated. My dad read it but I suspect he really didn't understand it. It was in the house and, out of curiosity, I read the thing. I am sure that a lot of Gamow's comments went well over my head; however, it nevertheless had a rather important impact on my thinking.

 

First of all, I was totally ignorant of Newton's mechanics and the mathematics involved so anything related to those factors went totally over my head. Secondly, Euclidean geometry - up/down, right/left and forward/back - absolutely covered the concepts of geometry which I comprehended. I suspect everything beyond that essentially went in one ear and out the other (so to speak). However, there was one description of an experiment which I remember quite clearly. It was the measurement of the speed of light by two different people. One was on a train moving at a high speed and the other was on the ground next to the track. What Gamow pointed out was the fact that the two observers would disagree as to the correct time of two rather important events: the initial start time of the light and the refection time of the light at the other end of the overall path. Gamow pointed out they had to set two clocks separated by the length of the path of the light over which the velocity was to be measured. Essentially, they would both presume they were at rest with respect to the traveling beam of light.

 

Clearly I had utterly no concept of the coordinate system he was setting up as a consequence, my immediate reaction was: "Oh, you can't use clocks to measure time!" My concept of time was: two things at the same place at the same time can interact. That perception was a direct consequence of the fact that I had utterly no comprehension of Newton's space-time diagrams of dynamic systems. At any rate, Gamow went on to suggest that "time" was a fourth axis orthogonal to the three space dimensions - up/down, right/left and forward/back. Thus, in my head those four dimensions became - up/down, right/left, forward/back and before/after. In my head these were all real directions. The concept of "imaginary" numbers was totally outside my comprehension and, in my mind, "imaginary" simply meant I couldn't actually examine this fourth dimension.

 

Now I don't know when I first heard of Plato's shadows on the wall http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analogy_of_the_Cave but it may very well be from my father as he tended to read stuff like that. Nonetheless, the idea which popped directly into my mind at the time was that this "imaginary fourth dimension" could not be seen because it was projected out: i.e., the three dimensional world we found ourselves in was Plato's "shadows on the wall". Now I pretty well understood "projections"; I could use a flashlight and project the image of my hand on the wall.

 

So I had a mental image of the phenomena Gamow was talking about. The universe consisted of things in a four dimensional universe where the fourth dimension "time" was being projected out. Of course, this picture was totally Euclidean as any other geometry was simply beyond my comprehension.

 

So, let's look at a universe represented by such an image. Note that everything is moving in that fourth axis "time'. However, if everything is at rest (nothing is changing position as time changes, that fourth axis being projected out) everything in the projection will appear to be at rest. In essence, every object is moving in the time direction at exactly the same rate. Now, in this picture, what is light? In my mind (consistent with Gamow's description) light would be an object moving orthogonal to the time axis, an object moving from point to point in that projection at the speed of light (being the maximum speed anything could move). If everything is moving at exactly that same speed (in the four dimensional representation), a little thought will show that all of the measurements taken in the projection turn out to be exactly as Gamow presented them.

 

For that reason, as a child I thought that I understood Einstein's relativity. I even explained it to my classmates though I suspect they didn't follow what I was saying. In fact, I didn't find out that I was in error until I was in College. (Back in my day, relativity wasn't even discussed in high school physics.) When I was in college, I discovered that Einstein's theory of special relativity had nothing to do with the mental image I had created in my head and I learned exactly how his theory worked. What I found interesting was the fact that my Euclidean mental construct gave exactly the same answers as did his theory. Actual calculations were sometimes easier in his picture and sometimes easier in my picture so whenever I took a test I used the mental construct which was more convenient to the specific question being asked. Not once did my picture ever give me an incorrect answer.

 

On the other hand, as I learned more physics, that projection began to bother me. Exactly what could the mechanism of such a projection be. By that time I was rather astonished by the fact that both pictures always gave exactly the same answers and became somewhat disturbed.

 

When I went to graduate school I learned about quantum mechanics (back in my day, quantum mechanics was not taught in most college physics courses). It was then that I learned of the uncertainty between position and momentum. Astonished, I realized that, if mass were momentum in the time direction, quantization of mass would yield infinite uncertainty in that direction. But we live in a universe where most all entities of interest are mass quantized. It followed that this was a mechanism which would provide that projection I had been using for twenty years. After a little work, I managed to prove the two mental constructs were actually mathematically identical.

 

I showed my proof to the professor teaching that quantum course and after about four hours of persuasion, he finally admitted that I was correct. I remember to this day his exact words: "Yes, you are correct but please do not show this to any of the other students as it will just confuse them!" So I took his direction as important and I did not show it to any of the other students.

 

Does anyone here have any interest in discussing the perspective I have just introduced here?

 

Have fun -- Dick

Edited February 14, 2014 by Doctordick

[phillip1882]

i need to read this several times to fully comprehend it, i think, but on my first reading i'm totally blown away.

i'll try to summerize my understanding of what your saying.

light moves at the maximal speed because it is tangent to the time diamention. but i would like to point out that light doesn't

travel instantaneously. it does take a fixed amount of time for a particle of light to travel a certain distance, and we can measure how much time passes between those two moments, porportional to the distance between the earth and sun, and the amount it time it takes to revolve.

so i can't really view this statement as entirely true.

 

and mass quantized, i'm not entirely sure what you mean by that. do you mean mass is a quantum enitity, and therefore can be in superposition of many states? i find that a tough pill to swollow.

 

i agree electons might be in superposition, but mass? mass comes from atoms, which cannot be in superposition, to the best of my knowledge. hope you can address my questions.

[Doctordick]

Hi Phillip, I appreciate your response to my post though you have made a few subtle misinterpretations.

 

i'll try to summerize my understanding of what your saying.

light moves at the maximal speed because it is tangent to the time diamention.

No, this is clearly a misinterpretation of what I said. What Gamow said was that Einstein set "time" as another coordinate orthogonal to the ordinary three dimensional universe we perceive ourselves to exist within. This idea creates a four dimensional picture of the universe. In that picture, everything would be moving around in that four dimensional space.

 

His assertion that this new dimension was different from the other three as it was "imaginary" (he meant that measurements in the time direction was by imaginary numbers -- see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imaginary_number ) but when I was in the third grade I had absolutely no concept of "imaginary numbers". I took it to mean something you couldn't see; that our three dimensional perception was analogous to "Plato's shadows on the wall" presentation. That is I saw the three dimensional universe we see as analogous to Plato's shadows when things were projected out in the "time" direction.

 

In Plato's picture, he uses light as what is causing the projection: i.e., creating the shadows. He clearly does not have light going between his shadows; he is using light as a mechanism creating the shadows. It should be clear to you that my child's mind could not use light as a mechanism projecting out the time dimension as light is a real component of our three dimensional universe one of the entities in our three dimensional perception of reality.

 

So, let's look at a universe represented by such an image. Note that everything is moving in that fourth axis "time'. However, if everything is at rest (nothing is changing position as time changes, that fourth axis being projected out) everything in the projection will appear to be at rest. In essence, every object is moving in the time direction at exactly the same rate. Now, in this picture, what is light? In my mind (consistent with Gamow's description) light would be an object moving orthogonal to the time axis, an object moving from point to point in that projection at the speed of light (being the maximum speed anything could move).

My concept of time was: two things at the same place at the same time can interact and that was what defined time, not what was displayed on a clock. On the other hand, what was displayed on the clock was measured on Einstein's time axis. Of course, in my mental picture, the time axis was being projected out. So, in my mind as a child, light being the fastest thing in the universe (the three dimensional shadow universe) was traveling in a direction perpendicular to the "time" dimension. You have to understand that Gamow had defined that dimension being "what clocks measured" and one of the facts of Einstein's relativity is that the faster you go, the slower your clock runs. That is, a clock traveling at the speed of light does not change at all in going from a to b: i.e., it must be traveling orthogonal to time measurement.

 

 

but i would like to point out that light doesn't travel instantaneously.

It does when the time required is measured on a clock traveling with the light. At least according to Einstein.

 

it does take a fixed amount of time for a particle of light to travel a certain distance, and we can measure how much time passes between those two moments

So long as we are not moving with that light (see above comment). That fixed amount of time (measured on our clock) has to be measured in our rest frame: i.e., in the three dimensional Platonic shadow projection.

 

and mass quantized, i'm not entirely sure what you mean by that. do you mean mass is a quantum enitity, and therefore can be in superposition of many states? i find that a tough pill to swollow.

I have a suspicion you don't comprehend the uncertainty principle. In quantum mechanics, the Fourier transform of a wave function expressed via the coordinate axis (the position) essentially defines the momentum of the entity being described. You need to check out the following website.

 

http://farside.ph.utexas.edu/teaching/qmech/lectures/node30.html

 

The uncertainty principle essentially relates the uncertainty in those two representations. If there is no uncertainty in the position of a particle, the uncertainty in momentum is infinite. Likewise, if there is no uncertainty in the momentum of a particle, the uncertainty in position is infinite. In wave mechanics, the uncertainty of position and momentum are intimately related.

 

[math]\Delta x \Delta p = i\hbar[/math]

 

Go back and look at what I said,

 

On the other hand, as I learned more physics, that projection began to bother me. Exactly what could the mechanism of such a projection be. By that time I was rather astonished by the fact that both pictures always gave exactly the same answers and became somewhat disturbed.

Note that I had left out that "WHAT" in the original post. I have now edited it back in.

 

In essence, the uncertainty principal asserts that if the momentum of a particle is known exactly, its position is infinitely uncertain. That says that if the particles momentum in the "t" direction is exactly known (commonly referred to as "quantized"), then its position in the "t" direction is infinitely uncertain. If that isn't a mechanism for projecting out the "t" axis, I don't know what is.

 

So, exactly what is required to generate such a projection? The momentum in the "t" direction must be quantized. Well, if light is something traveling perpendicular to the "t" axis, we would certainly not expect it to have any momentum in the "t" direction would we? So whatever it is that is quantized, when we apply it to light, its exactly known value is zero. Well it certainly pops into my mind that we could be talking about mass here as the mass of a photon is commonly taken to be zero.

 

Now how does such an interpretation apply to all the other "particles" in the universe. Their momentum in the t direction must also be quantized: i.e., exactly fixed (otherwise the "t" axis would not be projected out). Well gee guys, the masses of most of the stuff going to make up the universe we see around us (that three dimensional Platonic shadow we observe) is built out of stuff with fixed masses.

 

The most simple conclusion is that mass is no more than quantized momentum in the "t" direction. That makes all the dynamic mechanics of special relativity in my picture exactly what we observe.

 

The interesting thing here is that I can carry exactly the same analysis out to general relativity. Oh, I don't get exactly the same results that Einstein got but I do get sufficiently close to his results that I am aware of no known experiment which differs sufficiently to measure the difference except one which I noticed in the last few years.

 

What bugs me is that no journal will publish my results because they don't agree exactly with Einstein's general relativity. The reason that bugs me is that the physics community, after a hundred years, still complains about the "conflict between quantum mechanics and general relativity". My representation of relativity is one hundred percent in agreement with quantum mechanics from the get go. And that goes right out to general relativity! But of course, I am a crack pot!

 

Have fun -- Dick

[phillip1882]

you know, after everything i've seen and obsevered, i'm in agreement with you.

i hope your theory becomes accepted one day.

you seem to have a very good head on you shoulders and i wish you best of luck in future ventures.

[Doctordick]

you know, after everything i've seen and obsevered, i'm in agreement with you.

i hope your theory becomes accepted one day.

you seem to have a very good head on you shoulders and i wish you best of luck in future ventures.

I have but a single complaint with your response. What I have presented is not a theory. All theories are based upon hypothesis (things which may or may not be true), see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothesis. The only hypothesis I have put forth is "a valid explanation must be internally consistent". The standard interpretation of that constraint is: if it is not internally consistent, it yields different answers to the same question depending upon the path to the answer. The scientific community generally refuses to accept any explanation to any question if the answer is inconsistent. Such is the common fault with most "unscientific explanations".

 

You should take a careful read of my post "The Foundations of Physical Reality". I have just edited that post in an attempt to make things clearer.

 

On the other hand, there is a rather simple and straight forward solution to this specific difficulty.

 

If anyone here has any understanding of what I have just expressed, the results can be carried far beyond what I have expressed above and I would be happy to discuss the issues further.

I would love to have a response to that post.

 

Have fun -- Dick