Proof Minkowski Spacetime is Poorly Conceived

[danshawen]

Iff was intentional.

Although it seems not to be my reputation here, I am perfectly capable of doing math related to physics, and without making the usual mistakes. I had no tutoring resources to help me with that. Neither of my parents finished high school. This is one reason, I don't always take all of the given explanations or the math for granted. I can work it out for myself. Many techniques I developed over many years actually work better.

You seem to be quite astute yourself, Schneibster. Nice conversing with you.

 

[Schneibster]

Just because someone can't do linear algebra and tensors and matrices doesn't mean they "don't know any math," nor does it mean they "can't understand relativity." What I really find fascinating about physics I have managed to find out without having to do a bunch of boring highly complex math that I'll never ever use for anything that makes me money and keeps me eating. Frankly, though I'm interested, I still haven't found anybody who can explain all that math to me, and frankly, I'm a pretty elite software engineer so that makes me question their teaching skillz rather than my learning skillz. And there are a lot of trolls out there who play the "you can't understand the math" card enough that I'm suspicious when I see anyone play it if they haven't demonstrated their knowledge in other ways. It's just another obfuscation technique AFAIC.

And another just because, just because we disagree on your idea about bound photons making up electrons doesn't mean we have to be nasty to each other.

Nice conversing with you too.

 

[danshawen]

Just because someone can't do linear algebra and tensors and matrices doesn't mean they "don't know any math," nor does it mean they "can't understand relativity." What I really find fascinating about physics I have managed to find out without having to do a bunch of boring highly complex math that I'll never ever use for anything that makes me money and keeps me eating. Frankly, though I'm interested, I still haven't found anybody who can explain all that math to me, and frankly, I'm a pretty elite software engineer so that makes me question their teaching skillz rather than my learning skillz. And there are a lot of trolls out there who play the "you can't understand the math" card enough that I'm suspicious when I see anyone play it if they haven't demonstrated their knowledge in other ways. It's just another obfuscation technique AFAIC.

And another just because, just because we disagree on your idea about bound photons making up electrons doesn't mean we have to be nasty to each other.

Nice conversing with you too.

I struggled a bit with tensors, but finally understood them. I recognize the facility and the utility of using matrix algebra for handling the complexity of systems of linear equations, but because Minkowski's express intention was to combine time with other dimensions as only a component (so that he could do that much more mathematical bean counting woo) instead of acknowledging light travel time and FTL particle energy rotation as the ONLY component physical dimensions of spacetime frankly disgusts me.

Using tensors to depict absolute space and time 'spacetime' static geometric curvature as the most important physical concept instead of understanding time dilation a priori is, as far as I am concerned, just another symptom of the same mathematical OCD / vanity disease that afflicted Minkowski. His light cones are not just shaped like hour glasses for no reason. Quadratic curves are conic sections. Minkowsi was OCD about quadratics. I can recognize and acknowledge a form of mental illness that is the same as my own. Can you? OCD IS THE REASON human societies have traditions and also superstitions. With OCD, you don't really need to understand, much less actually think anything. It is a crutch. This whole forum is afflicted with it and doesn't have a clue that it does. Science and engineering occupations are as full of OCD afflicted individuals as any orthodox religious tradition. Don't tell me it isn't so; I have had a whole lifetime to observe what it does and how it does it.

I am not the only member of the human race afflicted with OCD, either in terms of math or otherwise. Some people are still not convinced that Ptolemy or even Aristotle got anything wrong. Minds as quick and agile as those massive turtles that carry the flat Earth universe around on their backs are pretty much everywhere.

And because of this, I also understand that what I am writing will more than likely not change any of your minds. Good for you. The more OCD you are, the more you are deserving of the condition. Have a miserable day like the rest of us.

 

[danshawen]

19th century mathematicians were as ignorant as, well, you know. If you aspire to be like them, you will get your wish.

 

[exchemist]

19th century mathematicians were as ignorant as, well, you know. If you aspire to be like them, you will get your wish.

That strikes me as a bizarre statement. If I think of the contributions from only the French ones, Lagrange, Argand, Laplace, Fourier, Hermite, Legendre, Poincaré........these are names that resonate, to anyone who has studied modern physical science. Calling such people ignorant seems to me preposterous.

I am always amazed, in fact, by how much was already in place, so early, in the history of mathematics, compared to physical science, e.g. complex numbers took shape in the c.17th!

But maybe it's just your OCD talking.......

 

[danshawen]

That strikes me as a bizarre statement. If I think of the contributions from only the French ones, Lagrange, Argand, Laplace, Fourier, Hermite, Legendre, Poincaré........these are names that resonate, to anyone who has studied modern physical science. Calling such people ignorant seems to me preposterous.

I am always amazed, in fact, by how much was already in place, so early, in the history of mathematics, compared to physical science, e.g. complex numbers took shape in the c.17th!

But maybe it's just your OCD talking.......

Maybe. No, for certain.

However, thinking like a 19th century mathematician is not the blessing a great many people here seem to believe it is, and that is the point. It was Einstein's point as well, if memory serves.

 

[Q-reeus]

Till now deliberately avoided even reading through this thread - which was a follow-on to ending at: http://www.sciforums.com/threads/maximum-photon-energy.155977/
Interesting to note that my observations there re dimensional analysis (http://www.sciforums.com/posts/3375142/), when piecemeal reproduced this thread by various folks, without any due reference back to those earlier observations, lot's of 'I likes' were now forthcoming. Short memory spans? Maybe. Not to be churlish, it's the following erroneous claims by one poster this thread I will concentrate on:
In #43:

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

Tantamount to claiming electron-positron annihilation to form two gamma rays is a time irreversible process. WRONG. See also e.g. #25, #49 in linked-to thread above.
In #52:

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.

A de facto concession to being corrected in posts #7, #9, #12, #13 here: http://www.sciforums.com/threads/time-dilation-of-photon-vs-wave-movements.156116/
But a garbled version - 'it's (photon) dimension in the direction of movement would be zero' [that inside parentheses added here] has it inverted. Actually, to the extent longitudinal extent of a photon can be defined in any given frame, in the limit of infinite redshift i.e. 'catching up' to a photon, 'photon length' goes to infinity, not zero! Consistent with zero frequency thus zero existence.
[edit: conceivably 'the frame' was meant, not photon. But that would still make no sense since 'a frame' cannot experience time, only objects within such a frame. Moreover, it's not 'the frame' that contracts, only objects having relative motion measured within such a frame of reference.]
In #98:

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.

Nonsense. SR can fully account for abitrary accelerated motion - any combination of rectilinear and circular acceleration. See e.g.
http://www.springer.com/cda/content...369097-c1.pdf?SGWID=0-0-45-1113969-p173959770
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/SR/acceleration.html
You need GR (or similar gravity theory) only when gravity is involved.

I look forward to being challenged on any of above by the individual concerned - just spoiling to hand out another hiding.

 

[exchemist]

Maybe. No, for certain.

However, thinking like a 19th century mathematician is not the blessing a great many people here seem to believe it is, and that is the point. It was Einstein's point as well, if memory serves.

I think your memory may be letting you down. I do not recall Einstein criticising mathematicians, or their way of thinking, at all. Have you a reference for the idea that he did?

 

[The God]

19th century mathematicians were as ignorant as, well, you know. If you aspire to be like them, you will get your wish.

Nope..unless you are referring to some specific case.
Mathematicians are cool guys, and there is nothing vague about maths or mathematicians of any era.

 

[danshawen]

I think your memory may be letting you down. I do not recall Einstein criticising mathematicians, or their way of thinking, at all. Have you a reference for the idea that he did?

The Michaelson Moreley experiment null result, and the ideas behind the experimental design itself.

The whole idea of an aether or an aether wind.

The whole idea of absolute space or absolute time, or Minkowski's absolute spacetime curvature which is what replaced it. Curved space that has as much inertia and a rock solid origin on which to hang a preferred reference frame as the 19th century version of absolute space that preceded it. The curvature makes it no less absolute. They simply replaced the scaffolding with sliding boards. Their very minds are like solid blocks of mathematically consistent reinforced cement.

Relativity tries for all it is worth to instruct us that time dilation is different everywhere, and these 19th century holdouts keep equivocating invariant light speed with invariant absolute time. It doesn't work that way. They simply trade one absolute for another and go on doing their absolute geometry in inertialess space. It only works after a fashion, in solids that cannot move. It only works in a universe which is static, which has no inertia other than 'at rest' for everything. A universe with no time or time dilation. a universe composed of solids, not dynamic atomic structure and/or energy transfer events.

Without time, inertia does not exist. The Higgs mechanism and the principle of equivalence do not exist. An understanding of where Cavendish's universal gravitational constant comes from is not possible. A degree in math or a divine hand will always be necessary for a stone to know in which direction to fall. A brisk aether wind blows in every direction at once, everywhere the G-d of absolute space and time wishes it to be.

These are the fruits of thinking like a 19th century mathematician.

"No problem can be solved by the SAME KIND OF <chronologically challenged> THINKING that created it." -Albert Einstein

 

[exchemist]

The Michaelson Moreley experiment null result, and the ideas behind the experimental design itself.

The whole idea of an aether or an aether wind.

The whole idea of absolute space or absolute time, or Minkowski's absolute spacetime curvature which is what replaced it. Curved space that has as much inertia and a rock solid origin on which to hang a preferred reference frame as the 19th century version of absolute space that preceded it. The curvature makes it no less absolute. They simply replaced the scaffolding with sliding boards. Their very minds are like solid blocks of mathematically consistent reinforced cement.

Relativity tries for all it is worth to instruct us that time dilation is different everywhere, and these 19th century holdouts keep equivocating invariant light speed with invariant absolute time. It doesn't work that way. They simply trade one absolute for another and go on doing their absolute geometry in inertialess space. It only works after a fashion, in solids that cannot move. It only works in a universe which is static, which has no inertia other than 'at rest' for everything. A universe with no time or time dilation. a universe composed solids, not dynamic atomic structure and/or energy transfer events.

Without time, inertia does not exist. The Higgs mechanism and the principle of equivalence do not exist. An understanding of where Cavendish's universal gravitational constant comes from is not possible. A degree in math or a divine hand will always be necessary for a stone to know in which direction to fall. A brisk aether wind blows in every direction at once, everywhere the G-d of absolute space and time wishes it to be.

These are the fruits of thinking like a 19th century mathematician.

"No problem can be solved by the SAME KIND OF <chronologically challenged> THINKING that created it." -Albert Einstein

Michelson and Morley were experimental physicists, not mathematicians. What does their experiment have to do with any particular kind of mathematical thinking?

 

[danshawen]

Michelson and Morley were experimental physicists, not mathematicians. What does their experiment have to do with any particular kind of mathematical thinking?

They were acting on the predictions of an aether wind proposed by 19th century mathematicians. Swimming upstream then downstream in a flowing river takes longer than swimming from one bank to the other and back again, fighting the influence of the current each way. All geometry.

Unbound energy like photons traveling to and from an interferometer mirror have no inertia of their own; only whatever they get by interacting with the bound energy that is matter. A laser cavity would be an example.

 

[exchemist]

They were acting on the predictions of an aether wind proposed by 19th century mathematicians. Swimming upstream then downstream in a flowing river takes longer than swimming from one bank to the other and back again, fighting the influence of the current each way. All geometry.

Unbound energy like photons traveling to and from an interferometer mirror have no inertia of their own; only whatever they get by interacting with the bound energy that is matter. A laser cavity would be an example.

But the aether was proposed by c.19th physicists, surely, not by mathematicians? In fact, as I understand it, the mathematics of Maxwell's equations famously does not require an aether.

That suggests to me that the mathematics had already dispensed with the aether, and that it was the physicists who, quite understandably, took a few decades to get their heads round the idea of doing without one.

 

[rpenner]

And what is absolute about Minokowski space again? It has no preferred origin, spatial orientation or state of rest.

What is absolute about Minkowski space is that is event A and event B have only one of these possible relations:
1) same event
2) A is on the future light-cone of B
3) B is on the future light-cone of A
4) A is within the future light-cone of B
5) B is within the future light-cone of A
6) none of the above


If any of 1,2,3 hold, it is possible to imagine a light ray passing through both A and B. If 4 or 5 hold it is possible to imagine a clock sent on an inertial trajectory that intersects both A and B, so a single characteristic elapsed time defines how far A is from B. If 6 holds it is possible to imagine a system of clocks in the same state of motion synchronized so that A and B are simultaneous. Likewise it is possible to imagine a clock at the midpoint sending round-trip signals between it and A or B to know it is the midpoint and A and B have a characteristic distance defining their separation.

In every case you can find a midpoint event M between A and B which has the same class of relationship with A as B, and the same class of relationship with B as A, but the elapsed time, if any, or characteristic distance, if any, is halved.

Likewise it supports a vector space, so if you have events A and B and C, you can define event D such that A→B is congruent with D→C, and B→C is congruent with A→D.
D = C + (A – B) = A + ( C – B)

So Minkowski space has a flat metrical geometry and respects light-cones.

 

[James R]

Relativity tries for all it is worth to instruct us that time dilation is different everywhere, and these 19th century holdouts keep equivocating invariant light speed with invariant absolute time.

This is a very inaccurate (read poor) attempt to summarise what relativity does. Just to be clear: relativity has no invariant absolute time and does not equivocate about that. As for the invariance of the speed of light, that is one of the original postulates of Einstein' special theory. So, again, not much to equivocate about there.

It doesn't work that way. They simply trade one absolute for another and go on doing their absolute geometry in inertialess space.

What would a space with inertia look like, exactly? Space is not a substance. How could it have inertia?

Without time, inertia does not exist.

Ok. This is getting a bit ridiculous. I'm going to ask you now to provide some kind of argument or evidence linking "inertia" with "time". When you provide this evidence, please be careful to define clearly what you mean by "inertia".

You can't continue to make claims that are actually empty of any meaningful content. At some point you need to actually explain what you mean, rather than just throwing buzzwords around.

I've read your claims that you understand tensor calculus and the like. But I'm yet to see anything mathematical from you on any of your theories about inertia, or anything else.

Tell me: when are you going to post some mathematical arguments that specify or support your claims?

The Higgs mechanism and the principle of equivalence do not exist.

Excuse me?

The principle of equivalence doesn't exist? Are you serious?

Or do you actually mean you don't believe that the principle of equivalence holds? If that is what you mean, I suggest you provide some evidence or argument to support your position. Please do so in your next post.

An understanding of where Cavendish's universal gravitational constant comes from is not possible.

Why not? Explain.

A degree in math or a divine hand will always be necessary for a stone to know in which direction to fall. A brisk aether wind blows in every direction at once, everywhere the G-d of absolute space and time wishes it to be.

Should this thread be in the religion forum? Or are you simply attributing this view to "19th century mathematicians"? Maybe the History forum, then.

Are you interested in discussing any 21st century science?

 

[danshawen]

Space without inertia would be static and not contain any energy dynamically contained as atomic structure or matter, nor would space without inertia support any unbound energy that could propagate at c relative to the bound energy that is matter, either at rest or traveling at velocities < c.

IFF you are a 19th century mathematician, the principle of equivalence does not exist because the universe is static and neither time nor energy nor the inertia that derives of it exists.

I refuse to regurgitate the tortured Lorentz covariance I was taught, or any of the math that goes with it. The assumptions on which it is based are fundamentally wrong. The propagation of light at c requires no aether. Time dilation doesn't either. There isn't any basis in physical reality for a tensor. Space IS light travel time IN ALL THREE DIMENSIONS and equally in all directions the propagation of energy may rotate.

Quantum entanglement is FTL. Flipping of paired entangled electron spins is FTL. Rotation of relativistic energy vectors within particles of bound energy / matter is FTL. It is NOT because of Minkowski rotation. It is NOT because space is curved.

The universal gravitational constant is a place holder for a factor we have no understanding about where it comes from or how it works. This is a situation that is unlikely to change as long as people keep thinking like 19th century mathematicians.

Other than that, we seem to agree on everything, James R.

 

[danshawen]

If Minkowski rotation exists, what is the specific RATE AND DIRECTION (CW OR CCW) of that rotation, in radians/sec?

Go ahead, make that a mathematical convention also, just like 19th century mathematical minds did for the coordinates of the AXIS OF MINKOWSKI ROTATION IN ALL INERTIAL REFERENCE FRAMES.

Pseudoscience has a distinctive unpleasant odor that permeates anything trying to extend it.

 

[Ophiolite]

Pseudoscience has a distinctive unpleasant odor that permeates anything trying to extend it.

Very true.

 

[danshawen]

Each and every subatomic particle of matter or antimatter has its very own frame of reference, and individual rates of time dilation are dependent on relative motion and proximity to other propagating (bound or unbound) energy densities. Time is neither invariant nor absolute.

To explain simultanaeity that occurs FTL, you need will be more mathematical horsepower than was generated by any 19th century math. More than Minkowski ever dreamt existed.

 

[danshawen]

Very true.

Sarcasm that finely crafted (even directed at me) make it difficult for me not to like you, Ophiolite, but I do respect your wishes.