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Consider Einstein's development of SR and his thought experiment on
the train to Berlin.

The clock towers at station X and station Y are synchronized in the
rest frame of the earth.

Einstein's watch is synchronized with X as he passes heading toward Y.

According to experiment, no matter how fast he travels the light from
both clock towers reaches him at light speed. Thus he cannot pass
light coming from X no matter how fast he goes so he will never
observe it ticking backwards. The minimum time for the trip is in the
earth frame is x/c. In this case, the time seen at X from Y is the
same as when he passed X.

The difficulty here is not so much a difficulty with special
relativity, it is a difficulty with how things are. If experiment is
correct, his watch must be slow by x/c since it cannot go backwards
when seen from X or Y if light speed is constant and light cannot pass
light as experiment reveals. Einstein derived all the equations of SR
are derived from this, t-t' = x/c.

While this may seem very strange, but the alternative is also very
strange. If Einstein could exceed light speed, he could arrive at
station Y and then watch himself arrive. Experiment reveals that
nature conspires to keep causes and effects is strict order such that
an effect before a cause is never observed and no clock can be
directly observed going backwards.

In every case at any speed his watch must be slow by x/c. In the
extreme case, at light speed, the travel time will also be x/c,
(x/c)-(x/c)=0 such that zero time passed on his watch exhibiting an
infinite proper velocity not limited by light speed for the traveler.

But all observers in the earths frame see a travel time of x/c and
never anything faster than light. Physics for the traveler seem
difference from the fixed observers. SR resolves this difficulty by
allowing relative distance to contract along with time. The faster he
goes, the shorter the distance, and at light speed the distance is
zero such that light speed is not exceeded and the laws of physics
remain the same for everyone.

However, this distance contraction is only a relative effect. It is
just a mathematical devise. The actual absolute effect is the clock
discrepancy of x/c when arriving at Y.

I am not sure you can convince the traveler who goes one light year in
one minute on his watch that he did not travel faster than light and
the distance for him was different than the distance for everyone
else. To believe that he did not travel 60*24*365 times the speed of
light, the traveler must swallow SR hook, line and sinker.

There is ZERO ambiguity as to which clock is slow or which clock is
moving with respect to any reference frame, but it seems absurd
initially.

Consider a second train travelling the same speed and direction as
Einstein's train leaving Y at the same time he leaves X.. In this
rest frame, the clock tower Y is effectively moving from train 2, to
train 1 and therefore Y must be slow by x/c when it arrives at train
1.

Many people stop their analysis here. This is an apparent
contradiction, either his watch is slow, or the clock tower is slow,
you can't have it both ways. Or can you?

At near light speed the clock tower apparently arrives at Einstein's
train immediately, but must have taken x/c time to get there in
contracted time and space. But since the clock did not change it must
be slow by x/t.

This can be true because each rest frame has its own clock and each
clock is slower in the other frame. There is no contradiction, the
clock discrepancy is actual from both frames. Relative time is always
slower and never faster and time between clocks is independent by x/c.

Experiment confirms that relative clocks are always slower and never
faster. Our idea that if one clock is slow, the other must be fast is
wrong. Thus the idea that some absolute clock can resolve the issue
is also wrong.

The reference frame of the big bang may be an exception. Relativity
may not be perfect and the big bang reference frame may be absolute.
This may account for some anomalies in the constant speed of light.
However, because we are accelerating away from the big bang frame at
close to light speed, it's clock is effectively stopped with respect
to ours and vise verse. It is thus not very useful when considering
trains or space travel.

The fact is that relative space and time is largely how things work.
We need only consider a clock moving from A to B and it must be slow
if event orderings are preserved.

How this happens cannot be conceptualized without considering general
relativity and the "bending", or construction and destruction of space
time.

It was Wheeler who said matter tells space how to bend, and space tell
matter how to move. This may be true, but I do not believe it is the
complete picture.

If we consider space time to be the enforcer of the absolute ordering
of causes and effects, then we can think of it as being composed of
the information about events (e.g. photons) it orders. This may seem
to contradict the postulate of quantum theory that vacuum fluctuations
are purely random by imposing a definite ordering of quantum
potentials in space but it is not contradicted by measurement. If
space is energetic, as Dirac and Wheeler suggest and the propagation
speed of light implies, it is not nothing, it is energy. We would
expect that when energy is released it becomes space, when it is
absorbed it is mass. Free energy is space and trapped energy is
matter.

The problem people have with this view is because the energy of the
vacuum is cold, 3 degrees Kelvin, microwave and below, how can it have
so much energy? Well, it takes more colder photons than it would take
hot photons, but if there is no limit to how how many cold photons
there may be there is no limit to how much total energy there is. And
how could so much energy seem like nothing? It is the zero point
because there is no lower temperature where it can flow. But it can
be absorbed by matter contracting local spacetime, while expanding
future spacetime. The contraction bends local space geodesics towards
masses. Masses will absorb a range of low energy frequencies
according to their mass. It is as though 32 feet of spacetime
ordering information falls into the earth each second by local
reception of vacuum energy pushing things down with it, imparting
acceleration.

If the universe is electrodynamical, than the only thing that can push back and resist acceleration is the vacuume energy, in that case it is no surprize, as Wheeler put it, the vacuum is only marginally less energy dense than matter. I may be thought of as a cold plasma, the coldest around, the zero point [[ZPE]].

The beauty of spacetime made of energy is that energy always defines
both space as wavelengths x=e/c and time inversely to frequency t=x/c
together, and we would expect there to be huge amounts of low energy
red shifted energy from the big bang. There is no bases to presume
space and time exist independently or by any other means than as it is
manifest electrodynamically. The model is exceedingly simple and uncontradicted by experiment.

Because space time itself can contract and expand by absorptions and
emissions there is no need for the classical notion of repulsion and
attraction. Instead there are quantum bi-local up or down spin
expansions and contractions without the need for other magic at a
distance.

See [[QuantumRelativity]] [[RelativeStateSpace]] [[ElectrodynamicalUniverse]]
----
This is a very satisfying answer for me personally. I just accept
what we know from experiment and it turns out to be enough to explain
most everything. The only problem I see is getting rid of our
preconceived notions and accepting nature as she reveals herself to
us. Looking back, the notion of magical forces at a distance is silly
and is not supported by general relativity or quantum mechanical
logic. [[User:69.115.53.232|69.115.53.232]] 13:41, 1 January 2007 (EST)

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