Black holes may not exist!

[Russ_Watters]

Einstein violated his own SR postulate. Look:

Contextless quotes from Einstein before he published GR, much less before black hole theory was well developed are of little value here. He does not address the issue we are discussing.

I understand it. Put your observer in a freezer and ask yourself if he measures the speed of light to be c. The answer is no.

It's been colder than a freezer in my area this winter and I assure you that my cell phone's clock and GPS receiver work perfectly fine.

He doesn't measure anything, he doesn't see anything. Gravitational time dilation goes infinite at the event horizon. So at the event horizon your observer is effectively frozen. Ask yourself if he measures the speed of light to be c. The answer is no. He doesn't measure anything, he doesn't see anything. Do you get it yet?

Repeating it won't make it true. You have to know you are wrong because you know your own thought experiment is wrong:

Look, imagine you've got an observer who is travelling through space at the speed of light. We all know that you can't actually travel at the speed of light, but this is another situation where time dilation goes infinite, so go with the flow.

Since you know you can't travel at C, you must know that your assumption is non-physical. It doesn't happen in the real world, only in your fantasy universe.

 

[Motor Daddy]

It doesn't happen in the real world, only in your fantasy universe.

So your point is that the real world trumps fantasy? So if for example you said that you can divide a pile of 100 pennies into 3 piles of 33.333...%, meaning 33.333... pennies per pile, that we both know that that is fantasy, right? Or do you think you can divide a penny into 3 pieces of 33.333...% for real, in reality? If not, the 1/3 is BS, right?

 

[paddoboy]

Farsight:



No. Proper time never comes to a halt.



You mean you haven't considered that everybody here gets it except you.



You're better off considering something that can actually happen, like an observer travelling at 99.999999% of the speed of light or something.



Yes.



I don't know what you mean by that.



Right. According to a distant observer, he never falls through the event horizon.

But you're mixing frames - a common error.

In his own proper frame, a traveller has no problem crossing the event horizon of a black hole (apart from possible tidal force, which can be made negligible for a large hole).

Travelling observers, by the way, never see the clocks they carry with them ticking slower or faster than normal. Those clocks are at rest relative to the observer carrying them, so they must be seen to tick at the "rest" rate.

This is basic relativity. I'm somewhat surprised that you, as someone who regularly posts in these kinds of threads, doesn't have a basic understanding of relativity. How long have you been posting about such topics?

BINGO!!!! Thank you James...Exactly as I have been claiming against some of these alternative explanations that seem to abound.
Nice forum you have by the way, and stacks up quite nicely with the ABC forum you were on at one time and was an Avatar.
It appears we have a few "Zarkovs" here. At least at the old ABC forum, we only had one
By the way, I was known as B.C. on that forum.

 

[paddoboy]

Eight years. And I'm the one who does understand it. The clock is "at rest" relative to the observer carrying it. But when gravitational time dilation goes infinite, the clock is stopped, and so is the observer. And a stopped observer does not see a stopped clock tick at the normal rate. He doesn't see anything. It's very simple James.

No, you certainly do not understand it!
Again....[1] From an outside FoR, watching an intrepid ship mate with a clock approach the EH, he is never ever seen to quite reach the EH, just gradually red shifted to infinity and time gradually slowing but never be seen to be stopped or frozen.....
[2] From the local FoR [that is of the intrepid traveller approaching the EH, nothing extraordinary happens, either with the clock or the traveller [ignoring tidal effects]

 

[Russ_Watters]

So your point is that the real world trumps fantasy? So if for example you said that you can divide a pile of 100 pennies into 3 piles of 33.333...%, meaning 33.333... pennies per pile, that we both know that that is fantasy, right? Or do you think you can divide a penny into 3 pieces of 33.333...% for real, in reality? If not, the 1/3 is BS, right?

You cannot divide a pile of pennies into thirds unless you cut one.

 

[Motor Daddy]

You cannot divide a pile of pennies into thirds unless you cut one.

So you are confirming in fact that 1 divided by 3 does not occur in reality. Unless you mean you can divide a penny into 3 equal pieces of 33.333...%??

 

[przyk]

Farsight, even though we disagree on the details, this is an area that I agree with you on. Making the claim that an observer's proper time does not dilate is irrelevant. To use a computer analogy:

Computers make calculations via their internal clock, which determines how many individual actions the computer can perform per second. For example, a 1-Gigahertz CPU can process 1,000,000,000 atomic* actions per second. You can overclock a computer, allowing it to perform more calculations per second; you can also underclock it. Either way, a "conscious computer" would be oblivious to its clock speed. It only knows how many actions it has performed, not how many actions per second it is performing. Now, if one were to underclock the computer to 0 Hz (by disabling the clock), the computer would be none the wiser. You could disable the processing clock for a decade, then re-engage it, and the computer would continue its last operation as if nothing happened, claiming that its world experience was smooth and continuous (unless of course it was processing the image of a human clock on the wall )

Extending this, if you disabled the processing clock forever the "conscious computer" would be effectively frozen for eternity without realizing it.

*atomic in this case means that the action cannot be broken down into additional steps; it's the computer-equivalent to a quantum of action in physics

As an analogy for what happens at black hole event horizons, there's two problems with this. First, the only reason you could say that the computer processor is "stopped" is because a) you have an external time standard that you can compare the processor clock with, and b) you've got good reason to consider that external time standard more fundamental than the processor clock. But there's no absolute time standard, and so no analogue of this, in general relativity.

Second (and this is something Farsight consistently fails to mention or consider), in GR it's not just a matter that an infaller reaches the horizon in finite proper time. It's rather that every way of analysing the spacetime geometry in the vicinity of the event horizon reveals that there's really nothing special there. Various coordinate charts that remove the coordinate singularities in the metric demonstrate this. Considering geometric invariants is another way of seeing it (e.g. scalar contractions of the Riemann curvature tensor that tend to a finite value on the horizon). In fact, spacetime can be arbitrarily close to flat at the event horizon, for a sufficiently large black hole.

This immediately has implications. It means that you can have locally inertial reference frames approaching and crossing the event horizon. This isn't trivial. Contrast this, for instance, with a genuinely "frozen" observer travelling at the speed of light, that Farsight likes to compare this to. It isn't the same situation at all. You could certainly imagine doing something like Farsight's "schoolboy error" (that nobody commits, except in Farsight's head) of rescaling the time coordinate and saying that the "frozen" observer isn't actually frozen (with respect to themself, or something). But you couldn't do this with an entire reference frame. In relativity, practically by definition, you cannot have an inertial coordinate system co-moving with an observer travelling at the speed of light. Any attempt to construct one will fail. Yet you can construct locally inertial coordinate systems that straddle a black hole event horizon just fine in GR.

 

[Farsight]

A Brief History of Time, page 89+ discusses this issue in detail. A quick quote:

"He would not, in fact, feel anything special as he reached the critical radius, and could pass the point of no return without noticing it."

He wouldn't notice it just as you don't notice falling asleep. If I put you in some machine that slowed down all your body and brain functions, you wouldn't notice being brought to a complete halt.

Does the effect happen suddenly or gradually an where is he when it happens?

The effect happens gradually. The closer he gets to the event horizon the slower he goes. Remember the coordinate speed of light is zero at the event horizon. He can't go faster than this speed. But did you see what I said about Friedwardt Winterberg's firewall?

Which observer sees anything frozen in time? Certainly not any clock or observer doing the approaching, and crossing of the EH...

See above. He doesn't see himself getting frozen. He doesn't see himself stopping at the event horizon.

In that local FoR, everything appears as normal in that same local frame [Ignoring any possible tidal gravitational effects]

Aaaagh! Everything comes to a grinding halt. The infalling observer doesn't see his clock ticking normally, he ends up not seeing anything.

Certainly not any observer in a distant FoR watching another intrepid ship mate approach the EH. In any distant FoR, all that is observed is a gradual redshift to infinity as the intrepid one approaches the EH, but is never quite seen reaching it...so again no freezing/stopping of time.

Have a look at the formation and growth of black holes again. Nothing crosses the event horizon in finite Schwarzschild coordinate time. It takes forever to cross the event horizon. But what Kevin Brown doesn't understand that the black hole grows like a hailstone. You don't cross the event horizon, it crosses you.

 

[brucep]

He wouldn't notice it just as you don't notice falling asleep. If I put you in some machine that slowed down all your body and brain functions, you wouldn't notice being brought to a complete halt.

The effect happens gradually. The closer he gets to the event horizon the slower he goes. Remember the coordinate speed of light is zero at the event horizon. He can't go faster than this speed. But did you see what I said about Friedwardt Winterberg's firewall?

See above. He doesn't see himself getting frozen. He doesn't see himself stopping at the event horizon.

Aaaagh! Everything comes to a grinding halt. The infalling observer doesn't see his clock ticking normally, he ends up not seeing anything.

Have a look at the formation and growth of black holes again. Nothing crosses the event horizon in finite Schwarzschild coordinate time. It takes forever to cross the event horizon. But what Kevin Brown doesn't understand that the black hole grows like a hailstone. You don't cross the event horizon, it crosses you.

What you don't know is just how ignorant you are on this subject. Your assertions just reveal how clueless you are. 'But what Kevin Brown doesn't understand ........". What you don't understand is just how ignorant you are on this subject. Intellectually dishonest troll.

For the Schwarzschild coordinates. Remote and local

Remote Schwarzschild bookkeeper coordinates

dr/dt_remote bookkeeper = (1-2M/r)(2M/r)^1/2 [from rest at boundary]

When r=2M dr/dt_bookkeeper = 0.

Local proper Schwarzschild coordinates

dr_shell/dt_shell = (2M/r)^1/2 [from rest at boundary]

When r=2M dr_shell/dt_shell = 1 [c=1]

The theoretical shell isn't possible inside r=2M so we can derive a local proper frame metric where we can find the proper distance between r_shell outside the coordinates associated with an event horizon to r inside the coordinates associated with the event horizon [we can show the distance is finite by integrating the distance component of the Schwarzschild metric but it's not very instructive other than to show the distance to the event horizon is FINITE].
Choose Chapter 7 -> 7.4 where they show the transformation from Schwarzschid coordinates to local proper frame Rain coordinates.
http://exploringblackholes.com/

You continue to insist the Schwarzschild coordinates are preferred coordinates. Just because YOU WANT support for the nonsense you post in this forum.

 

[przyk]

Einstein violated his own SR postulate.

Actually, no he didn't in the end. The speed of light postulate states that the (coordinate) speed of light is the same fixed constant in all inertial coordinate systems. It's actually the other postulate that was partially abandoned: GR relaxes the requirement that one can find/define/use globally inertial reference frames.

In noninertial coordinate systems the speed of light is generally not a constant even in special relativity. For example, in accelerating reference frames in special relativity, the coordinate speed of light works out to $$c' \,=\, c (1 \,+\, a x / c^{2})$$ instead of just $$c$$. (Notice that $$c' \,=\, 0$$ at $$x \,=\, -\,c^{2}/a$$. Can you make a clock physically freeze just by accelerating away from it? I've raised this with you a couple of times in the past and you never seem to have an answer to this.)

 

[Farsight]

RJ, do excuse me while I rip this apart...

As an analogy for what happens at black hole event horizons, there's two problems with this. First, the only reason you could say that the computer processor is "stopped" is because a) you have an external time standard that you can compare the processor clock with, and b) you've got good reason to consider that external time standard more fundamental than the processor clock. But there's no absolute time standard, and so no analogue of this, in general relativity.

That's erudite bollocks przyk. I've got my little alarm clock in my hand. I take the battery out. The clock is stopped.

Second (and this is something Farsight consistently fails to mention or consider), in GR it's not just a matter that an infaller reaches the horizon in finite proper time. It's rather that every way of analysing the spacetime geometry in the vicinity of the event horizon reveals that there's really nothing special there.

Yet more bollocks. There is no spacetime "in the vicinity of the event horizon". Spacetime is an abstract mathematical space in which motion does not occur. To understand this imagine you’ve placed a whole lot of parallel-mirror light-clocks in an equatorial slice through and around the Earth. When you plot all the clock rates, your plot resembles the rubber-sheet picture because clocks go slower when they’re lower. Then the curvature you can see does relate to Riemann curvature, which relates to curved spacetime. And yes, you measured those clock rates, so yes, it’s a curvature in your metric. But it’s important to remember that the curvature is just a curvature in your plot of clock rates, and those clocks measured the motion of light through space. So what the rubber-sheet picture is really depicting, is the coordinate speed of light. And for a black hole, this goes to zero at the event horizon. So your clocks don't measure anything any more, and that's the end of your coordinate chart. It looks like this.

Various coordinate charts that remove the coordinate singularities in the metric demonstrate this. Considering geometric invariants is another way of seeing it (e.g. scalar contractions of the Riemann curvature tensor that tend to a finite value on the horizon). In fact, spacetime can be arbitrarily close to flat at the event horizon, for a sufficiently large black hole.

Flat spacetime is merely space where your clock rates don't vary. And if all your clock rates are zero, they don't vary.

This immediately has implications. It means that you can have locally inertial reference frames approaching and crossing the event horizon.

Oh gee. Point up to the clear night sky. See that inertial reference frame? Er, no. Because it's an abstract thing. As is a coordinate system.

This isn't trivial. Contrast this, for instance, with a genuinely "frozen" observer travelling at the speed of light, that Farsight likes to compare this to. It isn't the same situation at all. You could certainly imagine doing something like Farsight's "schoolboy error" (that nobody commits, except in Farsight's head) of rescaling the time coordinate and saying that the "frozen" observer isn't actually frozen (with respect to themself, or something). But you couldn't do this with an entire reference frame. In relativity, practically by definition, you cannot have an inertial coordinate system co-moving with an observer travelling at the speed of light. Any attempt to construct one will fail. Yet you can construct locally inertial coordinate systems that straddle a black hole event horizon just fine in GR.

Only by putting a stopped observer in front of a stopped clock and claiming he sees it ticking normally. It's a light clock. It's at the event horizon. The coordinate speed of light is zero there. The clock doesn't tick there. Don't you get it yet przyk? "Constructing" a coordinate system doesn't make a stopped clock tick.

Jesus H Christ. What was it I said?

You can lead a physicist to knowledge. But you cannot make him think.

 

[Farsight]

Actually, no he didn't in the end. The speed of light postulate states that the (coordinate) speed of light is the same fixed constant in all inertial coordinate systems. It's actually the other postulate that was partially abandoned: GR relaxes the requirement that one can find/define/use globally inertial reference frames.

He said what he said! He said the constant speed of light postulate no longer applied when you started talking about gravity. And he said it repeatedly.

In noninertial coordinate systems the speed of light is generally not a constant even in special relativity.

Yes, I know that. Most of the other guys here don't. Just as they don't know that Einstein said (of a gravitational field) that a curvature of light can only occur when the speed of light varies with position.

For example, in accelerating reference frames in special relativity, the coordinate speed of light works out to $$c' \,=\, c (1 \,+\, a x / c^{2})$$ instead of just $$c$$. (Notice that $$c' \,=\, 0$$ at $$x \,=\, -\,c^{2}/a$$. Can you make a clock physically freeze just by accelerating away from it? I've raised this with you a couple of times in the past and you never seem to have an answer to this.)

No you can't. And I don't recall you ever asking me this before. I've said things like you don't make a star flatten by accelerating towards it or you don't change a photon by moving towards it. No way would I claim you can do something to a clock by doing something to yourself.

 

[paddoboy]

See above. He doesn't see himself getting frozen. He doesn't see himself stopping at the event horizon.

Aaaagh! Everything comes to a grinding halt. The infalling observer doesn't see his clock ticking normally, he ends up not seeing anything.

.

Because in his FoR nothing extraordinary happens.

I'm really taken aback here, as to how many off mainstream interpretations we have re what happens approaching a BH.

Probably what most of you "would be's if you could be's" should do, is contact the foremost authority on BH's Kip Thorne, or obtain his book, "Black Holes and Time Warps" and see the error in your ways.

We have at least three misinterpretations on the subject, that all disagree with each other anyway.
Then of course there is the common good old validated mainstream position.
[1] No FoR sees time, or experiences time as stopped or frozen.

[2] No external FoR will ever see the intrepid traveller to the BH and/or his clock as frozen/stopped in time, because they never ever see the intrepid traveller quite reaching the EH, just slowly being redshifted and fading beyond the viewing capabilities of their instruments

[3] From the local FoR of the intrepid traveller and his clock, nothing special is observed or actually happens as he crosses the EH. [Ignoring tidal effects if any]

 

[przyk]

I've got my little alarm clock in my hand. I take the battery out. The clock is stopped.

Did I say any different? No.

Yet more bollocks. There is no spacetime "in the vicinity of the event horizon".

This is what rpenner would call "naked assertion". Things aren't true just because you say they are.

You never seem to grasp that this is the real cause of resistance to things you post here. You keep coming up with endless re-explanations and analogies to try to explain your position and they're completely pointless, because your position is already very clear and easy to understand. It's the all-important "Why should I believe you?" bit that you always leave completely blank.

Oh gee. Point up to the clear night sky. See that inertial reference frame? Er, no. Because it's an abstract thing. As is a coordinate system.

For the umpteenth time, Farsight: YES! This is absolutely true, and you should be sceptical when faced with statements based on coordinate systems. So why is it you keep mysteriously forgetting this scepticism when confronted with statements based on the Schwarzschild chart?

Seriously, look up how the Schwarzschild geometry and coordinates are actually derived sometime. Anywhere (like, don't read MTW if you don't like MTW. Find another complete derivation that you trust more, as long as it covers all the details). Even at a quick glance, you'll see references to "static" and "spherically symmetric" and something called "Birkhoff's theorem" and maybe these things called "Killing vectors". Even you should be able to take the hint, if you look into it far enough: Schwarzschild coordinates are defined, first and foremost, to have certain nice mathematical (in your parlance, "abstract") properties. There's very little there, if anything at all about these coordinates being closely related to observer's experiences and measurements and such. It so happens that the mathematical properties of Schwarzschild coordinates make them very practical for thinking about some problems, like "gravitational time dilation" and Doppler shifts between observers who spend most of their time at fixed Schwarzschild radii, but that's as far as it goes, and you should not unquestioningly take everything stated in Schwarzschild coordinates literally.

Every time, you keep responding with this same story about stopped clocks and observers going to the end of "time" and back and such, when Schwarzschild coordinates are not closely defined based on what clocks measure in the first place.

Only by putting a stopped observer in front of a stopped clock and claiming he sees it ticking normally. It's a light clock. It's at the event horizon. The coordinate speed of light is zero there. The clock doesn't tick there. Don't you get it yet przyk? "Constructing" a coordinate system doesn't make a stopped clock tick.

You dismissed the point I was making without understanding its implications. Locally inertial coordinate systems are coordinate systems in which all physical behaviour, locally over reasonably short distances, resembles physics in special relativity. In other words, it's not just clocks but all physical behaviour that is practically normal and unremarkable near a black hole event horizon.

So your "putting a stopped observer in front of a stopped clock" retort is pure strawman. I'm saying something quite a bit more substantial than that, and it's different enough that it wouldn't work If I tried to say the same thing about a truly frozen observer moving at the speed of light.

 

[Russ_Watters]

So you are confirming in fact that 1 divided by 3 does not occur in reality. Unless you mean you can divide a penny into 3 equal pieces of 33.333...%??

Sometimes it occurs and sometimes it doesn't. This is an example of where it doesn't. If you had 99 pennies, it would.

 

[Russ_Watters]

He wouldn't notice it just as you don't notice falling asleep. If I put you in some machine that slowed down all your body and brain functions, you wouldn't notice being brought to a complete halt.

You can't be that dense; The quote says he passes the event horizon. If he came to a halt at the event horizon, he wouldn't be passing it. It directly contradicts you. Here it is again:

"He would not, in fact, feel anything special as he reached the critical radius, and could pass the point of no return without noticing it."

That bold part means he's crossing the event horizon.

The effect happens gradually. The closer he gets to the event horizon the slower he goes.

Does he notice?

 

[brucep]

You can't be that dense; The quote says he passes the event horizon. If he came to a halt at the event horizon, he wouldn't be passing it. It directly contradicts you. Here it is again:

"He would not, in fact, feel anything special as he reached the critical radius, and could pass the point of no return without noticing it."

That bold part means he's crossing the event horizon.

Does he notice?

Just a dense as he needs to be.

 

[przyk]

He said what he said! He said the constant speed of light postulate no longer applied when you started talking about gravity. And he said it repeatedly.

And yet you agree with me that:

Yes, I know that [the coordinate speed of light generally isn't constant even in SR].

So you tell me: how could Einstein "abandon" something that wasn't part of special relativity in the first place? (Controversial thought: maybe Einstein was human and still figuring things out? After all, he was starting to consider noninertial coordinate systems, which is something we very rarely do even today in special relativity.)

I've said things like you don't make a star flatten by accelerating towards it or you don't change a photon by moving towards it. No way would I claim you can do something to a clock by doing something to yourself.

That's fine, but then I'm completely mystified by why you react so violently and differently when confronted with black hole event horizons, especially given that Schwarzschild coordinates qualitatively have a lot in common with SR accelerating reference frames (accelerating frames even have an event horizon of sorts associated with them, and they don't actually map out the whole of space and time). Consider this comparison:

• Uniformly accelerating reference frame: coordinate speed of light is zero at $$x \,=\, -c^{2}/a$$. Proper time element is $$\mathrm{d}\tau \,=\, 0$$ there too, so a clock or explosion at $$x \,=\, -c^{2}/a$$ would be described as "frozen" in the accelerating reference frame. In fact, $$\mathrm{d}\tau$$ even becomes negative for $$x \,<\, -c^{2}/a$$, so you get such oddities as clocks and explosions running "backwards" in that coordinate region.
  Verdict: simple curiosity associated with accelerating reference frames, artefact of the way they're defined. Doesn't actually mean anything physical. (If you said this, I'd agree with you.)
• Schwarzshild geometry, in Schwarzschild coordinates: coordinate speed of light is zero at $$r \,=\, 2 GM$$. Proper time element is $$\mathrm{d}\tau \,=\, 0$$, so things are described as "frozen" on the event horizon in Schwarzschild coordinates. Things get even "weirder" inside the event horizon, because proper time becomes related to $$\mathrm{d}r$$ instead of $$\mathrm{d}t$$.
  Verdict: time stops there, black holes are frozen stars, no need to think any further than that. (Wait, what??? Why the change of heart?)

I'll grant you that the Schwarzschild geometry and coordinates aren't the same thing as SR accelerating frames. But still, this should at least give you some pause for thought here. Maybe things aren't so clear cut just looking at the coordinate speed of light and proper time, especially when you've seen how easily they can go haywire for something as innocuous as an accelerating reference frame in special relativity.

 

[Motor Daddy]

Sometimes it occurs and sometimes it doesn't. This is an example of where it doesn't. If you had 99 pennies, it would.

No. We are not talking about 99/3, we are talking about 1/3. Do you know the difference?

 

[brucep]

And yet you agree with me that:



So you tell me: how could Einstein "abandon" something that wasn't part of special relativity in the first place? (Controversial thought: maybe Einstein was human and still figuring things out? After all, he was starting to consider noninertial coordinate systems, which is something we very rarely do even today in special relativity.)




That's fine, but then I'm completely mystified by why you react so violently and differently when confronted with black hole event horizons, especially given that Schwarzschild coordinates qualitatively have a lot in common with SR accelerating reference frames (accelerating frames even have an event horizon of sorts associated with them, and they don't actually map out the whole of space and time). Consider this comparison:

• Uniformly accelerating reference frame: coordinate speed of light is zero at $$x \,=\, -c^{2}/a$$. Proper time element is $$\mathrm{d}\tau \,=\, 0$$ there too, so a clock or explosion at $$x \,=\, -c^{2}/a$$ would be described as "frozen" in the accelerating reference frame. In fact, $$\mathrm{d}\tau$$ even becomes negative for $$x \,<\, -c^{2}/a$$, so you get such oddities as clocks and explosions running "backwards" in that coordinate region.
  Verdict: simple curiosity associated with accelerating reference frames, artefact of the way they're defined. Doesn't actually mean anything physical. (If you said this, I'd agree with you.)
• Schwarzshild geometry, in Schwarzschild coordinates: coordinate speed of light is zero at $$r \,=\, 2 GM$$. Proper time element is $$\mathrm{d}\tau \,=\, 0$$, so things are described as "frozen" on the event horizon in Schwarzschild coordinates. Things get even "weirder" inside the event horizon, because proper time becomes related to $$\mathrm{d}r$$ instead of $$\mathrm{d}t$$.
  Verdict: time stops there, black holes are frozen stars, no need to think any further than that. (Wait, what??? Why the change of heart?)

I'll grant you that the Schwarzschild geometry and coordinates aren't the same thing as SR accelerating frames. But still, this should at least give you some pause for thought here. Maybe things aren't so clear cut just looking at the coordinate speed of light and proper time, especially when you've seen how easily they can go haywire for something as innocuous as an accelerating reference frame in special relativity.

He should go over the transformation from Schwarzschild coordinates to local proper frame coordinates that I provided. Then he could tell us what's wrong with the transformation and get a first hand look at the role SR plays in the coordinate transformation. Then we could have a useless argument about why the SR coordinates don't apply in curved spacetime. Or some other nonsense.