Relativity of Count – Spin Counter

You can’t imagine how refreshing it is for me to run across a real thinker.

It just so happens that I am writing a paper on that very subject (except concerning photon and electron spins). And you are right in that the dilation effect would calculate out to be far more complicated than a simple oval. But you don’t really have to calculate out the entire exact values. Every point on the wheel will be more contracted than it was as a circle. So even though it won’t be a symmetric oval, it will certainly be more narrow. There is no point on the wheel that has any impetus to be greater in diameter.

The center of the wheel would obviously be tracking the speed of the train. The top of the wheel would be twice the speed of the train, thus the top would contract even more. The end result is somewhat of an egg shape, still never as round at any point as the circle or the height in diameter.

And yes, time dilation in the direction of motion must bring the spin to a stop as any spinning object reaches light speed. Interestingly, the transverse spin does not change. And even more interestingly, what that means is that every atom in an object moving near the speed of light, will form a magnetic dipole and become a magnet. Even a block of wood, would develop a magnetic field and crush itself. The properties of materials completely alter at extreme speeds.

So the short answer is that the wheel must still seem to have a shorter circumference when it is traveling faster.

And I might add that from the train’s perspective, the wheel becomes a bit egg shaped too. The horizontal diameter remains the same, but the lower half gets larger as the upper half gets smaller. This forms a squashed egg shape. But the upper and lower halves, in effect, cancel each other’s circumference effect.

But great observation. :sunglasses:

It is definitely not the case that a block of wood moving at near the speed of light would crush itself if it were moving at near the speed of light. We already know this from our own experience because every block of wood that we have ever encountered is moving at near the speed of light relative to some object.

And yet you are the one making crazy, unsupported claims about blocks of wood that obviously violate our experience. And let’s not forget that while I took relativity at university not too long ago, you have admitted that you haven’t read anything on the subject (except wikipedia) fro 35 years.

This is the best argument against Special Relativity ever, by PK Dick.

The failure of the famous Michelson-Morley experiment in 1881, in which the absolute velocity of the Earth moving through luminiferous ether proved to be zero, gave rise to Einstein’s Relativity Theory, which holds that the concept “absolute velocity” is meaningless. However, scientists at UCLA, using more sophisticated laser techniques, have suggested a more probable significance of the null result: that in fact the Earth does not move and that Copernicus was a crypto-Pythagorean determined to vindicate an ancient and discredited heliocentric solar system model. In a meeting of Southern California astronomers and astrophysicists it was proposed that 1) the geocentric solar system be restored as the proper model, and 2) that Copernicus be dug up and admonished. As a side issue, Einstein will be regarded with mild disfavor and some amusement, but scientists attending the meeting could not agree on the amount of amusement to be formally proposed.

Since jonquil loves to be amused and never bored by stupid old facts, good science, and real history, this will now become her official view of the world in a most special and relative pre-Newtonian light as well since, as far as she knows, gravity is just a phantasm anyway. Thus, she advises all travelers to take extra precautions by wearing dragon-proof clothing and packing shoes with suction cups on the bottom when visiting the Antipodes. Furthermore, she plans to organize a bonfire of the pedantries where participants with their propeller beanies can clap and sing to the tune of Stars and Stripes Forever under red, white, and blue painted zeppelins floating in the smoke.

I think I’ve come to a conclusion about your refutation of S.R.

Essentially as the wheel is turning relative to the train, with a velocity of v at the circumference of the wheel, the entire wheel’s circumference contracts by an equal amount as viewed from the train: the wheel’s radius gets smaller, and is indeed proportional to the amount by which the track (as viewed from the train) gets shorter. The wheel still rotates 1000 times. Paradox resolved, case closed. Sorry.

How is this even possible? Are you saying that the rate at which an observer, motionless with respect to the track, measures the train to be travelling at, will differ from the rate at which an observer on the train will measure the ground to be speeding by? This is nonsense. Think of it like this:
On the roof of the train, there is a sodium light bulb. There is an equivalent bulb hanging over the tracks at the station. Also on the train is an observer with a spectroscope, and there is a second observer with an equivalent spectroscope at the station. As the train approaches the station, the observation of the light from the train’s bulb by the observer at the platform will show that the spectral lines of the sodium bulb have been blue-shifted, proportionally to the velocity of the train. The observer on the train will see an exactly equal blue-shifting of the light from the bulb at the station. This is obvious, and easily experimentally tested. There’s no need to measure lengths to calculate relative velocity; one can do it purely using this method. This avoids any question of whether the observer on the train can measure a different velocity because of the length or time dilation issues - it’s impossible. Plain and simple.

Oh you brought that up too soon in the thread. I would run across the one bright guy so soon. You have a good point (I think) that if a spinning ring dilates to an observer, it will appear to have a shorter circumference. I will have to calculate to see if it matches the track properly. I am just trying to come up with situations to bring out an error that I know is there already due to other issues. Perhaps this is insufficient.

Lorentz assumes the distance to dilate and then adjusts everything to match it. That forms a “consistent system of logic” that can possibly be perfect as long as it doesn’t ever violate anything else (no other assumption will be free in that nothing is independent of anything else, but you can use a single one as a base). I’ll have to give this some more thought. Thank you.

They each choose time and distance to measure velocity. If either chooses a different ratio between those, they WILL measure a different velocity. There is nothing magical about that. The track is seen as shorter by special relativity (distance). It seems far more magical to me to assume that they see the same track as a different length.

Lorentz assumes distance dilation
Saint assumes velocity dilation

The only question is which of those cannot fit the rest of reality without making even more non-intuitive assumptions, if either.

Such shifting is an issue of time and distance. The distance between the wave peaks determines the spectrum as time passes (frequency). The source of the light is proposed to be causing a faster cycle time due to its motion toward the station. But it also assumes the consistency of the speed of light travel to the observer (each peak). One assumption offsets the other. So even seeing the effect you mention, doesn’t resolve which of 2 possible variables is “right”.

Special relativity says the speed of light IS consistent (not merely observed to be).
Saint says the speed of light is not consistent, but will merely be observed to be.

It is an issue of two wrongs may not make a right, but lefts will. The question is who is really making the 3 lefts?

It is similar to Galileo and the Church concerning the Helical universe.

You keep talking about “other issues” whenever one of your threads falls apart and you are shown to be dead wrong on your premises. Eventually you will abandon this thread to for another one that you will promise will really bring out the central issues. Given your track record, it is unlikely you will succeed.

The Lorentz transformations are not simply a change in spatial length; they are also a change in time in two different ways. Regardless, if you can recover any of the phenomena predicted by SR with your “velocity dilation” it would be amazing. Let’s see your work.

Well, it is similar up to the point that the Church had power, whereas you don’t have any power to silence SR. Oh, wait, you think that you are Galileo. OK, then, the scenario is similar up to the point that Galileo had empirical evidence and you have absolutely none.

Well one thought has occurred to me;

If the wheel is a light circle (a photon circling at the speed of light), by Lorentz, its circumference distance doesn’t contract.

df = 1 / (1-(v/c)^2)^1/2

The train would be going at half the speed of light, but the diameter of the wheel must remain constant because the distance traveled by light must be constant to all observers.

The track would appear to be half as long as the station thought it to be, so the wheel would only report half the number of turns before the train got to the end.

An excellent thought though, but the math doesn’t work out - no Havana.

Back in the game. :mrgreen:

I am not the Church in the analogy, DW. Why don’t you wait for Carl to give you the right words to say.

Actually a light wheel spinner in the direction of travel can’t be used (is cheating). I originally had this scenario as a transverse spinner, not affected by axial line of motion. I thought I had lucked out with the idea of using a train wheel, but no such luck.

So, if you take the same scenario, but have the spinner spinning in the transverse direction to travel, the rest of the scenario is the same. The number of spins before the train gets to the end of the track is the question.

The station sees maybe 1000 spins in 10secs. The train, although time dilated in the direction of travel, sees the same rate of spin to any transverse spinning, 1000/10secs. But the train believes it takes less time to get to the end, perhaps 9 secs, thus the number of spins seen by the train has to be less; 900 spins.

Why don’t you actually use the Lorentz transformations to actually work out exactly how many times a transverse wheel will spin? Such a transverse wheel is simply another kind of clock, so it should be easy to work out. Then you don’t have to simply guess, like you are right now.

(Hint: right now, you have things somewhat backwards.)

Actually you could use light wheels for the scenario if you made the track out of a series of light wheels rather than a fixed rail. Or even if the rail itself was moving at a slower rate to allow for the train to not be exceeding the speed of light.

And Phys, read a book. Lorentz doesn’t deal with transverse motion.

And then yet a fourth way is to have a reflective optic ring mounted on top of the train where both station and train could count the spins of the photons around the ring.

The train, seeing no change in the ring and taking only 9 seconds to make the journey, would count a certain number of spins. But the station, seeing the ring as a dilated oval would see the distance for the photon travel to be less and thus yield more spins. And in addition, the station reads that it took the train 10 seconds to make the journey and thus not only is the path of the photons shorter, but the time allotted is longer and thus reads considerably more spin counts.

And a fifth way is to have the station with a separate photon ring of its own. The station counts a certain number of spins in 10 seconds while the train, reading its own identical spin counter counts less in the 9 seconds the journey takes (transverse or not).

How many ways do we have to prove that it isn’t the Lorentz distance that is changing.

Yet another way ( #6) provided by MrMermaid;

Using an absolute frame of reference, the following diagram displays the effects of spectrum shifting.

Spin - Absolute Blue Shift.jpg

In this diagram, the top wave is presumed to be the actual, “absolute frame”, frequency of a light source. A train station, S uses that same type of source to produce a light wave, but it is moving fast enough to cause the light headed toward the absolute frame to be at twice the frequency as measured by that frame, it is “blue shifted”. But also the light leaving the station in the other direction is red shifted to one half the frequency.

A railcar on a train is moving twice as fast toward the absolute frame as the station and thus produces a frequency of 4 times what the absolute frame would have produced, “ultra blue-shifted”.

As the railcar views the light coming from the station, it sees that light through 2 types of filtering, Doppler shifting (D) and Time dilation (T). The effect of the Doppler shift due to the train approaching the station is that the frequency of the light is increased to what the absolute frame would have produced. But the effect of the Time shift due to the train approaching the station would also increase the frequency because the train’s time is running slower, thus blue shifted.

From the station’s perspective seeing the light coming from the train, there are also the two filters but the Time shift for the station is zero relative to the train’s motion toward it. This could also be expressed in terms of the absolute frame wherein both were time shifted, the train twice as much due to going at twice the speed.

But even though the Time shifting doesn’t affect the light seen from the train, there is still a Doppler effect due to the motion difference. The railcar is producing a frequency 4 times absolute, but the station is moving away from the source even though not enough to outrun the train. Thus the Doppler effect is to reduce the frequency from its 4 times to merely a 2 times, thus blue shifted.

Thus without any length dilation involved but merely an absolute frame, the station and the train will perceive the same blue shift.

But if we allow the train to experience length dilation effects, we must add that additional filter (L). Due to any length dilation perceived by the railcar, the wave peaks coming toward it must be perceived as shorter, increasing the frequency again.

Thus if the train and the station see the same degree of blue shifting, there cannot be length dilation occurring on the train.

Just use an electron. We create an electron out of light via pair production, the electron has spin angular momentum, and the Einstein de-Haas effect tells us this spin is real.

So what’s going round and round? Light. It’s just a circular version of the back-and-forth motion in the simple inference of time dilation.

So you’ve got light going round and round at the speed of light in a circular path. Then when you move the train the light path is helical. If you move the train at c the light can’t be going round and round any more.

Special relativity is dead simple once it clicks. And the evidence is there in pair production and annihilation, electron spin, magnetic dipole moment, etc.

Yeah, I almost mentioned it as an electron. But I don’t think anyone is arguing against the idea of light spinning in a circle.

Btw, when an electron gets going really fast, it still has spin, but not much in the direction of travel. It forms a magnetic dipole in the direction of travel.

But you would have to tel us how these “light wheels” would work. Is something rotating in order to send out light in different directions? Photons don’t simply turn for no reason.

What Lorentz might have dealt with is irrelevant because he did not actually have all of the transformations that today bear his name and he did not develop the theory of relativity. However, the Lorentz transformations deals with timing. You are claiming that we will see some difference in timing.

But let’s accept that what you say about the Lorentz transformations. If it is true that the Lorentz transformations do not effect your peculiar wheel, then what is your motivation for claiming that in SR one frame will have less spins than in another frame? If the Lorentz transformations don’t apply, then what is your basis for your guess about the difference? Are you simply making guesses without any foundation?

As always, because you have never actually had to work all the way through a problem in SR, you don’t see the fundamental problems in your scenarios. You quit every one of your SR threads when somebody finally shows one of your fundamental mistakes. Learning to actually complete a basic problem from an SR textbook would aid you immensely.

If the reflector actually made only 9 spins in the train frame, then it would only make 9 spins in any other frame. Any other frame would see that the reflector spun more slowly that the train frame measured. This is basic SR.

This is again simply vanilla SR, no paradox at all. Clocks operate differently at different speeds.

Why should we use an absolute reference frame? Again, if you are trying to prove relativity to be wrong or paradoxical, you have to prove this using the actual theory. SR rejects that there are absolute reference frames.

According to the train, the station’s time is running slower. Thus according to your logic, the light from the train should be red shifted.

Regardless, let’s see you work out the actual calculations of how much blue or red shifting there is in any frame. If you want to actually say something about SR, then let’s see you demonstrate how SR actually treats this situation.

You actually have to use the Lorentz transformations to prove anything relevant. Yet when challenged to do so, you clammed up and claimed that they do not apply. This is similar to the deceptive behaviour you used in another thread here, where your point was trashed very badly by multiple posters and you then claimed that you meant something different from your original post (though evidence at other message boards proves otherwise). So either provide an example that uses the Lorentz transformations to derive some difference between frames (the only way that SR ever derives a difference between frames) or move along.

Phys, learn SR yourself. You have displayed many times how little you know while demeaning anyone else. Do you ever say ANYthing that isn’t BS?

I haven’t “just quit” any thread. Since you and Carl were stuck on Lorentz in the Stopped Clock paradox, I went ahead and deposed Lorentz in this thread as a separate issue. In that thread, Lorentz isn’t really the issue. The paradox is in SR without Lorentz. SR and Lorentz are different things. If you use Lorentz to defend SR, you merely use a false presumption to try to escape the paradox.

In this thread, I have used Lorentz only to display how Lorentz equations force an error and different paradox. In this thread, I accept time dilation and show how you cannot accept length dilation. Lorentz assumes both. Thus the Lorentz equations not only are in question, but have actually been completely debunked and cannot be used in that other paradox thread to defend SR. If an answer to this thread scenario cannot be given to repose Lorentz, I will return to the Stopped Clock Paradox and ask for any takers, but Lorentz will obviously not be allowed as a defense any more than someone saying, “Well, God can do anything, so…”.

You admitted that what you had declared as a paradox in that thread was not a paradox. In this thread, while you have invoked the name of Lorentz, you haven’t ever actually used the Lorentz transformations. People who do SR don’t really care about Lorentz, since he didn’t really develop the equations that bear his name into what we call SR today. So far, you are doing a really, really bad job of supposedly continuing the thread that you actually quit.

Without actually using these equations.

Without actually showing any work but by making lots of guesses.

If you are so sure that there is a problem, why not actually show us with the actual Lorentz transformations? I know that in the past, every time that you have tried to rigorously approach this subject you have been shown to be dismally incorrect, but maybe this time will be different.

Don’t feed the troll, James. He’s just trying to spoil the thread and deter readers and contributors.

The length contraction isn’t as bad as you think. It’s an observer effect rather than something real - we know this because a star a billion miles away doesn’t flatten to a disc just because you accelerated your gedanken spaceship. As to how it works, imagine that you’re a circle of light. When you move fast one point on the perimeter of that circle traces out a helical path. When you then look at all points and integrate, the circle is “smeared out” into a cylinder. You are this cylinder, but you don’t see yourself as such. You still see yourself as a circle. There’s a scale-change here, you see everything else as length-contracted, because you’re smeared out. So if I’m another circle, I look flattened. And of course you can assert that it’s me moving not you. Then it’s me who’s smeared out, and it’s you who looks flattened to me. Symmetry.

Yeah, I know. I had him on ignore, but even bratty kids say something relevant on extremely rare occasions, so on this new thread, I gave him a chance (again). But guess what. [-(

Well to sane people, that is obviously true. But the Lorentz equations used to form the Loedel diagrams are taken as “reality”. Lorentz presumes a “real” velocity and a time dilation (which is real) thus an relative unreal length.

A transverse spin counter, especially optic, requires that either the time dilation be corrected so as to match “reality” and leave the lengths alone, or we have to accept “relativity of count”. Pick your poison. GPS systems correct for time dilation by tracking accelerations (and thus do not use length dilation nor Lorentz).