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581

That’s sort of true except that there is no way to find the “absolute still” because everything is comparison.

You can’t just go up to point A and say that the clock there is running faster than yours. You don’t have the required information to make the calculation. You have the current space-time coordinates for YOU and A but you need another pair of coordinates from a previous time.

The traveling twin synchronizes his clock with the earth clock (same position and time) and then after returning compares his clock to the earth clock (same position and two time values). He concludes that he was the one moving.

582

That’s true. You decide what you want to use as the starting point. Choosing a convenient starting point simplifies the mathematical calculations.

583

It’s true, as I believe Sculptor said upthread, that this thread is brain dead. But not because of me!

I am giving standard science that is well-attested by evidence and experiment. Motor Daddy is offering crank rhetoric. It’s really that simple.

This is not like a philosophical dispute over whether we have free will, or the nature of morality, or the ethics of abortion, etc., where there are no clear-cut scientific answers. Here, the answers are clear-cut, according our best science.

It would be as if someone came on this board and argued that the sun is actually a giant tortilla, and someone else said, no, it’s a thermonuclear furnace in the sky. Are reasonable people, provided that they informed of the facts, really going to suggest that a legitimate dispute is going on here?

And so it is with this “dispute.”

Take this foolishness about using the sun as some kind of universal clock. We have two twins who from the surface of the earth measure a star to be five light years distant. One twin blasts off at a certain relativistic velocity. When he comes home his clock says that eight years have passed. The earth clock says ten years have passed.

It is being suggested that the twin whose clock read eight years is actually ten years old, just like the earth twin, because the earth has made ten revolutions around the sun. It’s nonsense. Revolutions around the sun have nothing to do with. All that matters is the elapsed time as measured from the point of view of a frame, and for the twin, it is true that eight years elapsed in his frame and ten years elapsed in the earth twin’s frame. (And the traveling twin did not exceed the speed of light because his journey was relativistically length-contracted.)

To underscore the absurdity of the argument, suppose a twin blasted off at such a velocity that when he returns home, eight years elapsed on his clock, and 40,000 years elapsed on earth.

Wow! Is the traveling twin now 40,000 years old? Hey, how’d THAT happen? NOBODY can live that long. So there is my reductio of this absurd argument being put forth.

Also, what happens if the sun and earth vanish? Does that mean it is no longer possible to tell time anywhere in the universe?

584

Why doesn’t he conclude that they both could have been moving during the same duration of time? We know the Earth moves around the Sun. So while the traveler was gone the Earth was moving. To make matters worse, we know the Earth ROTATES about its own axis while it’s orbiting the Sun. So we know for a fact that Earth is in motion during the travelers trip. But you’re not concerned with that, are you? You PRETEND that the Earth is “at rest” in order for your Relativity math to work. Your whole complaint in Relativity is that there is no absolute rest frame, but you go on to pretend that the Earth is at rest for your math to work. Funny!

My Absolute Velocity Box can prove to be at absolute zero velocity. It’s when the light sphere makes it to all the receivers in .5 seconds. It looks like a perfect circle in the box that touches all four receivers at the same time, with the center of the box remaining at the center of the light sphere. That necessarily means the box did not move in space for the measured .5 seconds. That necessarily means an absolute zero velocity in space. The speed of light to all the receivers is .5/.5=1.0c.

585

If a twin blasted off and came back after 40,000 years elapsed on Earth, then that twin is 40,000 years old.

You don’t like that, but you’re good with a watch claiming it took 8 years for the Earth to make 40,000 laps around the Sun?

What a hypocrite!

What happens if the Sun and Earth vanish? What happens if your spaceship clock dies on your journey? Did the twin not age because the clock died?

You are way out there, Dude!

586

Try this video

The bottom line is we can idealize away all accelerated frames and the time differential still holds because earth twin occupies one frame only vs. two frames for outgoing and inbound trip.

587

I don’t see why not. If you assume that you are not currently still - any movement might be a slowing down toward the stillness - taking away from your original velocity.

If there is an absolute still where clocks rotate faster - simply systematically move from a given origin to each point on the compass and back until you discover what direction of motion caused your clock to move more quickly. You can know that your clock ran faster by having communication to someone back at the origin.

Special relativity proposes that movement in any direction will retard your clock regardless of how fast you were originally moving - and it never catches back up. That seems to imply that because everything is always moving away from wherever it originally was - everything must be delaying itself - eternally. As anything orbits - it is under constant acceleration - and everything orbits.

There has to be a type of movement that restores a clock that has been retarded - else every clock throughout the entire universe would have to just get slower and slower and slower. That would mean the entire universe would one day come to a complete stop - not due to heat-death but because everything kept getting delayed and eventually time and aging simply stopped.

Something is not adding up.

But the problem is that the explanation simply concludes the whichever clock ran faster is the origin.

588

Acceleration is the rate of change of velocity. The rate is measured in the standard second, so an acceleration of 10 m/s^2 means the velocity is increasing 10 m/s every second.

So an initial velocity of 30 m/s has a velocity of:

40 m/s at T=1 Seconds
50 m/s at T=2 Seconds
60 m/s at T=3 Seconds

You knew that?? Sure you did. Did you also know that the seconds are the standard second, and not changing duration as the velocity was increasing? Sure you did!

According to Relativity, the faster you go the slower time elapses. Whoopsie, the seconds were not changing as the velocity was increasing. Every 10 m/s increase took exactly 1 second. LOL

589

I guess I don’t understand how an observer “occupies two frames”. What does that mean? :-k

590

I said this already,

But it bears repeating.

Adrenaline adds more energy to the brain which allows time to slow down.

When this reaction is the opposite, time speeds up.

This evolved to allow us to detect and handle threats better.

A very simple way you can detect this phenomenon is to walk down a trail for the first time.

It will seem like a normal walk… takes a while. You’re constantly looking for threats.

As you walk this trail 1000 times, the subconscious has memorized the potential threats (less adrenaline) and it will seem like no time passed from start to finish.

This is also why people say that time moves faster as you age. Life itself is like that trail. We get so used to it, that the energy pumping into the brain to detect threats decreases.

591

Travelling faster, does take/position the faster object to its destination quicker.

When the faster object has reached its destination, both the faster and slower objects will still have moved within the same timeframe… regardless of distance traveled.

What travelling faster does seem to do, is save on exertion/effort/etc.

592

Think of 100 meter dash for 2 runners. The distance is fixed at 100 meters. There is only 1 clock that measures the time.

The fastest runner is at the finish line in 10 seconds.
The slower runner is at the finish line in 20 seconds.

Time elapsed at the exact same rate for both runners, even though 1 runner was twice as fast as the other runner.

The faster runner had a speed of 100 meters per 10 seconds, or 10 meters per second (10 m/s)
The slower runner had a speed of 100 meters per 20 seconds, or 5 meters per second (5 m/s)

There was only one clock, and time elapsed at the EXACT same rate for both runners, even though they ran at different speeds.

If both runners weighed exactly the same weight:

The fastest runner had more POWER
The slowest runner had less POWER

Power=work/time

They both did the same work, which is moving their weight 100 meters.

One runner had more power than the other because he performed the work in less time.

593

False.
The equation shows the power used. The slower one may be a more powerful runner, but was being lazy - you know “lazy” - like your thinking.

594

Power is work/time.

You don’t do work in your head, you do it in the real world. Power isn’t some imagined potential, or some measure of how fast you “could have” moved 150 lbs 100 yards.

Power is how fast you ACTUALLY moved 150 lbs 100 yards.

Energy is power x time.

Ever get an electric bill with how much power or energy you COULD HAVE USED for that month?? Does your power company bill you for how much you COULD HAVE used that month, or do they bill you for how much you ACTUALLY used?

Work = Force x Distance
Power = Work / Time
Energy = Power x Time

Therefor:

Energy = (Work/Time) x Time
Energy=((Force x Distance)/Time) x Time

595

They don’t do the same work.

Work is Force x Distance

And Force is Mass x Acceleration

Therefore Work is Mass x Acceleration x Distance

The distance is the same and we are assuming their mass is the same.

So the work that they do depends on how they accelerated. A quick initial acceleration followed by steady cruising will produce a different amount of work than a steady acceleration over the length of the race.

And the fact that they did not run at the same speed means that their acceleration was much different.

596

Lifting 100 lbs 3 feet is 300 ft-lbs of WORK, whether it takes you 1 second, or 10 seconds.

Power factors the time to give you the rate of work that you did, the more time means the lower the power. The work is always the same regardless of time. In this case the WORK is 300 ft-lbs of WORK!

597

Do you agree that the distance is given as d=1/2 * a * t^2 ?

The distance is 100 m

The mass is the same for both.

Time (t1) for runner 1 is 10 s

Time (t2) for runner 2 is 20 s

Assuming a steady acceleration for both:
100 = 1/2 * a1 * 10^2
a1= 2 m/s/s

100 = 1/2 * a2 * 20^2
a2= 0.5 m/s/s

Work = m * a * d

Work1 = m * 2 * 100 = m * 200
Work2 = m * 0.5 * 100 = m * 50

Since their mass is the same, runner 1 did 4 times the work of runner 2.

QED

598

My example involved transportation, which would save the object/person their time and energy (effort) in arriving at the desired destination.

Runners are their own vehicle… so to speak, but are incapable of interstellar running, but yes… runner 1 is the V8 of runners to runner 2’s V4.

599

In part, my point upthread too.

Light years, time and distance are components of the either/or world. Presumably anyway. So, which fulminating fanatic above comes closest to guiding us down the One True Path here?

On the other hand, even “standard science” exists within the ultimately mysterious – and some insist mystical – parameters of “the gap” and “Rummy’s Rule”. Not to mention all that weird speculation about reality/“reality” given the components of the quantum world.

Then this part. Pood admits there are no clear-cut scientific answers regarding such things as determinism. So, what of those who argue that, given their own understanding of it, this entire thread is unfolding into the future in the only possible manner in which it could. I’m typing these words because I was never able not to type them. You’re reading these words because you were never able not to read them. You think as you do about light years, time and distance only because your brain compels you to.

“No!”, screams pood, “that’s idiotic!!”

And he has the Regularity Theory to “prove” it.

600

This in and of itself precipitates mind-boggling conjectures.

Suppose next month the really, really, [b]really[/b] Big One strikes Earth. An asteroid immense enough to wipe out every single last one of us. No human beings left at all.

And suppose further that human beings are the only intelligent life form in the entire universe.

What then of light years, time and distance? What then of things like the Twin Paradox?

Cue God?