Relativity of Count – Spin Counter

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).

So that everyone else is clear then: Jimmy is claiming that, although he is making claims about the Lorentz transformations, it is not relevant for him to actually support these claims with the actual use of these equations.

Every scientific publication on these systems disagrees.

Yep, people are forever taking mathematical abstraction as reality. I’ve even had 'em swear blind that a star “really” length-contracts into a discoid when you accelerate towards it.

I go for relativity of count. Then it’s quite easy to resolve the pole-and-the-barn length contraction paradox. All you have to do is understand that what you measure is affected by your own motion.

As you’ve no doubt been told many times, nobody has ever told you this. You are either grossly mistaken about this despite multiple corrections or you are simply lying about this point. At best you are doing a straw man argument, because it is not the case in relativity theory that one’s acceleration causes a star to become oblate. According to relativity theory, the star is already oblate in an infinite number of frames of reference. All acceleration does is change the the frame of reference that we use to describe an object.

Haha… and if we close our eyes, they no longer exist at all. “Reality is only perception” (straight from the Quantum Magi). :unamused:

And I rewrote the OP with a simpler explanation and corrected the use of an inline material spinner.

These claims about a “transverse spin counter” are pure fantasy. Presumably these things spin a number of times dependant on the time in their rest frame, which is different than the time in other frames.

Again, despite all these claims that Jimmy makes, he never actually uses the Lorentz transformations he claims to be criticizing.

Okay PhysPot, so you want to take the challenge…

You say that the Lorentz equations will show the solution to this problem. So let’s see it. Do DO know the Lorentz transformations, right? Carleas showed them to you. You should be able to find them again. So find the transformations and “plug and play”. Be sure to show your work.

But DO try to be more careful this time. The last time you tried to use equations was a bit embarrassing.

Why should I be the one doing your work for you? You are the one who is trying to actually criticize SR.

And as to my ability with the equations, anyone can see that for themselves here: viewtopic.php?f=4&t=172642&start=250#p2163463

One can also find in that thread 1) your bizarre idea that the Lorentz transformations somehow use a floating centre of frame value for “x” rather than an actual coordinate value, 2) your surrender in that thread that you were using the equations incorrectly, and 3) your claim that you would be dealing with the equations of the Lorentz transformations in this thread. That last claim of yours is an obvious lie, since you haven’t actually done anything with the equations in this thread. This is similar to your lie that you would put me on ignore. As you are incapable of actually addressing any of the questions about the science I bring up, it may be better for you to not read what I have to say. You can then blather on in ignorance and I can give warnings out to those who might be interested in the science.