Relativity of Count – Spin Counter

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.

I showed my logic, son. If you think you know better, show it. Now it’s your turn.

Put up or shut up.

I don’t lie, I’m not “grossly mistaken”, and this is no straw man. Take a look at our earlier discussion

You said: Do you doubt that stars are not flattened in reference frames in which these stars are in motion?
I said: A star appears to be flattened to observers in relative motion with respect to that star. But it isn’t real, as the orthogonal observers will agree.

Now please, don’t assert “according to relativity theory” to me. What you present as relativity is ersatz, and bears no resembles to Einstein’s equations of motion. Those frames of reference have no actual existence. You cannot look up to the sky and point one out. They are artefacts of measurement, and your practical choice of frame will depend upon your motion. We ignore the rotational motion of the earth in our everyday lives, and so we plot latitude and longitude. But we don’t ignore it in the Shuttle. In the Shuttle we ignore the orbital motion of the earth round the sun. But we don’t ignore it for Cassini.

It is true that all measurements are relative. This must be true simply because a measurement is a comparison, a relative measure. But if you cross-check (“transverse”) and verify your measurements then correct for consistency and cohesiveness, you discover absolute measure that is the same for all. Thus measurements are only relative when you don’t cross verify them and correct for the logical inconsistencies.

Otherwise it is like listening to only one witness or one bit of evidence at a murder trial.

Your logic is equivalent to:

  1. SR says the moon is made of made of green cheese.
  2. The moon is made of Stilton.
  3. Therefore SR is wrong.

You haven’t shown us that SR says the moon is made of green cheese and you haven’t shown us that the moon is made of Stilton. What you have been writing about SR is so off base that it is, as the physicists say, “not even wrong”. The only way that SR introduces time dilation, length contraction, and relativity of simultaneity is through the use of the Lorentz transformations (or, equivalently, through the invariant spacetime interval). If you want to make a claim about the nature of these things, you have to demonstrate them using the Lorentz transformations. Your logic is worthless without any demonstration that it applies to SR.

I have a question that I feel needs an answer concerning James S Saint and PhysBang. Do either of you feel you have sufficiently responded to each other’s assertions concerning this topic. If you believe you have responded exhaustively, then either agree or agree to disagree and leave it at that.

I’m happy to leave it at that. As long as people are able to realize that it might be the case that JSS is simply not talking about anything to do with the topic he claims to be discussing.

To my knowledge, he hasn’t actually addressed the OP. His remarks are merely concerning me, how wrong I am, how I should go read, I should show him more of how to resolve the puzzle, his opinion of me, and what others should do because of it (the very definition of “ad hominid”).

Ignoring him doesn’t shut him up nor inspire him to actually address the topic at hand rather than his opinion of me or anyone else. So yeah, I’d say that I have answered his topic relevant replies sufficiently.

Ok, then there shouldn’t be further need to address one another. If it continues, I will lock this thread and remove any remarks to each after this post.

James, I’m a little confused as to how your light-based transverse spin counter measures distance. Its spin doesn’t seem to be associated with motion along the track, because 1) it is light, so its motion is not caused by contact with the track, and 2) it is transverse, so track is never a tangent to the path of the light around the circumfrence of its spin (which seems essential to a spin counter. In that case, it seems that the “spin counter” is just a light clock, as Physbang has suggested.

I apologize if my questions are basic, but as I said to MMP in the other thread, the best place to start is to figure out what everyone is saying, so that we can get identify and resolve the core issues.

(Aside: Farsight, what’s the difference between a start being “really” flattened, and only being observed to be flattened? I don’t mean that sarcastically or rhetorically. For all intents and purposes, the star is flattened for the observer in motion. Would it be possible to devise an experiment that would distinguish between “real” and “observed” flattening? You’ve mentioned an orthoganal observer, but that just seems to either put another observer in the stationary reference frame, or to introduce yet another frame of reference into the question, without truly answering the question. I tend to favor saying that it’s “really” flattened, just because, for all possible applications of the idea (as far as I know), it can be treated that way.)