speed of light

speed of light

Science

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Walk your Faith

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30 Jun 08

Originally posted by MattP
Kelly,

The time has been measured with many different clocks which work in different ways and all results are consistent.

Also, as I mentioned before, time is not the only parameter which has been measured to confirm time dilation. Distance has also been measured (of particles traveling before they decay) and the results are consistent with the time res ...[text shortened]... ay be wrong you may know a lot about the subject - but you refuse to tell me what you know)
So what, they all work the different ways doing the same thing, and
under a certain stress something is being changed, and you assume
it is not the physical makeup of the devices we are using, but time
itself. That is the part I don’t see you or anyone else making a case
for, why is it that we know we can alter frequencies, slow down
mechanical mechanisms, and so on, those things can occur, but we
just assume those types of mechanisms are constant and true under
those conditions and time itself is being changed? We are assuming
there is some type of time warp thing going on and not something
that truly affects all things in our physical universe that we use to
measure time the same way, and that time itself is not a constant.
Kelly

AH

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30 Jun 08

Originally posted by KellyJay
Well, yes, if the clocks are stressed and that stress changes the
timing of the clock, does that mean time changed or the clock?

You can observe me altering the clock so only your observance
matters here, not the results of the clock being altered? Come on
what is it you are not seeing, what is constant here time, or the
clock? We know clocks can be ...[text shortened]... another to keep running, did I stop time, or the clock?
I'll wait for your answer.
Kelly
“…Okay, so my question is, why is it assumed time changed and not
the clock? We know I can alter a clock, heck I can stop a clock in one
room and allow another to keep running, did I stop time, or the clock?
I'll wait for your answer”


The answer is you stopped the clock -and I can observe you doing so -so that I would know it is you stopping the clock and not the event of “time stopping” (if such a thing is possible). But if many different clocks are exposed to a huge variety of very different conditions (so the “experimental stresses” each clock is exposed to is different!) consistently slowed down in a certain kind of experiment and I cannot observed you or anyone or anything else altering the clocks and there is no alternative rational explanation for these observations other than time is slowing down in the clocks frame of reference, then I would conclude that time is slowing down in the clocks frame of reference. This would be the “simplest” hypothesis because it wouldn’t assume the existence of a mysterious “something” that I cannot observe and yet that “something” alters the clocks and I don’t even have any explanation for what kind of thing that “something“ is!

However, having said all that, all your questions here are made completely redundant by what I pointed out in the last post that starts with the words:

“Wait! I have it!…”

If you just read it you see that the evidence observed for time dilation in the form of observing the wobble in Mercury’s orbit and this does not require any clocks nor any instrument that is put under “experimental stress”. Please read it all very carefully because this proves all your arguments to be redundant because, as far as I can see, all your arguments rely on some sort of supposed “experimental stress” that alters the readings of the instruments. The only instruments that are required here are telescopes and people simply look through them. How would people looking through them cause “experimental stress” on the telescopes?
I'll wait for your answer.

M

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30 Jun 08

Originally posted by KellyJay
So what, they all work the different ways [b]doing the same thing, and
under a certain stress something is being changed, and you assume
it is not the physical makeup of the devices we are using, but time
itself. That is the part I don’t see you or anyone else making a case
for, why is it that we know we can alter frequencies, slow down
mechanical ...[text shortened]... iverse that we use to
measure time the same way, and that time itself is not a constant.
Kelly[/b]
Are you intentionally ignoring what I say or are you just very slow?

I also said they have measured distance as well as time to confirm it. Also, the different clocks don't all work in the same way - so you have shown your ignorance there. There are atomic clocks which use the oscillations of nuclei as well as mechanical ones, to name just two kinds.

All physical and equipment variables have been ruled out.

Once again I repeat myself, you are correct to question the results and to wonder if time is actually changing - however, this as already been done and other effects have been ruled out.

You clearly do not understand - if you want I can try and explain how logic and reason work to you?

Also, you ONCE AGAIN ignored my request to explain what you understand about time dilation and relativity etc. Will you please do so - unless of course you dont actually know anything about it and you have no understanding at all about the subject - which seems the case

Walk your Faith

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Originally posted by Andrew Hamilton
[b]“…Okay, so my question is, why is it assumed time changed and not
the clock? We know I can alter a clock, heck I can stop a clock in one
room and allow another to keep running, did I stop time, or the clock?
I'll wait for your answer”


The answer is you stopped the clock -and I can observe you doing so -so that I would know it i ...[text shortened]... ooking through them cause “experimental stress” on the telescopes?
I'll wait for your answer.[/b]
The answer is I stopped the clock, yes! I can slow them down too,
and does my doing so slow down time? If that too is a no answer my
slowing down a clock does not slow down time, why should a stress
be credited with that if all it does is slow down, speed up, or stop
a clock?
Kelly

Walk your Faith

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3 edits

Originally posted by MattP
Are you intentionally ignoring what I say or are you just very slow?

I also said they have measured distance as well as time to confirm it. Also, the different clocks don't all work in the same way - so you have shown your ignorance there. There are atomic clocks which use the oscillations of nuclei as well as mechanical ones, to name just two kinds.

A ...[text shortened]... hing about it and you have no understanding at all about the subject - which seems the case
[/b]
I choose to ignore you now because you ask questions like I am slow.
Thank you very much.
Kelly

Walk your Faith

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1 edit

Originally posted by Andrew Hamilton
Wait! I have it! Of course! I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before! You don’t need clocks to observe time dilation effects! I remember this from an university physics course I did:

The elliptical path of mercury has long been observed to ‘wobble’ and, before relativity, this ’wobble’ was a totally unexplained scientific mystery. But it is no ...[text shortened]... ry’s orbit wobbles but with no actual physical wobble ?

Do you still disagree with me now? 🙂
You are telling me you seeing a planet wobble shows time can be
altered by looking at the wobble? Cool, well that clears that up.
Kelly

🙂

M

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2 edits

Originally posted by KellyJay
I choose to ignore you now because you ask questions like I am slow.
Thank you very much.
Kelly
Kelly, sorry if I sounded blunt, but please allow me to explain and justify my last remarks.

You simply refuse to acknowledge evidence which has been tested for the things you suggest. I commented that you were correct to ask these questions, but that they have already been accounted for - then I gave examples showing how they have been taken into account and ruled out.

You then simply repeated yourself, refusing to take on board what I had said. So you can see why this frustrates me.

You maintain that there is "some unknown factor that is changing the results - it may not be time that is changing, this factor in the material or physical properties of the materials may be being changed". If this is true then all of the equipment using a host of different methods, which measure different things in different ways, must all have been effected in a way which somehow caused all the results from the varied and different experiments to consistently show that time and space are deviating by the same amount in the same way! This is nonsense, it shows that you clearly do not understand what you are talking about.

I would also like to point out that time and space changing has not been plucked out of thin air to explain odd measurements - time dilation and lorentze contraction are predicted in the Theory of Relativity. They are an obvious consequence of the speed of light in the vacuum being constant in any frame of reference - they fall out of the mathematics somewhat beautifully. And they have been confirmed by observations.

Your stubborn and unjustified view is silly, you may as well be standing on a hill and shouting that the Earth is flat. So now do you understand why I was blunt, it was not to be horrible or ridicule you, it was out of frustration that you have not show yourself capable of using reason and logic, or at least applying it to this situation.

I have also offered to help you by educating you in the matter - but you refuse to tell me what you know on the subject. I find it suspicious that you have refused several requests to write a short post outlining what you know and how you understand relativity to work - it seems like you simply do not know and are in no position to discuss it due to your ignorance on the matter.

Please prove me wrong, by posting what you do know and showing me, and others here, that you are educated in this matter and you do understand the concepts and basic outline of the matter.

I invite you to do this - and until you do I suggest that people ignore your input as, at the moment, it looks like you do not know what you are talking about. This is not meant as an insult, it is pointing out a fact that your current posts support.

edit: In summary - I am very frustrated. I have listened to what you have said and posted to explain why there is not some unknown factor. I responded to your point in a reasonable way, explaining to you why it was incorrect - but pointing out that it was valid. You then ignored my response and simply repeated your original point. I have taken what you said seriously and responded to it - you have not done the same for me.

AH

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01 Jul 08
1 edit

Originally posted by KellyJay
You are telling me you seeing a planet wobble shows time can be
altered by looking at the wobble? Cool, well that clears that up.
Kelly

🙂
…You are telling me you seeing a planet wobble shows time can be
altered by looking at the wobble? …


No! I implied the exact opposite. I now suspect that you maybe either ignoring or pretending not to understand what I said. I ask do you do YOU belief that? If you don’t believe that, then logic determines that the only inescapable conclusion you can reach is that the observed wobble in the planet’s orbit is proof that time dilation effects exist -there is no way around that. I have sometimes been proven wrong about something in the past but, ever since I was a child, I always responded by admitting I was wrong and then going on from there. I hope you are capable of doing the same. 🙂

S

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01 Jul 08

KellyJay forget all about measuring time dilation and lorenze contraction and just focus on this argument: light (in a vacuum) travels at the same speed relative to any frame of reference. This has been proven to be correct (michelson-moreley IIRC). Do you accept this or do you dispute this aswell? If you agree with everyone that light traveels at a constant speed relative to any observer you must also accept that time is slowed down by moving faster and objects are shortened when moving faster. High school math is enough to derive the time dilitation formula from a constant speed of light. (atleast we did this in high school)

Walk your Faith

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Originally posted by Scyhte
KellyJay forget all about measuring time dilation and lorenze contraction and just focus on this argument: light (in a vacuum) travels at the same speed relative to any frame of reference. This has been proven to be correct (michelson-moreley IIRC). Do you accept this or do you dispute this aswell? If you agree with everyone that light traveels at a constant ...[text shortened]... the time dilitation formula from a constant speed of light. (atleast we did this in high school)
You believe time travels at various speeds? I accept light as near as
we can tell travels at the same speed with how we can test it.
Kelly

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01 Jul 08

Originally posted by KellyJay
You believe time travels at various speeds? I accept light as near as
we can tell travels at the same speed with how we can test it.
Kelly
You don't believe any about Einstein and relativity, don't you?

S

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1 edit

Originally posted by KellyJay
You believe time travels at various speeds? I accept light as near as
we can tell travels at the same speed with how we can test it.
Kelly
First: answer me this question: Do you accept that the speed of light is constant relative to any frame of reference? I don't want to read between the lines that you don't believe anything as truth or any other philosophical mumbo jumbo, that's a discussion for another thread. Just simply say yes or no. Even a "I don't believe anything can be known for certain" will do as it will render all further discussion worthless

Second: I don't believe "time" travels at various speeds, you have a bit wrong. *We* travel through time. Time is a dimension just like the 3 ones we move through every day. Thus it is very much possible to move in that dimension at different speeds. That's what I believe and what I've been taught.

Disclaimer: I am a high school student so my opinions are very likely to be a bit inaccurate. Please correct me where necessary.

AH

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02 Jul 08
1 edit

Originally posted by KellyJay
You believe time travels at various speeds? I accept light as near as
we can tell travels at the same speed with how we can test it.
Kelly
“You believe time travels at various speeds? …”

1, Time doesn’t “travel”! -and he didn’t say it did! Do you believe time “travels”?
If time “travels” then exactly what kind of medium or substance or kind of thing does time “travel” through?

”…I accept light as near as we can tell travels at the same speed with how we can test it.”

2, Just in case you didn’t already know this:

To be more specific, light travels at the same speed for ALL observers regardless of the frame of reference. If I am moving towards a source of light and then measure the speed of light that is coming at me from that source, I would observe its measured speed to be identical to the speed of light that I would observe from it if I was stationary relative to that light source! In other words, the observed speed of light is not the speed of light that I would observe if I was stationary relative to the source of light PLUS any relative speed I have relative to that light source; -it would be simply the speed of light that I would observe if I was stationary relative to the source of light! My relative speed will make no difference to the observed speed of that light! Observations confirm that if you move towards a light source, the observed speed of light from that light source doesn’t change.

M

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1 edit

Originally posted by KellyJay
You believe time travels at various speeds? I accept light as near as
we can tell travels at the same speed with how we can test it.
Kelly
Kelly,

This is a long post, but please read it and think about it.

Reading this post by you (quoted) I think I have come to the bottom of why you hold the ideas that you do.

Correct me if I am wrong.

You hold the view that you accept that light has been observed to travel at a constant speed regardless of relative motion between the observer and the light source. However, you still think that there may be something else happening that we cannot detect and dont know about.
So you think that all results can never be confirmed we can only say things like: "As far as we can tell....." etc...

Do you not realize that if we develop better methods of measurement we will still observe time to be changing but will know how it varies with greater understanding.

The "rate of time" does depend on relative motion - that is confirmed. But if we build better clocks etc we can measure the difference of rates to a higher accuracy - but we will never not observed rate changing.

An example of this is Newtonian mechanics, at the accuracy to which Newton could measure things his laws work perfectly. We can now measure more things and measure things with more accuracy and we have seen that his laws were not entirely correct and have made adjustments (Theory of Relativity). In the future we may discover more things we can not currently observe and may need to adjust our theories again - but the adjustments will only take effect for the new level of accuracy - are current laws will hold just fine for all we have observed at the moment

Just as the difference between Newtonian mechanics and Relativistic mechanics is negligible under most conditions.

Consider the current debate amongst physicists about the existence of Dark Matter. A group of researchers claims it has observed dark matter by using Earths orbit to measure incoming radiation with the Earth traveling in different directions. The group have observed a seasonal pattern to the levels of this radiation and claim it is due to dark matter (I wont go into the details as to why etc..). Other scientists dispute this claim, they agree that a seasonal variation has been observed, but they say it could be down to a whole range of other factors besides dark matter. So the debate continues as new data is acquired and more tests are carried out. Eventually the possible other factors will either be ruled out or one will be confirmed as the actually reason for the variation and the claim that dark matter has been observed will be proved correct of incorrect.

So, as I have said before, you are correct to question if other things are happening which effect results - but this has been done for Time Dilation and all other factors have been ruled out.

Why can you not understand this?

edit: Also, all measurements in science are accompanied with the associated errors, so the possible margin of error is taken into account. These errors can be due to equipment limitations (finite accuracy of measurements) or some limitation due to the method of acquiring data. The error margins are as important as the actually results, as it is impossible to see trends or patterns in data reliably unless you know what the possible range of values for each result could be. My point is that error margins are published, so scientist do say things like "we have found parameter 1 to have the value of X +/- Y, where Y is the possible error margin. No scientist says that they have a result completely correct as that is impossible. In short - your concerns about "...... is correct as far as we can test it" are taken into account.

M

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02 Jul 08

I would also like to draw people's attention to the fact that Kelly still has not posted a short summary of his understanding of Relativity, despite repeated requests.