Special Relativity Between Reality and Illusion

Hi,
Q1: Do the effects of time dilation and length contration really happen, or they seem to happen to us being in different inertial frame, because our means of observation ( say, by looking by means of coming relativistic beams of light) draw this illusion on us and show us something different from the reality.

Q2: Do the 2 effects kind of cancel each other (contraction/dilation) so as to make the light speed constant?

Q3: In Twin paradox, the difference in ageing should be just a relativistic concept (or at least, that's what I think). How could the physiological and chemical processes inside the bodies be affected. Is It possible that the chemical reaction used to proceed in 1 sec and now in 2 sec just because you travel so fast?!!

Now there is a true reference frame and if we knew what it was, we could figure out how fast the twins were really aging, and we would know which was getting older faster.

But God created the universe so that our chemistry would not depend on the inertial frame and in doing this, as an accidental side effect

He made it very nearly impossible for us to distinguish between inertial frames.

Accidental?

One would think that God makes things either possible or impossible, NOT "very nearly impossible"!

Accidental means that it is a low energy symmetry, one that disappears at higher energies.

Since the standard model is only an effective theory, any of its symmetries could be accidental.

No, a lot of things are very very difficult. For example, if it were just a little bit easier to build nuclear weapons, a good bit of the world would have become radioactive wastelands back in the 1940s.

Getting back to physics, if the elementary particles are composites made up of preons, we really cannot be certain what the maximum speed of those preons are. It's easy to suppose that they are just like everything else we see and limited to speed c, but then again, we can't get at them so we can't measure their speeds. It's a region where we have no measurements.

The correct statement is; the standard model could be an effective theory of more symmetric one. And this "deep" theory must show, in certain limit, all the symmetries of the SM.

Are you willing to make this a general statement about all physical systems? That is, that the low energy phenomena of any possible physical system must always be less symmetric than higher energy phenomena of the same system? If you are, I'm willing to provide counterexamples (that quantum field theory applies to). If you are not, then please expand on why a deeper theory must be of the very limited sort that you describe rather than the more general sort that can be of the type I suggest.

2) the whole history of (symmetries in) physics has been the gradual realization that Lie symmetries do not appear and/or disappear in an arbitrary or (accidental) manner.

So, nuless experiment shows otherwise, is is only natural to suppose that this order should apply to the SM.

3)we have no reason to abandon the correspondence principle which asserts that "the expression of a new theory must approach the mathematical formalisim of the theory that it attempts to supersede".

4) the success of the electroweak theory; At high energy the symmetry is SU(2)XU(1). At low energy it is only a U(1).

It is IMPOSSIBLE, even for God, to distinguish between inertial frames full stop.

Physics! This is rubbish not physics.

1) Do we measure the speed of quarks? No, we don't because we cann't.

2) At the quark-level,Do we know that c is still the c we know? Yes we do.

3) How do we know that without any measurment? Because, the physics at the quark-level (theory & experiments) respects Lorentz symmetry.

Regarding the unsuccessful preon models, as far as I know almost all of them are Lorentz invariant, which means that the "speed" of massive(massless) preon is less than (equal to) c.

Are you willing to make this statement about all known physical systems? That is, that the Lie symmetries of the low energy physics of a system are never more symmetric than the Lie symmetries of the high energy physics of the system? If you are, I'm willing to prove you wrong with physical examples. If you are not willing, then you must admit that there are physical examples of effective theories that are more symmetric than the deeper theories that lie beneath them, and that these provide counterexamples to your logic.

In the early 20th century there was no reason to suppose that mass and energy were not individually conserved. Do you admit that it would have been very natural to apply your word "rubbish" to Einstein's work that suggested that energy and matter could be converted into each other?

I agree that this could be a clue. But on the other hand, many thousands of very intelligent physicists have spent large amounts of time trying to use this clue to further unify the forces for several decades and have failed. This is also a clue.

ALL of the assumptions of physics should be examined anew.

Generalization of my statement is (as I said before) meaningless, because it is a common BELIEF among physicists. The SM, string theory and supergravity represent a solid ground for this belief.

Having said this, I do, however, want you to tell me where, in physics, do I find a Lie symmetry that gets larger in the low energy limit?

NO, because this was a result from a mathematically sound theory with countless experimental verifications. By "mathematically sound" I mean logical consistency and ability to explain a number of known facts.

Like most physicists, I think science is going in the right direction.

If you think that physics needs to be rewritten, then DO IT and show us a solid results. Don't just sit there and [throw] garbage on us.

David Bohm, of Bohmian mechanics fame, believed otherwise.

"On the meaning of non-Lorentz invariance of processes involving individual beables". The index lists page 292 for "preferred frame" and page 290 for "Lorentz ether" which reads on my comments on the Lorentz Ether Theory directly.

Also see page 346 which shows up in the index. As I recall, this is where he discusses the possibility of future experiments showing violations of Lorentz symmetry.

Bohm has an important physical effect named after him, the Aharonov-Bohm effect. I don't see how you have the standing to call his ideas rubbish. There are still a lot of physicists working on his ideas.

Agreed. You've made a series of clearly true statements but I'm not sure what your point is. I'm going to guess that your logic is to point out that quarks are subparticles of protons and neutrons and yet quarks obey Lorentz symmetry just like neutrons and protons do. Therefore, perhaps by a sort of induction, all deeper subparticles must also obey Lorentz symmetry.

Let's apply your logic to the neutrons and protons themselves. Back before quarks were accepted would you have argued that all known particles carry integral electric charges and therefore quarks must too? Would you have argued that all known particles can be found in a free state and therefore quarks must too?

Do you have an outline of a proof that it is impossible for a non Lorentz invariant preon model to produce Lorentz invariant bound states? Or are you saying it's impossible only because you've never heard of it?

However, I am very interested to see how "Lorentz non-invariant" dynamics (Lagrangian) "produces" a "Lorentz invariant bound state". So, I want you to write down the Lagrangian of this model and show me how it leads to Lorentz invariant bound state. I believe you know how to use LaTex, so I will be waiting to see that Lagrangian next time you post, OK?

What you're asking for is too complicated to put into a single post, nor does it belong on this thread. A first step on getting to where I described is to construct Lorentz invariant propagators from a non Lorentz invariant theory. Will you accept that as a first step or do you insist on having a whole textbook typed into a post?

By the way, regarding Bohm's opinions. You can claim whatever you want to about what the man told you etc. But why would you think he would talk to you about Lorentz invariance when you exhibit this attitude towards it? You can put whatever (self-serving) words you want to into a dead man's lips but you cannot deny his very clear writing on the subject.

I know Bohm well enough to tell you that he never believed in "accidental relativity".

It is IMPOSSIBLE, even for God, to distinguish between inertial frames full stop.

What Bohm & Hiley said in chapter 12, regarding QM versus relativity,is the following: IF QM does not break down at some fundamental level, and IF a metric tensor field CAN BE defined on such level, then a LARGE quantum fluctuations could prevent this metric from having diagonal form, i.e. spacetime may cease to be Minkowskian and Lorentz group ceases to be fundamental.

Now, it is equally possible that it is the QM that breaks down at such level. In this case, Lorentz symmetry may continue to be fundamental. I believe, the book discusses this possibility in chapter 14.

Our proposed ontological explanation of the quantum theory has, as we have seen, also led to a certain paradox. For it implies nonlocality and this would seem to contradict relativity which is regarded as a theory that is equally as fundamental as quantum theory. But as we have seen in chapter 12, section 12.7, it is possible to propose a deeper theory of the individual quantum process which is not relativistically invariant and which nevertheless leads to Lorentz invariant consequences for all statistical results, as well as for the large scale manifest world. In this theory there is a preferred coordinate frame in which the instantaneous transmission of impulses is in principle possible, so that there is no contradiction with nonlocality for individual quantum processes. In other words, we say that [b][i]underlying the level in which relativity is valid is a subrelativistic level in which it is not valid even though relativity is recovered in a suitable statistical approximation as well as the large scale manifest world.

In our discussion of this idea we have already suggested one way in which the theory might imply new experimental consequences. Thus although there is no inherent limitation to the speed of transmission of impulses in this subrelativistic level, it is quite possible that quantum nonlocal connections might be propagated, not at infinite speeds, but at speeds very much greater than that of light. In this case, as explained in chapter 12, we could expect observable deviations from the predictions of the current quantum theory (e.g. by means of a kind of extension of the Aspect-type experiment).

It would seem then that already in this case a subrelativistic level would simultaneously be one that goes beyond the current quantum theory. But the notion of a general subquantum mechanical level would have to go beyond the current quantum theory in a much more thoroughgoing way. To explore such a possibility, it is useful to consider once again the stochastic form of our ontological approach. We recall that in this approach a particle follows a trajectory that is random, but is modified by a suitable osmotic velocity along with the action of the quantum potential. At the level of Brownian motion of atoms, for example, similar random trajectories are regarded as approximations to actual trajectories in which this randomness does not prevail at indefinitely short distances. Rather there exists a characteristic length, the mean free path, below which simple causal laws begin to have a dominant effect. This free path reveals itself in many experiments, e.g. those of diffusion, conductivity of heat, etc. Similarly we may propose that in our theory there is a minimum free path below which the trajectory ceases to be random. As the atomic free path is the first sign of a 'subcontinuous' domain in which the laws of continuous matter would break down, so the free path in our trajectories would be the first first sign of a subquantum domain in which the laws of quantum theory would break down. It is implied of course that this would begin to occur for wavelengths of the order of the 'free path'.

The next sign of a breakdown of the quantum theory would be the discovery of some yet smaller dimension whose role might be analogous to the dimension of the atom in the atomic explanation of continuous matter. We do not yet know what this dimension is, but it seems reasonable to propose that it could be of the order of the Planck length, where, in any case, we can expect that our current ideas of space-time and quantum theory might well break down. The 'free path' would then be some multiple of this length.

At present further progress only seems to be possible through the use of the imagination to suggest new concepts that might permit a more precise formulation of these ideas. In this regard the situation is not very different from what it is in string theory, which is at present guided by speculative use of mathematical concepts, that also have little or no contact with experiment. As we have pointed out in section 12.8 of chapter 12, it took over 2000 years before the atomic theory of Democritus could achieve a more precise formulation. But we may reasonably hope that with the more rapid progress of science in the present era, it will take considerably less time.

You believe a version of what Bohm and Hiley believed. I believe a different version. You have a belief as to what is in Bohm & Hiley's book, "The Unidivided Universe". I have a different belief. What kind of experiment can we run to determine who is wrong and who is right (if either)?

One experiment is to write down the Lagrangian of that Lorentz NON-INVARIANT theory you talked about, which I am still waiting to see.