Proof Minkowski Spacetime is Poorly Conceived

Dr_Toad said:
Schneib, I see you're in your element here. Sorry we don't have the same quality of crackpottery at my place for you to take on!
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Minkowski was indeed an accomplished crackpot, Dr_Toad. Much better at it than I am, or could ever hope to be.
 
Thanks for all who participated in this discussion. I really needed that. None of you need to agree with me; Just putting it out there is enough. Someone will eventually verify it, probably when I am dust. I don't really care to be known for it.
 
danshawen said:
To determine that, you must understand that a pair of photons of sufficient energy are capable of creating a particle of matter and a particle of antimatter.

Exactly how do you imagine that process takes place.
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No imagination is required. At least one of the photons must have sufficient energy to occasionally form a fermion-antifermion pair which then annihilates back into a photon; in the case where it's one creating the pair, the other photon interacts with one of the fermions; in the case where both are of sufficient energy to make a fermion-antifermion pair, it is also possible that they will do so at the same time and location, and then the fermions can interact directly. It's also worth noting that a quark-antiquark pair can form a meson, and if this happens then the meson can either decay, or the quark and antiquark can annihilate back to a photon. This adds meson interaction with the other photon, with its occasional fermion pair, or if both photons are capable of forming mesons, then a meson-meson interaction is possible.

What is not possible is that two photons interact. And you must always remember that.

danshawen said:
Please note that I am not providing any more details of the process other than to calculate that it may only occur if there is both a tangential and a radial component of the propagating energy, and that according to the classical formula applied to a consideration of both components as light travel time, it is transparent that whatever is going on inside is doing so at a rate of c^2.
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You'll need to show why each of the above possible interactions requires both a tangential and a radial component as you claim. You'll then need to show that any classical formula applies to such interactions. Finally, since your claim that there is some quantity that is $$c^2$$, you'll need to show there is a nonzero r to account for this, and that now depends upon you proving these first two assertions, both of which appear doubtful at best and the second of which is highly questionable since we're talking about quantum mechanics.

danshawen said:
This is not the only way to derive the same result, just the simplest one.
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Well, I'd get working on those others because proving classical physics applies to quanta looks like a lost cause to me.

danshawen said:
Because this analysis works without any of those, and because the precepts upon which Minkowski based those things collapse of their own weight the very instant you can define a process like this one which is faster than c.
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You haven't defined any such process. You've only claimed to have defined it, and your claim currently rests on the assertion that classical mechanics applies to quanta, which appears incorrect to say the least.
 
danshawen said:
Minkowski was indeed an accomplished crackpot, Dr_Toad. Much better at it than I am, or could ever hope to be.
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I always wonder how someone can dismiss a great mathematician like Minkowski, or any other famous mathematician or physicist, so cavalierly. I have to say that it doesn't impress me positively.
 
danshawen said:
It is still dimensionally correct because internal to particles of matter or antimatter, delta t=o, the same as it is for a photon propagating in linear mode. This is why matter persists.
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I have no idea what you're talking about.

You wrote $$v=c^2$$.

This says that a velocity equals a squared velocity, which is not a physically meaningful statement.

I have spent enough time trying to extract some sense from you on this, so I will leave you to your nonsense for now.
 
Schneibster said:
I always wonder how someone can dismiss a great mathematician like Minkowski, or any other famous mathematician or physicist, so cavalierly. I have to say that it doesn't impress me positively.
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Minkowski was Einstein's calculus professor. He assessed Einstein as a poor student of calculus. Einstein's first wife too.

When the world wanted to know where Einstein got his strange ideas about relativity, they thought it might help if they knew who taught him the math he was using. It didn't. But Minkowski needed to show the world they had asked the right person about it, so he looked at the problems Einstein was having with parts of the theory like finding a relationship between time and space, and reconciling paradoxes having to do with simultanaeity. The math he came up with was so hopelessly convoluted and so far removed from the physical meaning of an invariant speed of light, that over 100 years later, people like you still believe they see the products of genius, rather than an OCD FIXATION with things quadratic and with Hilbert, his most reputable student other than Einstein.

The human mind doesn't work like that. Savants with cognitive gifts beyond all reason as well as the sum of the instruction provided by their teachers don't get there in ways we can easily understand. Maybe that is the punch line. E=mc^2 is such a creation, and Minkowki never accomplished anything to equal it. It illuminates. It does not set out to confuse, obfuscate, or elevate the talents of a teacher above a student no one seems to be able to understand outside of a narrow specialty.

"If you can't dazzle them with your brilliance, then BAFFLE THEM with your BS". --Irwin Corey, "world's foremost authority"

My timing for fine comedy like Corey's has always been "off". Sorry if you don't find it entertaining that people are still exactly as clueless about someone like Minkowski as Corey's unique brand of comedy would suggest. I am very amused and also entertained. You probably would do well not to take yourselves so seriously if you are really that gullible. You are going to need a sense of humor when the punch line finally comes and you are on the butt end of the cosmic joke. If you don't think that a fixation with math as a substitute for reality is "funny" in a dozen ways, i certainly can't help you. By all means, keep counting your beans, any way you like. Make an abacus with them. That should help.

That Corey chose Einstein to make light of rather than Minkowski was no mistake either. Minkowski was a lot of things, but funny wasn't among them.

Ask me why I wear tennis shoes.

v (tangential + radial) = c^2

This is no mistake or a joke. I couldn't be that funny if I tried.
 
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If someone really did find a relationship that strikes at the fundamental nature of time itself, like this one manifestly does, one should also expect that it is also beyond the logical framework of the mathematics that supported our previous best guess. With any system of mathematical reasoning, some true statement will not be provable, and there is no reckoning how trivial or how profound it might be. Incomplete or inconsistent are your only choices. Pick one.

This is it. It isn't Einstein. It's the triumph of his friend Kurt. It is outside the consistency framework of what we understand from all prior math supporting physics.

If you think this is BS, you are not alone, but I don't care.
 
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danshawen said:
Minkowski was Einstein's calculus professor. He assessed Einstein as a poor student of calculus. Einstein's first wife too.

When the world wanted to know where Einstein got his strange ideas about relativity, they thought it might help if they knew who taught him the math he was using. It didn't. But Minkowski needed to show the world they had asked the right person about it, so he looked at the problems Einstein was having with parts of the theory like finding a relationship between time and space, and reconciling paradoxes having to do with simultanaeity. The math he came up with was so hopelessly convoluted and so far removed from the physical meaning of an invariant speed of light, that over 100 years later, people like you still believe they see the products of genius, rather than an OCD FIXATION with things quadratic and with Hilbert, his most reputable student other than Einstein.

The human mind doesn't work like that. Savants with cognitive gifts beyond all reason as well as the sum of the instruction provided by their teachers don't get there in ways we can easily understand. Maybe that is the punch line. E=mc^2 is such a creation, and Minkowki never accomplished anything to equal it. It illuminates. It does not set out to confuse, obfuscate, or elevate the talents of a teacher above a student no one seems to be able to understand outside of a narrow specialty.

"If you can't dazzle them with your brilliance, then BAFFLE THEM with your BS". --Irwin Corey, "world's foremost authority"

My timing for fine comedy like Corey's has always been "off". Sorry if you don't find it entertaining that people are still exactly as clueless about someone like Minkowski as Corey's unique brand of comedy would suggest. I am very amused and also entertained. You probably would do well not to take yourselves so seriously if you are really that gullible. You are going to need a sense of humor when the punch line finally comes and you are on the butt end of the cosmic joke. If you don't think that a fixation with math as a substitute for reality is "funny" in a dozen ways, i certainly can't help you. By all means, keep counting your beans, any way you like. Make an abacus with them. That should help.

That Corey chose Einstein to make light of rather than Minkowski was no mistake either. Minkowski was a lot of things, but funny wasn't among them.

Ask me why I wear tennis shoes.

v (tangential + radial) = c^2

This is no mistake or a joke. I couldn't be that funny if I tried.
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In 0ther words, m/sec = m²/sec² -_O

Sorry, it has to be wrong. No physical scientist will accept something like this. You have to sort this out before you go any further.
 
danshawen said:
"If you can't dazzle them with your brilliance, then BAFFLE THEM with your BS". --Irwin Corey
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This will only work if your BS is of a sufficiently high quality. Yours is quite good, but it is not world class. It wouldn't even win prizes in the local pub.
 
This is all very amusing, but the fact is that the Lorentz transforms were derived from Maxwell's equations and the Michelson-Morley experiment results in 1892 well before SRT was published in 1905. And SRT provides the derivation of the transforms from two postulates: the relativity postulate, that all inertial frames are equivalent, and the speed of light postulate, that the speed of light is the same in all frames. Einstein's genius was responsible for the realization that if the speed of light was the same in all frames, then you didn't need any aether.

Minkowski's formula for spacetime interval is derived from Lorentz' transformations and Maxwell's equations, and was developed originally to deal with that, not with relativity. When relativity came along and put Lorentz on a sound footing, Minkowski incorporated relativity into his ideas, and today we formulate relativity in Minkowski space.
 
Schneibster said:
Einstein's genius was responsible for the realization that if the speed of light was the same in all frames, then you didn't need any aether.
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The speed of light is invariant in all inertial frames with the sole exception of the frame of the photon itself (and also other photons traveling at c), yes. Would that be an inertial frame or not? It has no inertia until or unless it interacts with matter (or perhaps that other photon) you know.

It takes two photons to create matter/antimatter pairs. Both of those photons experience maximal time dilation both before and after the matter/antimatter creation event. It is impossible to "observe" anything from the point of view of a photon traveling at c, but once they are bound, do you expect they continue to propagate or not? Do you expect time continues to dilate for them or not? Why do they persist? The rest mass of bound particles of matter is invariant just like the speed of light is. There is a good reason for that.

Relativity does not attempt to explain this process, or anything about it. Nothing travels faster than c in relativity, and evidently, there are things that can. Relativity is incomplete. I have shown it. How fast is quantum entanglement?
 
Given postulate 2, I would say that an inertial frame for the photon is pretty much ruled out. You can use it as a didactic or expository device but there is no frame there; its dimension in the direction of movement would be zero, and that's unphysical, and the rate at which it experienced time would also be unphysical.
 
Schneibster said:
Given postulate 2, I would say that an inertial frame for the photon is pretty much ruled out. You can use it as a didactic or expository device but there is no frame there; its dimension in the direction of movement would be zero, and that's unphysical, and the rate at which it experienced time would also be unphysical.
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Evidently, a propagating photon is as physical as it gets. You are made of them. So is everyone else.
 
Schneibster said:
But a frame moving at light speed isn't.
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So you do agree, "frame" can ONLY refer to something that is a moving aggregate of bound energy or inotherwords, matter or antimatter?

That is progress. Paddoboy, among others here, seem to be under the impression that a propagating photon is a FoR. Their only interest in relativity is to beat down anyone who goes against the teachings of someone like Minkowski. For all of the flaws in his version of relativity, at least he died in a timely manner.

Yet without pairs of rotational mode propagating photons (fundamental particles) matter itself doesn't exist, and neither do frames of reference and neither does inertia.

This is how energy gets what we call inertia. It is intimately involved with the other things we observe in relativity. Time dilation, and by means of extension, time itself depend on it. The passage of time continues for bound energy, or at least, on the outside. Otherwise, aggregate matter could not move, even at speeds closer to where we are, at rest or nearer to it than the speed of light.

If the speed of light or the speed of light squared were actually infinite, bound energy could not move and the universe would be static. It is because bound energy rotationally propagates faster than c but slower than infinity that time, motion, and inertia all become possible. The manifest graininess of time independent of the propagation of unbound photons makes sense. This is the part of the final exam Minkowski evidently failed. None of his math supports it.

This is a beautiful theory. What a shame it is that it was left to collect dust and never completed while physicists worked at developing fantasies like string theory. No one was interested, other than a tiny fringe who worked on developing boost matrices. Extension of relativity into explaining action at a distance and entanglement languished. Minkowsi is a big reason why. The Lorentz covariant model is fatally flawed and cannot be extended because it is pseudoscience.

For reasons I don't understand, relativity seems to attract a lot of folks interested in those. I only wish it attracted fewer. As for myself, I have no interest at all in pseudoscience. Science that is not extensible OR THAT HAS NOT CHANGED SUBSTANTIALLY IN OVER 100 YEARS to me is a red flag that WHAT YOU ARE DEALING WITH is pseudoscience. It is time for relativity either to move on or else get out of the way. It is blocking a large part of reasonable inquiry intended only to extend it into the 21st century.
 
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Ophiolite said:
HAMLET Madam, how like you this play?
QUEEN GERTRUDE The lady protests too much, methinks.

Hamlet, Act III, Scene II
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I have considered Popper's demarcation problem (science vs pseudoscience) very deeply, and that is what I came up with in lieu of tossing out induction with the baby's bathwater. Popper wouldn't even consider relativity as an example of science, choosing instead to base his model of science on the theory of natural selection. Genius. If only all of science really worked that way.

Science without instrumentation (induction) isn't science, particularly in this case. Pseudoscientists and Scientologists alike use instrumentation too; they just use it wrong.

Falsification is a powerful tool, and that is exactly what it is I'm trying to do. 100 years later, there are still really no tools to measure Minkowski rotation or 4D intervals. Lots of tools to confirm Einstein's most important results (matter and energy equivalence and time dilation). Entanglement communication now exists as well. I want college physics programs to stop teaching Lorentz covariance and Minkowski along with Einstein's relativity. They are not equivalent, or even compatible. Waste my precious time and money it was. The best example I can think of for math that leads directly to nowhere anyone wishes to go.

The Shakespeare's Hamlet quote is apt and I take your point. No more soliloquies.
 
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