Stopped Clock Paradox - Analysis

You start with a 2Xs distance between front clock and rear clock when stopped.
At speed, the train can maintain that 2Xs distance in it’s frame. But to the station, that distance looks smaller.
It doesn’t matter whether the cars are attached or not. It’s a measured distance.

What’s not to understand?

Take a yard stick and compare it to a friend’s. Exactly the same.
Accelerate him and compare your yardstick to his when he comes beside you … his yardstick looks shorter than yours. The Lorentz transformation calculates how long it appears.
Similarly, when he looks at your yardstick, he sees that it is shorter than his.

It’s all relative.

I’m saying all that matters is when they ARE two, not when they “become” two, R does not describe the progression from one to two reference frames, as far as I know.
IF RM can do this, all the more reason to finally break it out.

As far as I know R does not claim any logic about the change of one reference frame into two.
And I’ll grant you that this IS part of reality. Just don’t blame R for not including something it does not claim to include.

No James I hadn’t fully realized the whole logic from A to Z.
This is because you keep on teasing and in two years you’ve never ever put all your cards on the table.

I finally understand the problem. Where the real weirdness occurs is when one reference frame suddenly becomes two. The thing I can imagine relativity theory did not describe is the exact breaking point. The point where Euclid and Newton are transformed to be subservient to a greater law is not itself mapped.

And such a thing can only be mapped from a meta perspective.

But we don’t have that perspective. James claims to have it and so far I’ve put faith in him because what he has revealed does make sense.

Reminder: this is all about Epistemology. Deciding on a zero-point of knowledge.

In SR, there is no frame attached, except in a metaphorical way, to objects.

If something is accelerating, then it can be associated with a number of momentarily co-moving reference frames. SR does not use accelerating frames.

Compared to the practice of physics, this looks insane.

A frame of reference is a choice of coordinates. One can’t split a choice.

The problem is with 6. If the clocks stay in sync in the reference frame associated with the station, then they will not be in sync with each other in the reference frame associated with any given train.

Whenever there is movement, both frames are on the move with respect to each other.
Whenever there are two reference frames, there are two sets of coordinates which do not equate to the same constant.

By definition, clearly.

My my, doesn’t the devil get pissy when you have him cornered.

The SR equations for this scenario are pretty simple. Why aren’t any of you using them? I seem to remember something called the “Twin Paradox” that was discussed for around 100 years without anyone ever bitching that relativity doesn’t allow things to BEGIN to move. And the solution offered didn’t seem to mind the twins starting off together and then taking off in space ships. Or did I misread some part where relativity says that one can only leave the other in a spaceship, not a train?

There are 3 trains, all going the same speed and they end up like this;

Any equations you have will allow that exact picture.
The entire relativity notion came from the idea that one cannot know this or that, therefore we can assign a truth to the situation. But the truth is that one can know “this or that” and in this case, prove the assigned truth to be invalid.

…and (6) didn’t have anything to do with the station’s clock sync. And note in the pic, the station clock in not is sync with the engines clocks… is it.

Don’t mistake me for the Devil, Physbang or anyone else who is qualified at Relativity.

Can you show the equations or not?

Still, I solved the paradox in SR.
Since you’ve introduced GR I have no idea what the problem is. I don’t understand the rubber, for example.
It’s not like the train actually stretches.

The whole conviction that a neutralized language allows for a neutral perspective is where scientists are ants to the Platonic motherbrain.

Math does not equal truth. Logic does not equal correct equation.

We can admire Einstein for understanding precisely this, that the equations begin with the reference frame, with the context, with the perspective, with the subject. It turns out to be correct. What most can not fathom is why, how the the speed of light is always constant, but apparently Einstein did fathom that.

What interests me most about RM: AO is how it explains the maximum propagation speed of PtA. If you can explain c, the constancy of it, the limit in each affectance-pattern, then you have my fullest attention again.

You’ll never entirely lose my attention, you’ve been right on too many subjects too often for that. But tell me something I can work with.

No, it didn’t. And no, he didn’t. He stated, “If what I have been told [concerning the consistency of the speed of light] is true, then the following must also be true…”

Well, I have no argument with that wording. The problem is that what he was told wasn’t true.

RM:AO is all about logic. When you deny logic, truth leaves you.

Feynman [falsely] states that in the sub-atomic world, logic doesn’t apply. He is just another false prophet in that regard. But if you worship false prophets and deny logic, RM:AO is pointless to learn. RM:AO can explain anything… unless you deny the reasoning required to understand what it is explaining and insist that “we cannot know…”.

I need to see quotes of Einstein and Feynman on that.

Obviously though if what Einstein takes to be true is true,
then when one reference frame shifts into another, the speed of light shifts as well.

Feynman said it in that video you provided. Maybe get Farsight to find it for you concerning Einstein.
I’m not a prophet worshiper, myself. I don’t need guru’s on the island to tell me that someone has blue eyes.

We aren’t concerned with the speed of light per se. Only that it is to be taken as the same within and throughout each frame individually.

So you say that Einstein said x but when I ask you to show me that he did, you call me a prophet-worshiper?

Impressive.

I am going to close down ILP now.

Bye bye.

Before The Light can only be darkness… by definition.
… until you light the one oil candle you have that can’t be blown out.

There is nothing in relativity theory that stops the trains from ending up in the scenario now provided.

It is possible to set things up so that, in the reference frame associated with the station, the clock faces on the trains all show the same thing as the middle one passes the station.

But in this new scenario, there seems to be nothing referencing SR at all.

What a clock face presents at a certain spacetime event is invariant, all reference frames agree about what clock faces say at given spacetime events. But reference frames disagree about what a correct clock rate is and, to some extent, about what events are before or after one another given the coordinates they are assigned.

And you, of course, have access to experiments and observations that prove this to be false?

I breathlessly await your Nobel prize.

The three engines constitute one frame of reference because they are moving together and the station constitutes a another. Both the train observer and the station observer know that the flashes occur together because the timers will be reading the same, regardless of what that reading might be. And regardless of that, simple side track arms set at Xs can trigger the flashers without being concerned with any length contraction issues.

So you are back with the original proposal;

Since they both know the flashes occur together and SR states that they must both experience light traveling at c0, the station must experience the upper portion of that pic and the center engine (the “train”) must experience the lower of the pic. But at most only one of those perspectives could actually occur.

So the question is;
A) Station clock stops only
B) Train clock stops only
C) Both clocks stop
D) Neither clock stops.

Which is it?

False. A system of coordinates constitute a frame of reference. We can say that there is a frame of reference in which the three trains are considered to be stationary because we stipulate that there is a frame in which they are moving at the same speed in the same direction.

What happens at the same time does not depend upon what clocks read, but upon what idealized synchronized clocks should read. This is true whether or not one is using SR or Newtonian mechanics.

Not really, since when the end of a train passes a part of the track is different in different frames of reference.

When the center engine clock passes the station clock, is when the flashers are Xs distance from the station clock. The engines did not get closer together.