I am new to sciForum. (My post count is two orders of magnitude less than some of the participants active here!) I have read less than 10% of this fast moving thread and only one other thread more. (In it, I came to admire MacM and Stokes Pennwalt for their informative posts about fission power.) I think MacM is wrong here. I think SR & time dilation are real, not an illusion related to communication delays, as MacM seems to think. IMHO, the real illusion is Universal Time, UT. Belief in UT is based on human experience, not physics. Defending it today is as foolish as defending a flat-Earth view was, once a partial eclipse of moon was understood to be the Earth’s shadow, and not some invisible hungry dragon who liked green cheese.
Despite all this and the unavoidable appearance of arrogance, I am going to help MacM by now giving some unsolicited advice to others who are also attacking his view (and unfortunately also him, at times). MacM may not like my “help,” but that is a risk I’ll take.
In a way MacM probably disliked, I have already “helped” him. Both James R and I recently made predictions about what MacM would do next. I predicted what MacM’s response would be to a very focused request from James, by actually writing what I thought he would write, before he had time to make his reply, and posting it. James predicted that MacM would “duck and weave.” Both of us can claim to have been right, at least in part.
MacM did deny that the returning astronaut twin would have the same biological age as his Earth-bound brother, just as I predicted, but in the version I wrote of “MacM’s response” there was a strong counter attack that clearly showed James R’s argument for a difference in the twin’s biological age was based on circular logic. My “psuedoMacM” concluded something like: “I’ll believe the astronaut is biologically younger when I see it – not because of James R’s faith in SR, which I have X times proven false, predicts it.”
James R’s prediction also, at least appears to have been correct as MacM is now, after his two line denial of astronaut twin’s relative youth, off talking about some defects in some clock test of SR but, (and here is where I start to help MacM) I think this is at least equally the fault of the other participants in this thread! (Skip next paragraph if you want to go directly to why I think this.)
James and I firmly believe SR’s prediction of the youthful biological state of the astronaut twin is a fact, even if it has never been directly tested, but we can not use this unconfirmed “fact,” which MacM disputes, as the basis of our argument to “prove” he is wrong. (SR = fact; SR predicts youth; therefore MacM is wrong because SR is fact.) That is circular logic. Generally speaking, MacM is quite logical, and his position REQUIERS that he deny the astronaut’s relative youth; thus I was sure he would deny the astronaut’s relative youth, but based on his past performance, I expected more from MacM. Thus, I included this strong counter attack (Your argument is circular!) as part of my prediction and in this I was wrong. - MacM you let me down by only quickly denying the astronaut’s youth, but I understand it is 1 against M, where M>>1 and that keeps you very busy, which brings me to the main point of this post:
This thread keeps going off on tangents. There are too many sub-threads. MacM can pick and chose which he wants to respond to and by the time that sub-thread is sick and dying with no resolution, there are several more for MacM to chose from. Great if your object is to keep the thread alive for as long as MacM is willing to fight all of us by himself alone. In this regard, he is capable and shows no signs of growing tired. (He usually escapes into a new sub-thread ONLY after one or two good “counter-punch” posts with maybe a “duck or weave” into and out of a new sub-thread before returning to punch back again. You “got ta” at least admire his courage and tenacity.)
Some may think I am naive, inexperienced, etc. but I confesss: I think MacM is logical and thus persuadable. My objective is to force MacM to explain only one fact, WHICH HE ADMITS IS FACT, and which, IMHO, by its self ALONE can show MacM he is wrong, unless I am indeed naive, inexperienced, etc. If participants of this thread would stick to discussion of this one “admitted fact,” we might show MacM the error of his position, but as it is now, he is always able to turn to some new sub-thread (“duck and weave” as James put it) and escape. It is for this reason that I say the responsibility for this unending debate, which is going nowhere, is as much ours, as it is MacM’s.
I am referring to the trapped position MacM is now indefensibly in, about cosmic ray muons reaching the Earth’s surface. If we try to use the “full” or standard twin paradox (twins reunited after one has rapidly traveled most of his life) to argue against MacM, he can justifiably accuse us of circular logic, because he does not accept (as established fact) that the astronaut twin is indeed biologically younger than his brother, when they reunite. If we are honest, we must admit that any argument we can make, base on the untested “fact” that the astronaut twin is younger, would be circular, no mater how firmly we believe SR’s PREDICTION that the astronaut twin would be younger; however in the muon example or “half paradox” we have MacM trapped and can “beat the truth” into him, because he admits that the muons do reach the Earth even though their life time is much too short for many to travel to the ground if they are formed from primary cosmic ray interactions in the high atmosphere.
I have not gotten MacM to formally agree (in a post) that these cosmic ray shower muons are born in the “high atmosphere,” from a single primary, but I am sure he respects himself and year of scientific balloon measurements too much to argue that this part of our argument is false. Also he probably knows about results from large detector arrays, placed at different altitudes, that clearly show that their expanding distribution horizontally, in (X, Y) space, as vertically (Z) altitude decreases is consist only with them being produced by one primary particle, “high in the atmosphere.” (I won’t mention the fact that they are also observed to occur “simultaneously” over this expanding “cone” which is often many square kilometers at sea level, because “simultaneously” is too dangerous a word to use here.)
The muon “half paradox” has several other advantages over the “full paradox” in addition the fact that MacM does not dispute the observed facts:
1) Many muons, perhaps the typical muon - I don’t know, but even if true for only one muon, that one can still be used for “beating up on MacM,” have ZERO ACCELERATION until they hit the ground detector, which can easily record when that event occurred (at Te, where “e” is for “at Earth”) The full paradox is always more complex by at least two acceleration periods which technically removes it from the reach of SR theory. Muons are not “born and then accelerated later.” – They are “born traveling fast.”
Trust me MacM, I am helping you again! All this “beating up on you” is “for your own good.” You are a SINNER of the WORST KIND. If you were just violating a physical law or two, I could look the other way, but you are trying to BREAK a sacred law of physics. One of god Einstein’s own creation. You must be punished for the good of your soul. Someday you will thank me, I know it. Until then, I will devote my best efforts to showing you the light (& clocks with conflicting times). I have the truth and I know it. It has set me free – no slave to universal time am I. I can run on my own schedule! I want the same for you. Trust me MacM. You too can be a true believer. God Einstein will give you the faith, if you will just confess the error of your ways now, before it is too late and this thread dies. (No offense intended to any who hold strong religious views – just trying to lighten things up a little.)
2) All significant events take place in the same reference frame, Earth, and both sides can agree that a clock, supported in a high-altitude stationary balloon, can be synchronized with one on the ground .
Ring .... Ring
Excuse me while I get the phone. Hello, ... yes? .... Great. Thanks for the other offer, but not just now.
That was MacM, offering to synchronize non-accelerating clocks ANYWHERE regardless of their relative motion. What a kind guy he is! Let’s take back all the unkind things we have said about him. I think there is hope for him. If all work together in a focused effort, we can convert him.
3) MacM Admits muon time-of-flight descending to Earth is much greater than muon half life so that...
You Got Mail / Message from Edufer:
SUBJECT: Cerinkov radiation observed from muons descending in Argentina’s light-less Patagônia
TEXT: Muon Cerinkov proves Point 1 false. End of Msg. STOP
Ok Edufer, I admit it, but the acceleration is very small compaired that the astronaut twin experienced, so I still think this “half a parodox” is better than none, or the whole one.
Excuse this interruption. Now getting back to my points:
4) MacM has cancelled his quick mystic explanation (Space energy, which is part of time itself, and /or atmospheric shock effects mess up the decay process, not these exact words, - MacM used a few paragraphs in his post, which I admit I did not understand, but it was something like this, when condensed.) of why muons get to Earth surface despite UT’s clear prediction that they can not, unless the half-life tables are different for each reference frame. - MacM will not use this escape. He has his dignity and he knows half lives measured in the spring are the same as those measured in the fall, when the Earth / sun system is moving in a different reference frame. MacM now admits that he does not have any “absolute explanation.”
If this thread would stay focused on this muon paradox, it would not be long before MacM removes the word “absolute.” Once MacM admits that UT and muon observations are mutual incompatible, MacM’s logical, knowledgeable, mental structure, will not long tolerate a belief in UT when facts he has admitted contradict it. MacM knows SR is supported by many observations and has no known experimental contradictions. MacM values more highly experimental observations than any thought experiment, even one he has originated. As I said to MacM, “trust me on this.”
Thus my “Plea to Participants” is: Offer no new sub-threads. Don’t respond to any MacM creates. Try to knock down any “reconciliation /explanation” MacM may offer to remove the incompatibility between Universe Time and the muon observational facts he accepts, and above all never attack MacM, only attack his idea /support for UT. I am convinced MacM has a great deal of merit, is usually correct, and just happens to wrong on this UT view, perhaps because of “parental pride” in his monitor clock scheme, which for me and I think for “just-send-10” James R, (unless he has changed his view in a post I did not read), is not telling B any real in information about the rate of any physical process at the other location (A).
MacM if I wanted to a local “monitor clock” run at the rate of some moving clock, whose speed I knew by any means, I would just use SR’s predictions and control it that way. Thus, if I built a clock to monitor the passage of time in a frame which is co-traveling to Earth with the muons, my only problem would be to know if it is still running or not, because its “one per second ticking” would occur so infrequently. I would clearly understand why the muons survive to reach the Earth surface. A follower of the UT theory never will, trust me on this.
Despite all this and the unavoidable appearance of arrogance, I am going to help MacM by now giving some unsolicited advice to others who are also attacking his view (and unfortunately also him, at times). MacM may not like my “help,” but that is a risk I’ll take.
In a way MacM probably disliked, I have already “helped” him. Both James R and I recently made predictions about what MacM would do next. I predicted what MacM’s response would be to a very focused request from James, by actually writing what I thought he would write, before he had time to make his reply, and posting it. James predicted that MacM would “duck and weave.” Both of us can claim to have been right, at least in part.
MacM did deny that the returning astronaut twin would have the same biological age as his Earth-bound brother, just as I predicted, but in the version I wrote of “MacM’s response” there was a strong counter attack that clearly showed James R’s argument for a difference in the twin’s biological age was based on circular logic. My “psuedoMacM” concluded something like: “I’ll believe the astronaut is biologically younger when I see it – not because of James R’s faith in SR, which I have X times proven false, predicts it.”
James R’s prediction also, at least appears to have been correct as MacM is now, after his two line denial of astronaut twin’s relative youth, off talking about some defects in some clock test of SR but, (and here is where I start to help MacM) I think this is at least equally the fault of the other participants in this thread! (Skip next paragraph if you want to go directly to why I think this.)
James and I firmly believe SR’s prediction of the youthful biological state of the astronaut twin is a fact, even if it has never been directly tested, but we can not use this unconfirmed “fact,” which MacM disputes, as the basis of our argument to “prove” he is wrong. (SR = fact; SR predicts youth; therefore MacM is wrong because SR is fact.) That is circular logic. Generally speaking, MacM is quite logical, and his position REQUIERS that he deny the astronaut’s relative youth; thus I was sure he would deny the astronaut’s relative youth, but based on his past performance, I expected more from MacM. Thus, I included this strong counter attack (Your argument is circular!) as part of my prediction and in this I was wrong. - MacM you let me down by only quickly denying the astronaut’s youth, but I understand it is 1 against M, where M>>1 and that keeps you very busy, which brings me to the main point of this post:
This thread keeps going off on tangents. There are too many sub-threads. MacM can pick and chose which he wants to respond to and by the time that sub-thread is sick and dying with no resolution, there are several more for MacM to chose from. Great if your object is to keep the thread alive for as long as MacM is willing to fight all of us by himself alone. In this regard, he is capable and shows no signs of growing tired. (He usually escapes into a new sub-thread ONLY after one or two good “counter-punch” posts with maybe a “duck or weave” into and out of a new sub-thread before returning to punch back again. You “got ta” at least admire his courage and tenacity.)
Some may think I am naive, inexperienced, etc. but I confesss: I think MacM is logical and thus persuadable. My objective is to force MacM to explain only one fact, WHICH HE ADMITS IS FACT, and which, IMHO, by its self ALONE can show MacM he is wrong, unless I am indeed naive, inexperienced, etc. If participants of this thread would stick to discussion of this one “admitted fact,” we might show MacM the error of his position, but as it is now, he is always able to turn to some new sub-thread (“duck and weave” as James put it) and escape. It is for this reason that I say the responsibility for this unending debate, which is going nowhere, is as much ours, as it is MacM’s.
I am referring to the trapped position MacM is now indefensibly in, about cosmic ray muons reaching the Earth’s surface. If we try to use the “full” or standard twin paradox (twins reunited after one has rapidly traveled most of his life) to argue against MacM, he can justifiably accuse us of circular logic, because he does not accept (as established fact) that the astronaut twin is indeed biologically younger than his brother, when they reunite. If we are honest, we must admit that any argument we can make, base on the untested “fact” that the astronaut twin is younger, would be circular, no mater how firmly we believe SR’s PREDICTION that the astronaut twin would be younger; however in the muon example or “half paradox” we have MacM trapped and can “beat the truth” into him, because he admits that the muons do reach the Earth even though their life time is much too short for many to travel to the ground if they are formed from primary cosmic ray interactions in the high atmosphere.
I have not gotten MacM to formally agree (in a post) that these cosmic ray shower muons are born in the “high atmosphere,” from a single primary, but I am sure he respects himself and year of scientific balloon measurements too much to argue that this part of our argument is false. Also he probably knows about results from large detector arrays, placed at different altitudes, that clearly show that their expanding distribution horizontally, in (X, Y) space, as vertically (Z) altitude decreases is consist only with them being produced by one primary particle, “high in the atmosphere.” (I won’t mention the fact that they are also observed to occur “simultaneously” over this expanding “cone” which is often many square kilometers at sea level, because “simultaneously” is too dangerous a word to use here.)
The muon “half paradox” has several other advantages over the “full paradox” in addition the fact that MacM does not dispute the observed facts:
1) Many muons, perhaps the typical muon - I don’t know, but even if true for only one muon, that one can still be used for “beating up on MacM,” have ZERO ACCELERATION until they hit the ground detector, which can easily record when that event occurred (at Te, where “e” is for “at Earth”) The full paradox is always more complex by at least two acceleration periods which technically removes it from the reach of SR theory. Muons are not “born and then accelerated later.” – They are “born traveling fast.”
Trust me MacM, I am helping you again! All this “beating up on you” is “for your own good.” You are a SINNER of the WORST KIND. If you were just violating a physical law or two, I could look the other way, but you are trying to BREAK a sacred law of physics. One of god Einstein’s own creation. You must be punished for the good of your soul. Someday you will thank me, I know it. Until then, I will devote my best efforts to showing you the light (& clocks with conflicting times). I have the truth and I know it. It has set me free – no slave to universal time am I. I can run on my own schedule! I want the same for you. Trust me MacM. You too can be a true believer. God Einstein will give you the faith, if you will just confess the error of your ways now, before it is too late and this thread dies. (No offense intended to any who hold strong religious views – just trying to lighten things up a little.)
2) All significant events take place in the same reference frame, Earth, and both sides can agree that a clock, supported in a high-altitude stationary balloon, can be synchronized with one on the ground .
Ring .... Ring
Excuse me while I get the phone. Hello, ... yes? .... Great. Thanks for the other offer, but not just now.
That was MacM, offering to synchronize non-accelerating clocks ANYWHERE regardless of their relative motion. What a kind guy he is! Let’s take back all the unkind things we have said about him. I think there is hope for him. If all work together in a focused effort, we can convert him.
3) MacM Admits muon time-of-flight descending to Earth is much greater than muon half life so that...
You Got Mail / Message from Edufer:
SUBJECT: Cerinkov radiation observed from muons descending in Argentina’s light-less Patagônia
TEXT: Muon Cerinkov proves Point 1 false. End of Msg. STOP
Ok Edufer, I admit it, but the acceleration is very small compaired that the astronaut twin experienced, so I still think this “half a parodox” is better than none, or the whole one.
Excuse this interruption. Now getting back to my points:
4) MacM has cancelled his quick mystic explanation (Space energy, which is part of time itself, and /or atmospheric shock effects mess up the decay process, not these exact words, - MacM used a few paragraphs in his post, which I admit I did not understand, but it was something like this, when condensed.) of why muons get to Earth surface despite UT’s clear prediction that they can not, unless the half-life tables are different for each reference frame. - MacM will not use this escape. He has his dignity and he knows half lives measured in the spring are the same as those measured in the fall, when the Earth / sun system is moving in a different reference frame. MacM now admits that he does not have any “absolute explanation.”
If this thread would stay focused on this muon paradox, it would not be long before MacM removes the word “absolute.” Once MacM admits that UT and muon observations are mutual incompatible, MacM’s logical, knowledgeable, mental structure, will not long tolerate a belief in UT when facts he has admitted contradict it. MacM knows SR is supported by many observations and has no known experimental contradictions. MacM values more highly experimental observations than any thought experiment, even one he has originated. As I said to MacM, “trust me on this.”
Thus my “Plea to Participants” is: Offer no new sub-threads. Don’t respond to any MacM creates. Try to knock down any “reconciliation /explanation” MacM may offer to remove the incompatibility between Universe Time and the muon observational facts he accepts, and above all never attack MacM, only attack his idea /support for UT. I am convinced MacM has a great deal of merit, is usually correct, and just happens to wrong on this UT view, perhaps because of “parental pride” in his monitor clock scheme, which for me and I think for “just-send-10” James R, (unless he has changed his view in a post I did not read), is not telling B any real in information about the rate of any physical process at the other location (A).
MacM if I wanted to a local “monitor clock” run at the rate of some moving clock, whose speed I knew by any means, I would just use SR’s predictions and control it that way. Thus, if I built a clock to monitor the passage of time in a frame which is co-traveling to Earth with the muons, my only problem would be to know if it is still running or not, because its “one per second ticking” would occur so infrequently. I would clearly understand why the muons survive to reach the Earth surface. A follower of the UT theory never will, trust me on this.
Just had to plug that in there); including the possibility that I am wrong. But your whole arguement is baseless and borders on being dishonest in absence of any evidence or suggestions that Mr Kelly is a fraud.