- #71
PeterDonis
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Your post #68 strengthens the impression I expressed in post #57.student34 said:
Your post #68 strengthens the impression I expressed in post #57.student34 said:I just wanted to know if I was misinterpreting something about length contraction. Now I don't think I am.
Why would you call a shorter route an illusion? Is it also an illusion that it is shorter to drive from Miami to New York through Washington DC than through Denver? In what way is the word "illusion" appropriate here?student34 said:It is still sort of an illusion. The muon just takes a shorter route through spacetime to get to the ground.
I meant that the length contraction for the muon's journey is an illusion, at least in the strict sense of the term contraction.Ibix said:Why is the green line more illusory than the blue one?
Shorter than compared to the slower object in blue.PeterDonis said:Shorter compared to what?
There is no such object in the scenario. What's the point of this?
No, it's just a different measurement. Again, you are focusing on the exact meanings of words in their general context, words that we repeatedly tell you are not and cannot be precise. The sooner you accept that the words are jargon and do not have their customary meanings, the sooner you can get on with learning relativity.student34 said:I meant that the length contraction for the muon's journey is an illusion, at least in the strict sense of the term contraction.
If I am riding the muon from its resting point through its journey to the Earth, it is going to seem like the distance contracts for me once I start accelerating. But I am actually taking a geomterically different route than the route which I saw when I was at rest. It is an illusion for humans because we don't see the temporal dimension.Dale said:Why would you call a shorter route an illusion? Is it also an illusion that it is shorter to drive from Miami to New York through Washington DC than through Denver? In what way is the word "illusion" appropriate here?
No, you are not. The muon's route through spacetime is an invariant.student34 said:I am actually taking a geomterically different route than the route which I saw when I was at rest.
In other words, we are right back to where we started with this thread. None of the discussion after 75 posts has made any impression on you at all. So what's the point of discussing?student34 said:I meant that the length contraction for the muon's journey is an illusion, at least in the strict sense of the term contraction.