"Time is the speed of light."

[Brian]

I see I explained part of this poorly. The people in the fast-moving ship see no difference in their own reality -- their clocks seem unaffected, their ship still measures the same length and width, their hearts thump along at the same pace, etc. If they look out the window and observe people on the passing planet Earth, it seems that the people on the Earth are zooming by with slow clocks.

 

The People observing from "stationary" Earth see their own clocks behaving normally and the ship's clocks running slow.

 

It is all relative, you see.

[Michael Sternbach]

I see I explained part of this poorly. The people in the fast-moving ship see no difference in their own reality -- their clocks seem unaffected, their ship still measures the same length and width, their hearts thump along at the same pace, etc. If they look out the window and observe people on the passing planet Earth, it seems that the people on the Earth are zooming by with slow clocks.

The People observing from "stationary" Earth see their own clocks behaving normally and the ship's clocks running slow.

It is all relative, you see.

 

Nope. You explained it very well. But I already knew all of this. Perhaps I didn't pose my questions well. Let me try again, one at a time:

 

Let's say that I am flying to the Sun at a velocity very close to c. You, sitting on Earth and watching me by a strong telescope, will observe me taking a little over 8 minutes to get there. But I will measure almost no time passing while traversing the 150 million kilometres to the Sun. So, from my view, I am travelling at many times the speed of light.

[Bud Jetsun]

All of 'special relativity' is perception reference artifact. 

 

To 'learn' special relativity is to become indoctrinated with a non-reality delusion. 

 

Entanglement is universal (and measured at a minimum of >C^2).  The 'relative' is perception limitation alone (lack of any true reference). 

 

Special relativity is no longer, just as Newtons delusions prior are no longer and current quantum entanglement models that are not Oneness will also be discarded after folks think of better test setups. 

 

Unlimited Love,

-Bud

[Brian]

All of 'special relativity' is perception reference artifact. 

 

To 'learn' special relativity is to become indoctrinated with a non-reality delusion. 

 

Entanglement is universal (and measured at a minimum of >C^2).  The 'relative' is perception limitation alone (lack of any true reference). 

 

Special relativity is no longer, just as Newtons delusions prior are no longer and current quantum entanglement models that are not Oneness will also be discarded after folks think of better test setups. 

 

Unlimited Love,

-Bud

I am in complete agreement, Bud. Well, almost.

 

If one attaches one's self to any teaching, laws, rules or absolutes, one is painting one's self into a corner. Physics (or natural philosophy) is no different. The trick is to be able to learn things and then set them aside. Again, physics is no different. The tools we learn to use to navigate through life can become the defining factors of our reality if we let them (and this is the case for everyone and for all sorts of tools) but we have the capacity to relax through those understandings and release those attachments. This applies to ALL teaching and understandings, not just "scientific" ones, but it is a capacity very few people exercise in any sort of meaningful way. This is especially true of people who think their understanding it "The Truth" (which applies to religious ideologues and materialistic realists in equal measure).

 

First there is a mountain then there is no mountain then there is -- as I burn away my own self-imposed filters, I realize more and more how broadly this applies.

[Brian]

Nope. You explained it very well. But I already knew all of this. Perhaps I didn't pose my questions well. Let me try again, one at a time:

 

Let's say that I am flying to the Sun at a velocity very close to c. You, sitting on Earth and watching me by a strong telescope, will observe me taking a little over 8 minutes to get there. But I will measure almost no time passing while traversing the 150 million kilometres to the Sun. So, from my view, I am travelling at many times the speed of light.

Ah! I think I see the thing here...

 

As you are racing towards the Earth, it seems to you that the Earth is racing towards you. Both things are equally true. Both of us, by our clocks, will think time is moving at its normal pace (because it is) and both of us, looking through our telescopes, will see the other guy's clock ticking much too slowly. If we point our telescopes at the other guy's measuring tape, we will both see that they are much too short while ours is just fine. If we both start our stopwatches at the instant we pass each other and stop them as your ship passes the Sun (let's assume you don't plunge into it), we will both measure the same time.

 

Both of us are seeing illusions and both of our illusions are real and unreal at the same time. This is just another artifact of duality and is simply the nature of the Tao.

 

General relativity extends all this to noninertial systems and the ramifications of acceleration get added to the implications of velocity (again, both being entirely dependent upon the observer's perspective). I won't go there today, though, as the question posed to me was specific to special relativity and what it helped uncover about the nature of time (namely that time is a dimensional thing like space is and that they are all entangled with light).

[Marblehead]

Nope. You explained it very well. But I already knew all of this. Perhaps I didn't pose my questions well. Let me try again, one at a time:

 

Let's say that I am flying to the Sun at a velocity very close to c. You, sitting on Earth and watching me by a strong telescope, will observe me taking a little over 8 minutes to get there. But I will measure almost no time passing while traversing the 150 million kilometres to the Sun. So, from my view, I am travelling at many times the speed of light.

And you are going to be burned to a crisp way before you get there. 

[Bud Jetsun]

First there is a mountain then there is no mountain then there is -- 

 

 

The mountains 'return' because they never left.  Misperception induced delusions do not return, they only previously existed in the confusion of a human mind.  When the confusion departs, they vanish cleanly into no-thing. 

[Brian]

I would phrase it as the mountains are both there and not there, and neither there nor not there -- whether they appear to be there or not is a matter of perspective. The rational mind wants to resolve the duality by assigning "truth" to one perspective because it sees this as a paradox. Dissolving the paradox by accepting that duality itself is both real and not real, and neither real nor not real -- this starts an avalanche of dissolutions which fundamentally alters one's understanding.

 

This is very difficult to express.

[Marblehead]

This is very difficult to express.

Well, you sure did try hard though.  Gotta' give you credit for the attempt.

[Nungali]

I would phrase it as the mountains are both there and not there, and neither there nor not there -- whether they appear to be there or not is a matter of perspective. The rational mind wants to resolve the duality by assigning "truth" to one perspective because it sees this as a paradox. Dissolving the paradox by accepting that duality itself is both real and not real, and neither real nor not real -- this starts an avalanche of dissolutions which fundamentally alters one's understanding.

 

This is very difficult to express.

 

 

hence the song 

 

 

 

 

 

In anthropology , studying mythical stories (and 'mythic reality'  .... or 'significance' ) ... well, In Oz at least, they have equal difficulty;

 

The real ... the really real ... and the really really real . I am dead serious . 

 

It is much easily understood around the fire: 

 

(none of these answers and questions are mine, I am in the background as an observer ... and cracking up ... along with Uncle Lewie who is silent too. 

 

0; Uncle Lewie ... he's a possum.

I; Naah !  He is  man . Not a possum. 

 

0;  Oh, yeah, he is a man, but he is a possum.

i: Ohh, so he really is a man ... but he is like  a possum.

 

0; No, he is a man and he is  a possum .......    but he is also like a man and like a possum. He came from a possum but he is a man too ... possoms used to be like men. 

I;  What ?   Ohhh, you think you came from a possom .... no, we all came from an ape like creature then we became men.

 

O; No .... Look, its okay if you want to have an ape totem ... where you come from, but we dont have them in this country. First of all he is a possum as we are all men, of course,, so second, yes he is a man  but really he is a possum on the highest level.

I :  So he is a but like a possom, he cant be both, he cant also be an actual possum?

 

O: Oh no, he can ... he can be any possom , anywhere.  Not like your ape totem that somehow lives in the past. 

 

I; No no no ,  ape isnt a totem .. we actually used to be ape like and turned into men. 

O; You seriously believe that !?     Really ? 

 

I; Yes, its been proved ... well ... not actually proved but ... its ... its science. 

O;  Oooooh ... science ! 

 

I :  this is getting nuts, it has to be one thing or the other ! 

O; No it doesnt !

 

I ; Look ... you guys ... 

 

< noisy angry  bronchial growling and hissing from outside >

 

O: What the hell is that ! 

 

I;  Possom . 

 

( both of us silently in background     ) 

Edited November 20, 2015 by Nungali

[Nungali]

'Reality' multiple choice test.

 

a) True.

 

b )  False.

 

c) Neither true nor false.

 

d) Both true and false.

 

e)  All of the above.

 

f) None of the Above.

 

g) Both all of the above and none of the above.

 

h) Neither all of the above nor none of the above. 

 

i ) Forget it, I give up ... I am going to the beach for a swim. 

Edited November 20, 2015 by Nungali

[Nungali]

And you are going to be burned to a crisp way before you get there. 

 

Rubbish , the sun will melt the wax  wings as he gets to high altitude .... he will never get out of orbit ! 

 

 

 

 

[Brian]

'Reality' multiple choice test.

 

a) True.

 

b ) False.

 

c) Neither true nor false.

 

d) Both true and false.

 

e) All of the above.

 

f) None of the Above.

 

g) Both all of the above and none of the above.

 

h) Neither all of the above nor none of the above.

 

i ) Forget it, I give up ... I am going to the beach for a swim.

Well, the answer is obvious: Yes.

[Brian]

hence the song

 

 

 

 

 

In anthropology , studying mythical stories (and 'mythic reality' .... or 'significance' ) ... well, In Oz at least, they have equal difficulty;

 

The real ... the really real ... and the really really real . I am dead serious .

 

It is much easily understood around the fire:

 

(none of these answers and questions are mine, I am in the background as an observer ... and cracking up ... along with Uncle Lewie who is silent too.

 

0; Uncle Lewie ... he's a possum.

I; Naah ! He is man . Not a possum.

 

0; Oh, yeah, he is a man, but he is a possum.

i: Ohh, so he really is a man ... but he is like a possum.

 

0; No, he is a man and he is a possum ....... but he is also like a man and like a possum. He came from a possum but he is a man too ... possoms used to be like men.

I; What ? Ohhh, you think you came from a possom .... no, we all came from an ape like creature then we became men.

 

O; No .... Look, its okay if you want to have an ape totem ... where you come from, but we dont have them in this country. First of all he is a possum as we are all men, of course,, so second, yes he is a man but really he is a possum on the highest level.

I : So he is a but like a possom, he cant be both, he cant also be an actual possum?

 

O: Oh no, he can ... he can be any possom , anywhere. Not like your ape totem that somehow lives in the past.

 

I; No no no , ape isnt a totem .. we actually used to be ape like and turned into men.

O; You seriously believe that !? Really ?

 

I; Yes, its been proved ... well ... not actually proved but ... its ... its science.

O; Oooooh ... science !

 

I : this is getting nuts, it has to be one thing or the other !

O; No it doesnt !

 

I ; Look ... you guys ...

 

< noisy angry bronchial growling and hissing from outside >

 

O: What the hell is that !

 

I; Possom .

 

( both of us silently in background )

I've had similar discussions with some Cherokee friends. They sound less and less nutty to me, which worries my wife...

[Daeluin]

When you put the implications I list above together, it becomes apparent that we cannot accelerate an object to the speed of light. Mass goes to infinity and the rate at which you can develop a propulsive force goes to zero. We can approach the speed of light arbitrarily close, though, depending only on our technology. The clear implication, though, is that something somehow moving at the speed of light (like light itself, for instance) experienced no passage of time. In fact, time loses all meaning -- the "time" it takes for a photon to travel from the Sun to the Earth takes eight minutes from the perspective of someone on the Earth but it takes zero time from the perspective of the photon traveling at the speed of light. The "time" it would take for a photon to travel all the way across the universe (as we see it from Earth) would take zero time, too -- from the photon's perspective. At the speed of light, then, the "time" the photon would see on its wristwatch (if photons had wristwatches) at any point along that journey and beyond would be exactly the same. This is indistinguishable from the photon simultaneously being everywhere along that path.

 

Mind-boggling is right.

 

Thanks for this.

 

This would seem to have interesting interpretations in terms of physical immortality and the operation of wuwei.

 

At the heart of things perhaps one is able to root to the source, and yet one's body remains manifest. One could shed one's shell and move on to the spiritual realms, and yet, if one is able to shape one's energy/light in such a way that it moves in cycles, then it is contained. And if it cycles close to the speed of light, then very little mass is needed to simulate the normal human density, even as one's experience of time barely exists. Hence the use of wuwei/ziran to exist without acting. Perhaps the amount of mass necessary to pull this off can simply come from what is absorbed from one's environs, allowing one to forge a presence that internally is able to step beyond time (not just in mind, but mind and body), returning to the dao, even while remaining present as a system of active integration with the dao.

 

Clearly I'm butchering something somewhere. Just throwing ideas around for fun.

[Michael Sternbach]

Ah! I think I see the thing here...As you are racing towards the Earth, it seems to you that the Earth is racing towards you. Both things are equally true. Both of us, by our clocks, will think time is moving at its normal pace (because it is) and both of us, looking through our telescopes, will see the other guy's clock ticking much too slowly.

You see, that's the part I have a problem with. Logically, if you see my watch as ticking too slowly (whereas to me, it seems just fine), I should be seeing your clock as ticking too fast.

 

Only that would help to explain why travelling at nearly the speed of light also means a time trip into the future, as I have repeatedly heard. I also heard, over and over again, that time dilation would allow astronauts to reach distant stars within a (for them) comparatively short time span. What amount of time would be required depends on how closely c could be approached; one particular calculation I saw suggests that the approximately two and a half million light-years to the Andromeda galaxy could be traversed within twenty-five years of board time. And since velocity is simply length divided by time, those brave astronauts should be measuring a speed of no less than 100'000 times c.

 

Please help me to clarify this. And your reply should better be a good one because otherwise

 

Edited November 20, 2015 by Michael Sternbach

[Marblehead]

I've had similar discussions with some Cherokee friends. They sound less and less nutty to me, which worries my wife...

I can understand her concerns.

[Marblehead]

 

Clearly I'm butchering something somewhere. Just throwing ideas around for fun.

Yeah, you did that well.

[Brian]

You see, that's the part I have a problem with. Logically, if you see my watch as ticking too slowly (whereas to me, it seems just fine), I should be seeing your clock as ticking too fast.

 

Only that would help to explain why travelling at nearly the speed of light also means a time trip into the future, as I have repeatedly heard. I also heard, over and over again, that time dilation would allow astronauts to reach distant stars within a (for them) comparatively short time span. What amount of time would be required depends on how closely c could be approached; one particular calculation I saw suggests that the approximately two and a half million light-years to the Andromeda galaxy could be traversed within twenty-five years of board time. And since velocity is simply length divided by time, those brave astronauts should be measuring a speed of no less than 100'000 times c.

 

Please help me to clarify this. And your reply should better be a good one because otherwise

 

Dang! So many little side streets to explore here and I simply don't have the time. (Yeah, yeah... I know.)

 

First, let me point out that nothing in science is "The Truth" but, instead, science (and particularly physics) works on building models that yield results consistent with observations, match observations better than previous models, and are predictive.

 

The common understanding of the question "why?" generally has a motivational or psychological aspect to it but the physicist see "why" in a mechanistic fashion. The "alehouse philosopher" might view the question, "Why did the chicken cross the road?" as inquiring about the chicken's state of mind while the "natural philosopher" contemplates the principles and forces involved which make it possible for the chicken to physically cross the road. This distinction doesn't come into play in this discussion directly (at least not yet) but it is relevant in this aspect -- special relativity wasn't intended to explain why the universe appears to behave the way it behaves but rather to present an analytical model which provides a mathematical solution conforming to observation AND a predictive capability (for instance, the very measurable phenomenon of time dilation). Maxwell took four different well-tested equations related to electricity and magnetism, mixed in Lorentz's "-c²t" term, and produced a new understanding of electricity and magnetism which explained them better and explained them more deeply -- and did so in an elegant and integrative fashion. Special relativity took that same Lorentz transformation and applied it (with the restriction of inertial frames of reference) to the laws of motion with similar results.

 

I'll go no further down that alley at this point but will turn, instead, to the issues you raise in this post.

 

Let me start with the idea that the person traveling close to the speed of light actually takes "a time trip into the future." This is true only in the sense that our familiar "arrow of time" points in the direction of increasing entropy and, as such, we define "the future" such that we are always traveling into the future. Remember, though, that we take "now" with us -- "the present moment" is relative to the observer's perspective. This means that there is a necessary synchronization that must occur when we switch between frames of reference. This synchronization adjustment is precisely the apparent time difference calculated by the the Lorentz tansformation. This might be a good time to speak to the form of the Lorentz transformation...

 

This forum doesn't lend itself to writing equations so bear with me. Imagine a situation in which you are observing an object that is moving at constant velocity straight towards you or away from you. The constant velocity means we are dealing with inertial systems (so we don't need to expand the discussion to general relativity) and the "straight towards you or away from you" part just simplifies the math -- it works just the same regardless. Additionally, let's define the axes of our coordinate system, S, to be centered on you and oriented such that the direction of motion is only along the X-axis. Imagine, too, a second coordinate system, S', that is similarly oriented but centered on the object being observed. The principle of invariance means that the laws of nature work the same from the perspective of either coordinate system with just a simple compensation for the relative motion between them. It is important to note, BTW, that the question, "Which one is really moving and which one is really standing still?" make no sense whatsoever. As far as we can tell, there is no observable concept of "absolute motion" or "absolute rest." The "simple compensation" between the two perspectives for this situation is as shown in this image I borrowed from Wikipedia:

 

Notice (starting from the bottom) that the "equations of motion" for the Z & Y axes are trivial. This is by design because we intentionally aligned our two coordinate systems to make this happen. The next term is the transform between the S & S' frames of reference for the X & X' axes. If you ignore the little lowercase gamma symbol outside the parentheses, the equation x'=x-vt is simply the familiar transformation for Newtonian relativity that we use without even thinking about it when we do something like throw a ball at a moving target. The gamma, however, represents what's called the Lorentz factor and it is written out as (again, borrowed from Wikipedia):

 

This coefficient is nonlinear. It has a value of 1 when the two frames of reference aren't moving relative to each other and approaches infinity as the relative speed between the two coordinate systems approaches the speed of light. The curve of these values changes very little until the relative motion starts getting close to the speed of light and then it increases very rapidly. The term is, therefore, very close to one for practially every event we encounter in everyday life and it can simply be dropped when working with trains, planes and automobiles (not to mention footballs, bullets, etc.) -- Newtonian relativity and Newtonian equations of motion work beautifully until that term starts to grow (as the relative motion starts to approach the speed of light...)

 

When that term starts to "kick in," it is a multiplier that describes the contraction of the dimension affected. Notice, however, that the assignment of S & S' is totally arbitrary. It makes no real difference whether we swap the designations of S & S' or even how we choose to assign the motion itself -- is object A moving and object B is stationary, or is object A stationary or object B moving, or are they both moving relative to some other frame of reference (think, for instance, of two spaceships being observed from the perspective of a "stationary" space-station)? Doesn't matter because the motion is described with the same set of equations and the transformations work in either direction.

 

So we see that, as the relative speed begins to approach the speed of light, the "distance" measured by an observer stationary relative to one frame of reference is "normal" but it will look like the other guy's measuring tape is the wrong size.

 

Now let's move to the time equation in that first image.

 

It is important to understand that Newtonian relativity held both space and time to be absolutes. Distances didn't change depending on your perspective and time was both immutable and independent of space. Special relativity demonstrated that none of that really holds up to scrutiny. Time is a dimension exactly like the X, X & Y axes in a Cartesian coordinate system and both space & time (which were later collapsed to the single concept of "spacetime") are entirely relitivistic -- there is (as far as we know) no absolute frame of reference for the fabric of space and there is no "universal time."

 

OK, so that time transform...

 

Notice that the form is virtually identical to that for distance, except with "v/c²" -- this is just multiplying one term by a constant. Otherwise, the math is identical (and no more complicated than arithmetic) and the transforms work in both directions. Just as an observer sees his or or measuring stick as being "normal" and the other guy's measuring stick as being distorted, clocks behave that way, too.

 

We are used to this paradox of "how can they both appear to be slow?" when we are talking about distance measurments. If you and I start nose to nose and then begin backing away from each other while holding a meterstick upright in front of us, we will each see that our meterstick remains unchanged while the other guy's meterstick gets shorter and shorter. Not only that but we will each see the other person getting shorter and shorter, too. Additionally, we see that the other person compared against their meterstick still measures the same height. When we talk about a very similar phenomenon with regards to clocks instead of metersticks, however, it seems very alien and counterintuitive because our experiences (and probably our educations) have convinced us that time is nothing like space AND that time is absolute & unchanging. This is an example of the type of "false truth" delusion about which Bud Jetsun so appropriately cautioned earlier. In fact, I have made a point several times of injecting conditional modifiers like "as far as we know" and I stressed up front that nothing in human intellectual understanding (which includes "science") should be taken as The Truth but this is such an important point ant it can't be repeated too often -- except that it gets in the way of conversation.

 

OK, one last subtopic. Let's do a tiny bit of math.

 

Rather than having our astronaut go to Andromeda, let's put a space station exactly one light-year from Earth, fixed relative to the Earth. A light-year is 186k miles/sec x 60 sec/min x 60 min/hr x 24 hr/day x 365.25 days/year = 5.866 trillion miles (roughly speaking). Ignoring for the moment the acceleration which would really be involved (which is a very significant thing for us to be ignoring but it is beyond the scope of special relativity and therefore beyond the scope of this discussion), we can calculate how long it takes to get there. If we travel at 100 mph (note that there really is no such thing as "ship's speed" because it only makes sense to speak of the relative speed between the ship and the Earth or between the ship and the space station -- I will nonetheless use terms like "ship's speed" as a simplified expression, just so I don't have to type "the relative speed between the ship and the Earth or between the ship and the space station" every time), the trip will take about 6.7 million years. If we travel at 1000 mph, the trip takes one-tenth as long, or about 670 millenia. 10k mph and our astronaut needs to wait 67 thousand years, and so on. At ten million mph -- a pretty good clip -- the trip takes about 67 years. Even at that pace, the speed of light doesn't become significant -- 10 million mph is only about 15% of the speed of light, or 0.15c, and that Lorentz factor (goes from 1 to infinity, remember?) has moved from 1.000 to about 1.011. We would be able to start measuring some distortions in "the other guy's clock" and "the other guy's distances" but they wouldn't be substantial. Speed of light is roughly 670 million mph so let's plug in 90% of that. The time taken is 1.11 years. Getting closer now to that 1 year that we would measure a light wave to take to cover that same distance. From the perspective of the "stationary" observer back on Earth (neglecting for the moment the propagation delay we would experience in trying to watch this trip), the ship's clock is only moving at 1/10th the pace it "should" but the people on the ship would see absolutely nothing to suggest their clocks were altered. They would, however, be able to see that the Earth clock was only moving at 1/10th the pace it "should." Bump the ship's speed to 99% the speed of light and the trip takes 1.01 years. At 99.9% the speed of light, the trip is 1.001 years. Notice that as the relative speed between the ship and the Earth asymtotically approaches the speed of light, the time it takes for the journey asymtotically approaches the time it would take for a photon to make the journey.

 

We could take these same transformational principles we used when talking about time and calculate what happens to distance and mass and momentum and energy, etc.

 

(Pardon any misspellings -- spiel chucker seems problematic for me at the moment and I'm not doing any additional proof reading...)

[Michael Sternbach]

Very interesting, Brian, although I will need to reread it in part...

 

Meanwhile, let me try to ask you a simple question. If I would go on a round trip at nearly the speed of light while you remained on Earth, and we would compare our watches after my return, whose watch would show more time to have passed? I would assume, yours.

Edited November 21, 2015 by Michael Sternbach

[Brian]

Excellent question! The clock which experienced the most acceleration.

 

 

There's an inertial solution, too...

[Brian]

I'll touch on the inertial approach to this question tomorrow, if I have time.

[Marblehead]

You guys are going too fast - I can't keep up.

[Michael Sternbach]

You guys are going too fast - I can't keep up.

 

Don't give up. The faster we go, the more we will all slow down.

[Miffymog]

Don't give up. The faster we go, the more we will all slow down.

 

ahhh - but only as far as an external stationary observer is concerned - if we do go faster, we don't feel time slowing, because for us it's not........