Proof Minkowski Spacetime is Poorly Conceived

[PhysBang]

And what about the other 20 or 30 relativity theories that are candidates for replacing Minkowski?

Sure, what of them? Do any of them work? What are these alternatives? So far, danshawen has not actually provided or even examined this information.

Why do you suppose Einstein himself wished to replace it with something like De Sitter space?

Sigh. De Sitter space uses Minksowski space.

I would recommend, you take whatever they teach you with a grain or two of salt, but each to their own taste.

But why doesn't danshawen take articles written in horrible English with a grain of salt?

 

[przyk]

Threads that are not made into ad hominem attacks on the OPs are rare here

Your arguments are based on a complete misunderstanding of what Minkowski geometry is and its relevance to relativity. The inevitable result is that your posts consist of little more than strawman arguments. That is a fallacy and it is not an ad hominem attack to point out that you are repeatedly committing it.

And what about the other 20 or 30 relativity theories that are candidates for replacing Minkowski?

That doesn't even make sense. Minkowski geometry is, at the end of the day, nothing more than a mathematical notation for Einstein's relativity that (most who have learned it would say) simplifies many problems in relativistic physics. It is not a different or alternative theory to relativity.

Why do you suppose Einstein himself wished to replace it with something like De Sitter space?

That also makes no sense. Einstein used pseudo-Riemannian geometry when developing GR. That is a generalisation of Minkowski geometry that can accommodate noninertial coordinate systems and curved manifolds. The de Sitter space(time) is just one particular example of a possible pseudo-Riemannian manifold, not an alternative to it.

You are right that a BS in physics earned 42 years ago doesn't mean very much today.

I honestly don't care who has what degree as long as they can demonstrate they know what they're talking about. The only reason I'm talking about this is that you keep referring to some course you once did on relativity as if that should lend you some authority. It does not. Relativity is by now a 110-year-old theory that everyone studying physics at undergraduate level is expected to learn. Lots of people have learned and can justifiably say they fully understand relativity. You're not in a position to insist you have some special insight into the subject.

I would recommend, you take whatever they teach you with a grain or two of salt

You're making two false assumptions:

1. I'm not still a student.
2. Even when I was, I was not uncritically dependent on my instructors.

 

[The God]

You're making two false assumptions:

1. I'm not still a student.
2. Even when I was, I was not uncritically dependent on my instructors.

Good one !
Even though we learn something or the other every day and at every stage, and for that we can be termed as students (not in literal academic sense)...What I like most is being critical without losing the prudency and respect. Infact this trait should be inculcated in all the science students....

 

[danshawen]

Even when I was, I was not uncritically dependent on my instructors.

Yes, very, very good indeed. This is why, I don't think we even have a major disagreement here. I love the math as much as you do.

Kindly allow me the same latitude to be critically independent of only ONE of my former physics profs who taught us Minkowski spacetime, and also just one of Einstein's calculus teachers (yes, the same individual).

You may find this incredible for me to admit at this late stage of the thread, but it's a fact that I NEVER had any sort of dispute with any of my college math instructors, including calculus, vector calculus, linear algebra. Lagrangian dynamics went very smoothly as well. All of those instructors were the best of the best of the best. None of my math instructors had even the slightest interest in anything related to relativity. Derivatives and integrals of position with respect to time was about the only topic related to physics that any of them even touched on.

Giving up physics completely and studying math would have been a wiser choice for me. It wouldn't have left me with this stupid obsession either, now would it?

I can't seem to shake it because I followed all of the steps Minkowski used to arrive at his conclusions, understand the import of the results, and yet to me it is so very, very wrong headed from its very inception, it literally makes me nauseous just thinking about how anyone with that great a command of the math could go so wrong so very, very easily. But it isn't even the math that is wrong. It's his whole conception of what time is, and the deliberate wrong way he generalized it just because he favored a particular means of analysis.

Sure, you could use quaternion Fourier analysis to normalize 4D eigenfunctions in a complex statistical hyperbolic space, but why would anyone choose to do that to solve problems that are conceptually much simpler? Sometimes, you simply don't need every mathematical tool in the bag. A nutcracker will leave more edible nut meat to enjoy than a sledge hammer that renders both the nut and its shell into an even distribution of inedible, incomprehensibly distasteful, inelegant and repulsive spot of nut pulp adhering to the sidewalk.

Oh, sure, the math works, and when you are finished, nothing moves any more. What happened to time? It was mathematically minimized and eliminated in favor of analysis of simultaneous events in a higher dimension. Too bad. Time was the only dimension that was ever really there to begin with.

He could have done the same thing more elegantly with nothing more exotic than a one dimensional graphic nomogram.

 

[Ophiolite]

Yes, very, very good indeed. This is why, I don't think we even have a major disagreement here. I love the math as much as you do.

The problem is Dan that, while you may love the math as well as przyk does, you only understand it about as well as I do.

 

[Dr_Toad]

The problem is Dan

When pryzk explains it so well, so should Dan.

 

[PhysBang]

I can't seem to shake it because I followed all of the steps Minkowski used to arrive at his conclusions, understand the import of the results, and yet to me it is so very, very wrong headed from its very inception, it literally makes me nauseous just thinking about how anyone with that great a command of the math could go so wrong so very, very easily. But it isn't even the math that is wrong. It's his whole conception of what time is, and the deliberate wrong way he generalized it just because he favored a particular means of analysis.

Well, we have, until he reverses this again in a day or two, dansahwen admitting again that there is no mathematical problem with Minkowski's work. The problem is, mostly or completely, aesthetic.

Sure, you could use quaternion Fourier analysis to normalize 4D eigenfunctions in a complex statistical hyperbolic space, but why would anyone choose to do that to solve problems that are conceptually much simpler?

If someone was doing physics, then the answer to this question would be that we would choose to do this because the analysis produced more accurate descriptions and predictions about physical systems. It is a common crank methodology to claim that something is conceptually simple and then ignore any evidence that more is required to do good physics than their simplistic approach.

Oh, sure, the math works, and when you are finished, nothing moves any more. What happened to time? It was mathematically minimized and eliminated in favor of analysis of simultaneous events in a higher dimension. Too bad. Time was the only dimension that was ever really there to begin with.

Another crank methodology is to ignore pretty much anything. In this case, given that Minkowski spacetime exists for almost nothing else but to describe motion, danshawen still claims that there is no motion in Minkowski spacetime.

 

[danshawen]

When pryzk explains it so well, so should Dan.

How about this:

If two physical quantities vary in relative proportion to each other but cannot be represented as a graphic nomogram, then the quantities are unrelated to each other by means of proportional analysis.

Soak up the impact of that NEW THEOREM. It works as well in complex/quadratic domains as it does anywhere else. Apply it to space and time.

One of my favorite books was a compendium of nomograms by Rudolf Groff. They could represent everything from resistors in parallel to a Smith chart for microwave antennas.

Any true proportional relationship, even ones with invariant limits, can be represented this way. If it can't, then you don't have a proportional relationship. Space IS time. Give it up. The relationship of space with time isn't there because they are the same thing, a "null" nomogram.

 

[PhysBang]

How about this:

If two physical quantities vary in relative proportion to each other but cannot be represented as a graphic nomogram, then the quantities are unrelated to each other by means of proportional analysis.

Soak up the impact of that NEW THEOREM. It works as well in complex/quadratic domains as it does anywhere else. Apply it to space and time.

One of my favorite books was a compendium of nomograms by Rudolf Groff. They could represent everything from resistors in parallel to a Smith chart for microwave antennas.

Any true proportional relationship, even ones with invariant limits, can be represented this way. If it can't, then you don't have a proportional relationship. Space IS time. Give it up. The relationship of space with time isn't there because they are the same thing, a "null" nomogram.

And we're back to denying the math, mere hours from claiming to accept it. The mathematics of relativity theory, which danshawen tells us he knows but makes mistakes about so often, do not make time proportional to space. Nor do they make time into space.

 

[przyk]

Kindly allow me the same latitude to be critically independent of only ONE of my former physics profs who taught us Minkowski spacetime, and also just one of Einstein's calculus teachers (yes, the same individual).

You are entitled to be as critical of Minkowski geometry and of your former instructors as you wish. But that entitlement is not exclusive. If you decide to publicly post opinions about the subject then everyone else in the world is equally entitled to be critical of you. You've responded very ineffectively to this so far.

I can't seem to shake it because I followed all of the steps Minkowski used to arrive at his conclusions, understand the import of the results

Well clearly you took a wrong turn somewhere because you built up a lot of ideas about Minkowski geometry that have nothing to do with the real thing.

In particular:

nothing moves any more.

What happened to time? It was mathematically minimized and eliminated in favor of analysis of simultaneous events in a higher dimension.

Neither of these are implied by Minkowski geometry.

and the deliberate wrong way he generalized it just because he favored a particular means of analysis.

That is not why Minkowski geometry is used in physics.

You've been corrected on these points before. Which part of "strawman argument", and the fact that it is a fallacy, do you not understand?

 

[danshawen]

So, you don't really know what a nomogram is? I wasn't kidding when I said "ANY" proportional relationship of any kind can be represented graphically by means of a nomogram. That includes all of relativity, even Minkowski's bit. Have you ever even used a slide rule? Log table? I have. When I was 15.

You have encouraged me to work through this, and I'm going to do it. Thanks, but I don't think you really understand my particular problem.

 

[przyk]

I wasn't kidding when I said "ANY" proportional relationship of any kind can be represented graphically by means of a nomogram. That includes all of relativity, even Minkowski's bit.

Relativity and Minkowski geometry are not primarily about proportional relationships.

Have you ever even used a slide rule? Log table? I have. When I was 15.

No. I had a graphic calculator that I could program by the time I was 11 or 12. (I moved on to learning Java and some C when I was around 15.)

You have encouraged me to work through this, and I'm going to do it. Thanks, but I don't think you really understand my particular problem.

That isn't a useful answer. No. I don't know what your particular problem is, beyond that you apparently had a bad experience with an instructor more than four decades ago. The only thing I'm quite sure of is that your problem, whatever it is, doesn't come from Minkowski geometry.

My honest advice: please forget what you think you know about Minkowski geometry and start from scratch with it. Because you clearly got the wrong idea about it somewhere along the line and you've spent the better part of this thread arguing against all sorts of bizarre ideas that Minkowsk supposedly says that no physicist I've ever met actually believes in the first place. Which means you've really spent most of this time passionately arguing with yourself. Do you really think that's a constructive way to expend your own time and effort?

 

[PhysBang]

So, you don't really know what a nomogram is? I wasn't kidding when I said "ANY" proportional relationship of any kind can be represented graphically by means of a nomogram. That includes all of relativity, even Minkowski's bit. Have you ever even used a slide rule? Log table? I have. When I was 15.

Here's a great example of,charitably, a straw man argument. danshawen is criticizing Minkowski for a proportional relationship that does not exist.

You have encouraged me to work through this, and I'm going to do it. Thanks, but I don't think you really understand my particular problem.

I think that danshawen is the one not understanding his problem.

 

[danshawen]

good advice! And lots of it.

Found a bunch of really nice relativity nomograms. Beauty. Check it out:

http://www.logical.ai/nomo-doppler/

Note carefully just how simple that one looks, and works every time. Need to analyze how it works more closely. It doesn't appear as though it has used a higher dimension for whatever it is doing. You wouldn't expect it to.

The Lorentz boost is beautiful also.

Now notice what is NOT there.

 

[danshawen]

http://physics.stackexchange.com/qu...to-a-relativistic-rotating-frame-of-reference

Excellent mathematical discussions of the Ehrenfest paradox, and also the idea that for rotating frames, velocities may indeed exceed c (because I have been charged, among other things, with making up that idea out of whole cloth).

Matt Seifert did this excellent analysis:

"This is not to say that we can't do particle dynamics in a rotating reference system, even for relativistic motion. The better way is to take the Lagrangian approach, in which a particle moving between two events in spacetime will extremize the proper time along its trajectory:"





In the rotating reference frame, this can be written as




and we can find a set of Euler-Lagrange equations for r⃗ ′(t′)rt that extremize this integral in the usual way. This would be the easiest way to generalize the Coriolis force and the centrifugal force into a relativistic context."

 

[danshawen]

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/SR/rigid_disk.html

This section in particular is golden:

"Note added by the Editor in 2013–2015

The same idea is universally taken for granted in the standard Lorentz transform studied throughout special relativity. There too, we don't concern ourselves—no one does—with how the "primed frame" was ever made to move. It is simply taken as having always been moving, forever. Any other treatment of its motion would only mask and complicate the underlying ideas, which concern the Lorentz transform and not questions of how to accelerate physical objects. We are content to treat a constant-velocity primed frame as having had its state of motion forever, so we should do likewise for the rotating frame and not allow discussion of how the disk was set into motion derail the core issue, which is the analysis of events in a rotating frame."

An example is given of how we can spin around in one spot and observe a full moon (distance is about 240,000 miles) breaking the speed of light.

"It might at first be thought that the rotating frame gives problems with the speed of light. For instance if we spin around on the spot, we see the Moon whizz around us in a huge circle, so isn't it travelling faster than light in our frame? It is travelling faster than the tabulated value of "c", but it is not travelling faster than light; after all, we agree that light is still escaping from its surface. In the language of special relativity, the Moon's world line always remains within its local light cone; it remains "timelike". In fact, this behaviour is no different to the well-accepted behaviour of light in an accelerated frame, where the measured speed of light depends upon where in that frame it currently is. This speed can in fact have any value, from zero to infinity."

And the "infinity" behavior discussed is what is seen in the second nomogram, both in terms of the length contraction (no limit to low end of length) and time dilation (no limit to how slowly time may proceed). Twice or n x infinity is still infinity. It makes perfect sense. Just not in the realm of numbers. With femtosecond photography, we can actually watch a pulse of light as it traverses a Coke bottle. That's a lot of events happening while light propagates. One could imagine EM of much longer wavelengths doing the same traversal at the same rate. The speed of light is no indicator of the limits of time itself, the way Minkowski cast it.

Sorry everyone, but this seems to be reenforcing my assertion that the speed of propagation of energy within bound fundamental particles of matter not only exceeds the limits of invariant c in the linear mode of propagation, but also exceeds the limits of our collective understanding of relativity itself. It seems, an awful lot of folks out there agree with me, even if I'm not finding any of them on sciforums. Which is why, this is my last post.

But it was very true what Steve Jobs said: "The journey IS the reward."

 

[PhysBang]

Sorry everyone, but this seems to be reenforcing my assertion that the speed of propagation of energy within bound fundamental particles of matter not only exceeds the limits of invariant c in the linear mode of propagation, but also exceeds the limits of our collective understanding of relativity itself. It seems, an awful lot of folks out there agree with me, even if I'm not finding any of them on sciforums.

Classic Farsight behavior: cherry-pick citations and quotations that either do not actually relate to the things he was discussing or do not actually mean what he thinks they do. The posts above do not support danshawen's bizarre claims.

Which is why, this is my last post.

Small mercy, at least.

 

[przyk]

It seems, an awful lot of folks out there agree with me, even if I'm not finding any of them on sciforums.

Um, nope. The situation with the speed of light in rotating reference frames isn't a problem for special relativity. It also shouldn't surprise anyone who actually knows the theory.

In fact, here's me pointing out exactly the same moon example in this post back in 2008:

If you spin around on the spot fast enough, you'll find yourself in a (rotating) reference frame in which the moon's speed exceeds c (never mind the ludicrous speeds of quasars billions of light years away).

This has nothing to do with what you've been saying about Minkowski geometry here and the material you quoted, if you would actually read it, explains why this is not a problem for relativity.

 

[Dr_Toad]

I'm not sure if he doesn't read "magic" when the rest of us read "relativity".

 

[ajanta]

Whereas time as a 4D component of Mink spacetime explains almost nothing about the nature of time, inertia, or anything else, my definition is functional on many levels.

I'm not sure if he doesn't read "magic" when the rest of us read "relativity".

From electromagnetic theory,
PHOTON has electric field whose value changes from +ve to -ve and back as the wave passes. https://www.single-molecule.nl/notes/light-waves-and-photons/

So, is changing the value(of electric field) from +ve to -ve a causation/Incident/Occurrence ? If it is causation/Incident/occurrence so how can it be possible ? Because PHOTON travels at light speed and imaginable clock of photon's reference frame will tick 0 second.

So, a causation/incident/occurrence in 0 second !?!