Proof Minkowski Spacetime is Poorly Conceived

Discussion in 'Alternative Theories' started by danshawen, Apr 21, 2016.

  1. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    It hardly needs pointing out, but this statement shows that danshawen hasn't come to grips with the basics of relativity. If you don't understand what a reference frame is - and clearly danshawen does not - you're not equipped to do anything much in relativity.

    This is pure pseudoscience.

    A reference frame is a coordinate system. It has nothing to do with photons or matter or rotational propagating modes.

    Also, I note that the origin of inertia is not explained in any sense by danshawen, who only makes empty claims on that topic.

    It seems that danshawen holds the "energy is a mysterious glowing substance" view that is common among pseudoscientists and purveyors of crystal healing. Contrary to this popular but erroneous view, energy is not a substance.

    This is an empty claim with no support (so far). Show me the maths. (And that's assuming you can make the idea that energy propagates make some sort of sense, which itself is dubious in the extreme.)

    There is no manifest graininess to time.

    There's actually no need for Minkowski, or anybody else, to support an ill-defined idea that danshawen just dreamed up.

    danshawen has done nothing to show that Lorentz covariance is in any way flawed. In fact, I doubt he knows what it is.

    Maybe so. I don't know which area of science danshawen is referring to here. It can't be anything to do with the theory of relativity, which has advanced significantly in the last 100 years.

    Huh? Does danshawen believe that the "clock paradox" was only solved in the 1990s? What is he referring to, exactly?

    Does this mean that danshawen believes that objects have two different kinds of mass?

    Of course not. All that F=ma stuff is clearly useless!

    Show me the maths.

    danshawen should google "reference frame" and try to learn some physics.

    danshawen is confused about the difference between inertia and force?

    No. M-M was all about trying to measure the ether drift. It turned out there was no ether.

    danshawen would do well to explain what this "gravitational mass" is that he keeps referring to, since physicists recognise no such thing.

    The discovery of the Higgs boson has not caused an upheaval in quantum physics, or in our understanding of time, or any of the other nonsense that danshawen is referring to. Recall that the existence of the Higgs boson was predicted.

    What is "static" supposed to mean in this context? And what is "relativistic space"? How does that differ from non-relativistic space?

    What does a person do when they know a few buzzwords but little to no actual physics?
     
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  3. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    James, this is all rather depressing, the business about inertial frames and the dimensional error especially.

    But there is one aspect I'd like to query, viz. whether there is, or could be, a difference between gravitational and inertial mass. The treatment of the two as identical is a cornerstone of GR, but so far as I understand it this is just an empirical fact, rather than necessarily so. There does seem to be some speculation as to what might occur if this were not always the case, for example here: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/...ry-separates-gravitational-and-inertial-mass/

    Is this serious, do you think?
     
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  5. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    exchemist:

    I haven't read the article you linked. Just quickly, though, in GR there is no "force" of gravity, so there's no need for a thing called "gravitational mass" in order to cause a gravitational force. We only need the kind of mass that resists acceleration - i.e. inertial mass.
     
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  7. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    Indeed but, for that reason, I'd be intrigued in your comments if you do have a chance to glance at the article. It's quite short - MIT newsletter.
     
  8. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    I took a quick look. I found this statement puzzling:

    I can't imagine how they could reach such a conclusion, but I haven't read any paper on this.

    From the article you linked, it's hard to draw any conclusions. I am very skeptical that there is any need for a separate "gravitational mass", for the reasons I've stated above.
     
  9. danshawen Valued Senior Member

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    Show me a reference frame that is at rest or flying around (or even in a straight line at constant velocity <c) ALL BY ITSELF outside of the mind of a mathematician and I will concede you may have a point. You either didn't read or simply didn't understand what I wrote. I don't really care which.

    Your perception (and that's all it is) of my ignorance in math does not even begin to plumb the depths of your own ignorance in physics. How is it you could possibly not know or understand the documented creation of matter-antimatter pairs with photons of sufficient energy if you knew anything about physics? Do you live somewhere it isn't even in your textbooks? If you have a degree in something besides math(s), it isn't in evidence in your responses. Could have been a correspondent course with online assessment I suppose. Who completed your final exam?

    Sorry, but you are as unsalvageable and as abusive as paddoboy, so you will be treated as such.

    I don't need help from the forum to ignore even a staff member. You will receive no more likes from me with responses that could have come from paddoboy.

    Tend to your maths and don't respond to questions about physics if you don't know anything about it other than whereever your search engine directs you. Put out your bushfires or something. Get your own references. Any google scholar should be able to find information and disinformation with equal facility. If you can't tell the difference, you have a lot of company. I finally figured out, that's where paddoboy gets his. Some staff members too, evidently.
     
    Last edited: Apr 27, 2016
  10. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    Dan. Old chap. Seek help. You are talking to James, here.

    You are getting wilder and wilder in your statements and your accusations and are barely making sense any more:-

    "Do you live somewhere it [sic] isn't even in your textbooks?" ???

    "Put out your bushfires" ???

    You are not right in the head.
     
    Last edited: Apr 27, 2016
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  11. danshawen Valued Senior Member

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    3,951
    James R usually (or at least, recently) posts in threads about UFOs. I usually don't.

    Like paddoboy, his posts are inconsistent (helpful or abusive in equal measure).

    I was TORTURED by a freshman physics professor in Fall 1970 over his personal derivation of the Lorentz transformations with an emphasis on coordinate systems in inertialess Minkowski spacetime. I paid for it.

    And James R just asked me to go and revisit that math.

    All I am trying to do is to give such victims of relativity bullies the means to fight their oppressors back with sharpened pencils and minds that are even sharper than my own once was. I delayed testing and joining American Mensa until age 49, 14 years ago. At the time, most joined on the basis of their SAT scores when they were much younger.

    The professor is dead (not my fault) and his derivation was wrong, but I still suffer from PTSD over the experience. He never published or co-authored anything of significance. No educational foundations in his name, either. This did not surprise me when I learned of his death in 2010. All of my other former physics professors both published and have memorial scholarsip funds in their name. Go figure.

    UFOs were not involved, but I wish they had been. Swapping his brain for that of a farm animal would have been an improvement.

    As always, thanks for your concern, exchemist.

    I don't care if I am being trolled or heckled by Minkowski himself. I was once so indoctrinated.
     
    Last edited: Apr 27, 2016
  12. origin Heading towards oblivion Valued Senior Member

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    I cannot even fathom how distraught James must be over this revelation...
     
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  13. origin Heading towards oblivion Valued Senior Member

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    Man, I wish one of the most tramatic experiences in my life was just a professor I didn't agree with. The melodrama that you have built up around this professor is nothing less than bizarre.
     
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  14. danshawen Valued Senior Member

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    That doesn't even begin to describe the real experience. My memory of it is all too vivid. I only threw out his mimeographed copies of his derivation a few years ago. I should have burned them when I failed his class. At least, I never really needed them again. That should give you some idea of how useless and unnecessary that experience was.

    Getting me shipped to the jungles of Vietnam and losing my scholarship was his intention. Sometimes, I think it might have been a better and more educational experience. Factor that into your estimation of how traumatic an experience it was. What he wasted class time on wasn't even a necessary part of the freshman physics curriculum. I never cracked open the text and got an A+ in the repeat course with another professor. Back then, you could only average, not replace failing grades.

    It isn't James R's fault, I understand. It's just a stupid OCD button I still have.
     
    Last edited: Apr 27, 2016
  15. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    danshawen:

    My point was that reference frames don't fly anywhere outside the mind of somebody, mathematician or not.

    Unfortunately, I did read it. But you're right, parts of it didn't make a lot of sense and I didn't understand those parts.

    I've seen no evidence that you have any competence in maths, but you can prove me wrong if you're worried about it. Just post the mathematics of your "particles are made of rotating photons" theory, or whatever it is. Or, if you'd prefer, you could show me mathematically where Minkowski's big boo boo was.

    I'm not that interested in playing a game of "Who knows more physics?" with you. The answer to that should be fairly clear to any reader with sufficient knowledge to be able to make an informed judgment.

    A straightforward derivation of the Lorentz transformations can be found in just about any general first-year university physics text, if you're interested and equipped to understand it. In fact, if I remember correctly I think that at least one derivation has been posted right here on sciforums.

    To understand any such derivation, though, you need first to find out what a reference frame is, because the Lorentz transformations are transformations between two reference frames.

    There's no point trying to jump in with profound statements about the Higgs boson and the fundamental nature of relativistic reality before you know what a reference frame is. If you try to do that, you're probably just going to end up looking a bit foolish to those who do understand that stuff.

    Either you're exaggerating, or else you've had a very extreme reaction to what is, in the end, a fairly esoteric piece of mathematics. Most people don't get so upset about maths. I think you may need to work through your issues, because it sounds like you've built this thing into something much bigger than it should be. Don't let it take over your life.

    Good luck.
     
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  16. danshawen Valued Senior Member

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    3,951
    Better criticism. Thanks. I'm actually still working on the diagram Origin requested.

    One of the reasons I keep doing this is to push the idea a little further along. It has come further with this thread than any other, and I think it is almost finished.

    Do you know what a "mixer" (telecom) is? It works with modulated signals that are fundamentally electrons, but the principle of EM frequency multiplication would be similar with photons in a bound particle of energy. The particles comprised of pairs of photons would interfere with each other and have modes, just like electrons bound in atoms.

    Now the v = c^2 that I derived makes more sense, even if the dimensional analysis doesn't quite work the way expected. The resultant t^2 dimension suggests this approach.. If space is light travel time, t^2 is a bound area of space.
     
    Last edited: Apr 27, 2016
  17. Ophiolite Valued Senior Member

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    I've said it before and I'll say it again. I don't know much physics, but I do know con-artists and their work. Dan, you may even be deluding yourself, believing what you are posting to have substance. That is not the case. Quit while you are merely behind.

    And, if you could, please add me to the category who don't receive Likes from you for their posts. It's an embarrassment I can do without at my time of life.
     
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  18. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    OK Dan. Would it be useful for us to indicate when we think your OCD is showing, so you can get control of it? Or would that make matters worse?

    Or how about making a resolution never to utter the word "Minkowski"? Or how about getting another interest? Obsessing about the past is never healthy.
     
    Last edited: Apr 27, 2016
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  19. danshawen Valued Senior Member

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    Okay.
     
  20. danshawen Valued Senior Member

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    yes, of course you are right.
     
  21. Schneibster Registered Member

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    This is an incorrect understanding of the clock postulate and has little or nothing to do with the clock paradox, also known as the twin paradox. You also claim that acceleration is not absolute, and that is at extreme variance with both SRT and GRT. The clock postulate shows that all of the time dilation due to constant acceleration can be accounted for in SRT by time dilation due to motion; your position here not only doesn't include gravity, it also fails to note that GRT, via the equivalence principle, accounts for time dilation due to motion. So does SRT, but only for a constant acceleration; GRT allows analysis of changing accelerations.

    This also is incorrect. What the Higgs does is show the reason why mass and energy are in a constant ratio; it does not overturn the equivalence principle, nor does it show any differentiation between gravitational mass and inertial mass.

    This is sillyness. You can always detect acceleration by a local experiment, without having to look outside your local frame of reference. Nature obviously cares about acceleration, and in a different manner than it cares about motion.

    This is also incorrect. GRT explains gravity, and there is acceleration in SRT. Futhermore, given that there is such a practical purpose, I think you're arguing against your own assertions.
     
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  22. danshawen Valued Senior Member

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    No. SRT predicts relative time dilation for CONSTANT RELATIVE VELOCITIES, not "constant acceleration". GRT handles acceleration, and did not change as a result of the clock postulate ,which demonstrates that instantaneous velocity is more important to time dilation effects than acceleration. For anything smaller than the gravitational fields of stars and black holes, it is a smaller effect than relative motion anyway.

    You are right, I meant 'clock postulate', not 'paradox'.

    Only 2% of total atomic mass / energy is believed to be attributable to the Higgs mechanism, and we have had this discussion "Matt Strassler reference" before. Higgs mechanism inertia is not currently believed to be the same as Principle of Equivalence gravitational inertia by particle physicists.

    If it were otherwise, I would never have joined this forum to try and figure out whose boneheaded concept of the new physics that originally was. And I still don't know. Strange that no one lays claim to something that important. There must have been a paper other than the one by Peter Higgs, Engert et al. I don't have time to read through 50 years of theory to find it. Who would?

    The ratio of mass to energy is always the same regardless of state of relative motion. That ratio is: 1:1. Matter is energy. Yes, even for a "massless" photon, iff its energy becomes bound or otherwise absorbed by an electron.

    I only named the technical terms for second, third "jerk", fourth "snap", fifth "crackle" and sixth "pop" derivatives of position with respect to time. You said this was incorrect. Specify what is incorrect, please.
     
    Last edited: Apr 27, 2016
  23. Schneibster Registered Member

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    390
    Ummm, SRT predicts the degree of time dilation at each infinitesimal relative velocity as the frame accelerates. What is difficult is to define the infinitesimal velocities for a non-constant acceleration. SRT doesn't have the math to do this. You need GRT for it.

    This is a thing that lots of pop-science books say, mostly without explaining it very well. In fact, SRT is perfectly capable of handling acceleration as above. What is difficult, as I said, is to handle changes in acceleration.

    I have no idea where you think I said either GRT or SRT "changed as a result of the clock postulate." Nor did they.

    While it is true that instantaneous velocity determines the instantaneous time dilation, it is also true that acceleration determines the rate of change of time dilation, and because it determines the velocity at every instant, it also determines the total time dilation. All this without using any GRT.

    I don't think there is any intrinsic effect on time dilation by acceleration other than the instantaneous time dilation at any point, and the totality of all those ongoing instantaneous time dilations on the final overall proper time in the moving or accelerated frame with reference to the observer frame. There is no additional time dilation due to acceleration that is not already accounted for by the summation of the instantaneous time dilations during the acceleration, and any prior or subsequent inertial motion.

    Good. Thanks for confirming that.

    Ummm, you have forgotten that both protons and neutrons are composite particles made of quarks bound together by colored gluons; the quarks are the only things interacting with the Higgs field. Protons and neutrons are made of up and down quarks, and the quarks make up only a small portion of the masses of protons and neutrons. Most of the mass is gluons, which are bosons (energy), and their binding energy when they are coupled to a quark (more energy). It is unsurprising that most of the mass of a nucleus, therefore, is energy, which does not couple to the Higgs field, and only a small part of it due to the quarks, which do couple to the Higgs field. Remember also that both mass and energy are affected by GRT, so there is no discernible difference (at least under GRT) between the gravitational mass and inertial mass of an atom.

    But this thread is about Minkowski spacetime, not about particle physics (i.e. QM).

    Well, then it looks like you got your answer. The Higgs coupling of the quarks (and, incidentally electrons) only accounts for a small percentage of the mass of an atom; but energy accounts for the rest, and mass and energy are on a fixed ratio basis in atomic physics all the way up through classical physics, so QM at and above the nuclear scale, and classical physics, are not affected by the Higgs field nor by the discovery of the Higgs boson at the LHC. And the Higgs therefore has no practical effect on GRT.

    Agreed.

    Well, actually it's \(E=mc^2\). But it's a fixed ratio, which is (in context) almost certainly what you meant.

    Agreed.

    "Iff" often means "if and only if." I would not agree with this statement unless that was a typo. And I wouldn't agree with it even then; OTOH, if you meant to say, "even if its energy becomes bound..." I would agree with that.

    My disagreement had nothing to do with that terminology. I disagreed with this:
     
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