Recent content by KipIngram

I'll try - it's been a long long time since I encountered that. Edit: Ok, I found this - it's not the same thing I read years ago, but it gets at it: https://physicsworld.com/a/max-planck-the-reluctant-revolutionary/ A quote from there: There is also another thread here...

My understanding was that Planck quite hated his own "quantum hypothesis" that got him across the black body radiation finish line. He was convinced it was some form of trickery, but was just more or less desperate for the win.

I'm not going to argue with you about it. No, they're not exactly the same thing, but you can reduce the error by so assuming to as small a value as you wish if you look at a small enough part of the circle / sphere. Is the error zero? No. But it becomes less significant as you go. This is...

Ok, guys - I just did the math on this and it works out perfectly. The images from Bob that will line up with Alice's telescope are the ones he emits at closest approach. In Alice's frame, those just make a straight shot to her and everything is easy to see. In Bob's frame, though, he sees...

Yes, I do think that having Bob go all the way around a full circle would raise problems. I do think, however, that you could approximate a tiny angle of a huge circle as a straight line and have the error go to zero as you made the circle big enough.

Thanks, PeroK. I was trying to create a situation where time dilation was the only applicable effect, by looking at motion that was (to as close an approximation as desired) perpendicular to the line connecting the parties. I am aware the the stationary party would perceive the other parties...

Ok, so I'm still thinking about this stuff, and I think I may see something interesting. Someone of you may have said something earlier that triggered this - if so, thanks! So I'm presuming the closest approach distance between Alice and Bob is quite large - large enough to make the angle...

I guess what I'm fretting over here is this: Alice predicts that she will see a difference of less than 33.3 ms in her images, because Bob's clock is running slower than her's. How can Bob predict that as well, while still claiming that Alice's clock is running slower than his?

I don't want to get rid of the camera - one of the things I like best about this "situation" is that we get a result that goes beyond just making calculations around things - Alice's camera will record pixels, and Alice's "analysis" and a correct Bob analysis should predict the same pixels...

Yes, the light that Alice receives was emitted by Bob much earlier, But as long as Alice's scope is pointed in the direction of the point of closest approach, she will see the light he emitted while he was there. The fact that he has moved on in the mean time doesn't matter, right?

I assumed that if we wanted to move Bob further away we'd give Alice a higher magnification. I really shouldn't have even mentioned the field of view, or that it took one second for Bob to cross it, etc. All that really matters is that Alice sees Bob long enough to capture two frames. Those...

But we can make that part of the effect as small as we wish to make it, by making the "closest approach" distance further. We can make the angle Bob traverses during that one frame-to-frame interval that contains the closest approach as tiny as we want it to be. I don't think that's...

I do want to re-iterate that I feel certain something is wrong with that simple Bob analysis. I just can't see what it is. :-|

I agree with that. But what Bob is wanting to predict is what the pixels recorded by Alice's camera look like. He knows Alice's camera is designed to catch a frame 30 times per second per Alice's clock. From his perspective, Alice's clock is running slower than his own, so her camera should...

Right - exactly. So how would Bob go about predicting what Alice will record? My "simplest attempt" at that predicts exactly the opposite of what you expect looking at it from her side. I guess Bob could say, "Well, Alice sees me moving, so she will see my clock running slower... etc." But...