Concerns about ontological interpetations of Theory of Relativity

[leandros_p]

Assuming:
- Every event happens at some actual moment
- We can figure out the moment by knowing our distance to the event when it happened and the speed of light
- The notion of time is the same for every co-moving observer, regardless of the history if their world lines.
- Special Relativity holds true

AnssiH, how can you "know your distance to the event when it happened" ?

Both space as well as time are unknown physical variables. Both distance and time are calculated in reference to observer, counted by the unit of speed of light. The only physical knowledge that we have is that the ratio of space divided by time is constant, for all frames. This ratio is expressed by the speed of light.

I think you do accept the relativity of space. Am I wrong ?

Leandros

 

[AnssiH]

how, no, but when the information was sent, yes (since when it was sent depends on your choice of coordinate system).

Well yeah, but while it is very trivial to choose the moment "when" in raw logics, it's not that simple ontologically.

I mean, if you have this idea that there is FACTUALLY information approaching you steadily when you are in one inertial coordination system, even though you haven't observed it yet, the experience of the blue observer becomes very puzzling (in the previous thought experiment with the red clock).

I mean think about it, let's say you are the blue observer, talking with the purple observer;

BLUE: It's 2 seconds past, want to bet if the signal is on its way towards us?
PURPLE: Yes of course it is, it's always sent at 0s
BLUE: Ha! We'll see about that! Will you stay here and wait for the signal, while I'll switch to inertial system where the signal hasn't been sent yet.

Blue starts moving away... ...observes the signal at 8s...
...and comes back to talk to the purple observer.

BLUE: I catched the signal at 8s, so it cannot have been on its way when we last talked, the signal cannot just jump back into the clock.
PURPLE: You are wrong, I catched the signal at 5s, as usual
BLUE: Of course I saw you catching the signal when you showed 5 seconds, but you are not to decide when the signal begun its journey any more than I am.

PURPLE: Sure, but do you assert that while you were making your bet, the world around you was not the same as the world around me? Do you not think, that if there actually was information approaching me, it was approaching you too?

Who wins the bet in your opinion? If neither, why?

I expect that people who want SR to describe actual, philosophically coherent reality, would go bonkers here. People who are happy with the raw logic see no need to even think of such problems.

There are many other similar ontological problems. Like, it is quite puzzling to think about observers out there who are approaching you rapidly. From your perspective, they must be RIGHT NOW in such an inertial coordination system in which there must information about YOUR future approaching them already. Of course this information is not approaching them from your perspective, I realize that, but even from your perspective THEY exist in such a "place" where it must be so. (And vice versa)

So there is this kind of odd detachment of different inertial systems from each others, that is not very easy to explain. Apart from raw logic, and I do see the clarity of that.


You know I've been thinking that it would be interesting to build like this simulation of a virtual SR-world where time passes at very slow speeds (like 10 m/s), and in which you could run around and observe very concretely the phenomenons of SR.

And if I want to REALLY show the phenomenons, I would add an option to see how things relate to each others if you were able to see them without the information delay (i.e. what actually happens). To see what the effect of the second postulate itself is on the world. And also visualize the information itself propagating through space.

Now, the only way to actually implement such a world, is to allow the events & light to move backwards in time when the observer switches directions. Otherwise SR is not in the realm of Turing machines at all, since I cannot actually predict how the observer is going to move in the world.

I remember hearing that physics students that are more sensitive with the notion of reality, usually have more difficulties in really grasping the idea of SR, as opposed to students who are more aligned towards math. And I'm not surprised at all. I mean, the raw logic of SR is not that difficult to grasp at all, but the problems arise only once you try to apply the ideas to real world situations.

What mitchellmckain said is indicative to this "Any true understanding of the relativity of simultaneity must use the mathematics since it is primarily a mathematical concept not a philosophical one. I think than anyone with a good understanding of the relativity of simultaneity will naturally use the mathematics more, for it is only way to achieve clarity on the topic."

If clarity can be achieved ONLY though mathematics, it means there is something missing.

But you seem to be assuming not just an objective reality, but an objective flow of time. Philosophically, the findings of relativity seem more compatible with the idea that all events in spacetime have equal ontological status, that there's no particular set picked out by reality as happening 'in the present'.

Of course, this is well understood. The problem is more in detecting how/when does the information actually move towards you, since any information that is propagating towards you right now, is subject to the inertial coordination system you WILL be in once the information hits you.

See this article by Paul Davies:
http://urgrue.org/lib/mysterious-flow.html

Thanks

 

[AnssiH]

AnssiH, how can you "know your distance to the event when it happened" ?

Both space as well as time are unknown physical variables. Both distance and time are calculated in reference to observer, counted by the unit of speed of light. The only physical knowledge that we have is that the ratio of space divided by time is constant, for all frames. This ratio is expressed by the speed of light.

I think you do accept the relativity of space. Am I wrong ?

Yes I accept the relativity of space, but it is just something I've come to figure out myself from observing Lorentz-transformation, so my interpetation of this could be horribly horribly wrong. In any case, length contraction seems to be basically the same thing as relativity of simultaneity, and what I've picked up is that while the speed of light is the absolute speed limit, one could still travel hundreds of light years in a fraction of a second because near the speed of light, hundreds of light years could turn into few hundred meters. (of course hundreds of years of time has passed in the destination)

As for the thought experiment, it should suffice that you know what the distance to the event was from your perspective. This is enough to reveal you the moment the event actually happened in your perspective.

So now what is puzzling is simply the immediate history of your worldline, right before the moment you finally observe the event. Since the moment the observed event "actually happened" is in the raw logics decided by the inertial coordination system you are in WHEN you observe it, this leaves it unexplained what was happening to the information while it was propagating and you were NOT yet in the inertial coordination system in which you made the observation.

It seems that in the raw logics there is this sort of causal connection between "the moment of something being observed" and "the moment of the information being dispatched from the source". Only that the direction of this causality is running from the observation (future) to the dispatching (past).

I.e. you cannot decide when some information begins to propagate, UNTIL you know for certain which way you are moving at the moment of observation. Obviously you don't know "which way you are moving" for certain until you actually observe the information, and thus you also know the moment of dispatching ONLY once you have observed the information.

I.e. even if someone messages you 10 light seconds away, "I will send a test signal towards you 5 seconds after sending this", you may think then that this test signal must be following the message 5 seconds afterwards -> it must be halfway on its way towards you already. Only this is not true in the case you decide to change your direction rapidly into inertial coordination system that is receding from the source.

 

[JesseM]

Well yeah, but while it is very trivial to choose the moment "when" in raw logics, it's not that simple ontologically.

I mean, if you have this idea that there is FACTUALLY information approaching you steadily when you are in one inertial coordination system,

But if you simply believe in the "block time" view, and don't believe there is any objective flow of time and thus no objective coordinate-independent truth about whether the signal is "already on its way" or whether it "hasn't been sent yet", then there is no problem here.

I mean think about it, let's say you are the blue observer, talking with the purple observer;

BLUE: It's 2 seconds past, want to bet if the signal is on its way towards us?
PURPLE: Yes of course it is, it's always sent at 0s
BLUE: Ha! We'll see about that! Will you stay here and wait for the signal, while I'll switch to inertial system where the signal hasn't been sent yet.

First, of all, why does Blue have to start moving to "switch to an inertial signal where the signal hasn't been sent yet"? He doesn't have to move relative to Purple at all, he can do this just by declaring "I'm going to analyze this problem in inertial coordinate system A which is different from our own rest frame." Part of the problem here is that you are arguing as though each observer has an intrinsic frame that they are physically obligated to use, when in fact each observer has no obligation to use the inertial frame in which they are currently at rest, that is just a matter of convenience.

Blue starts moving away... ...observes the signal at 8s...
...and comes back to talk to the purple observer.

BLUE: I catched the signal at 8s, so it cannot have been on its way when we last talked, the signal cannot just jump back into the clock.
PURPLE: You are wrong, I catched the signal at 5s, as usual
BLUE: Of course I saw you catching the signal when you showed 5 seconds, but you are not to decide when the signal begun its journey any more than I am.

PURPLE: Sure, but do you assert that while you were making your bet, the world around you was not the same as the world around me? Do you not think, that if there actually was information approaching me, it was approaching you too?

Who wins the bet in your opinion? If neither, why?

Neither, as long as they both understand that asking whether the signal "had already been sent" at the time they talked is not a physical question at all, its just a question of coordinate systems. Analogously, suppose you have two people standing on a piece of paper, and each one wants to know if a certain dot at a different point on the paper is above their x-axis or not (assume each observer is at the origin of their own coordinate system). If they use different coordinate systems with the x-axes oriented at different angles, it is perfectly possible for the same dot to be below one guy's x-axis but above the other's. Similarly, if you picture spacetime as a 2D sheet with events as dots at different locations on it, then two observers at one point in spacetime who use coordinate systems with their t=0 axes oriented at different angles (again, assume they are both at the origin of their systems) can disagree if a distant event happened before or after t=0.

I expect that people who want SR to describe actual, philosophically coherent reality, would go bonkers here.

Not at all. The reality is the spacetime, the coordinate systems are just things you lay on top of it. Again, picture a 2D sheet with dots representing events at different locations on it, and then different people laying different coordinate systems drawn on tracing paper on top of it--the location of the dots relative to one another on the sheet never changes (all the spacetime intervals between the dots remain the same, for example), even if different coordinate systems disagree on issues like whether two events happened at the same time or not.

There are many other similar ontological problems. Like, it is quite puzzling to think about observers out there who are approaching you rapidly. From your perspective, they must be RIGHT NOW in such an inertial coordination system in which there must information about YOUR future approaching them already. Of course this information is not approaching them from your perspective, I realize that, but even from your perspective THEY exist in such a "place" where it must be so. (And vice versa)

Again, you're talking as though each observer is physically obligated to use the inertial frame in which they are currently at rest, but this is purely an aesthetic choice made for convenience.

But you seem to be assuming not just an objective reality, but an objective flow of time. Philosophically, the findings of relativity seem more compatible with the idea that all events in spacetime have equal ontological status, that there's no particular set picked out by reality as happening 'in the present'.

Of course, this is well understood. The problem is more in detecting how/when does the information actually move towards you, since any information that is propagating towards you right now, is subject to the inertial coordination system you WILL be in once the information hits you.

I don't think you understood my point at all, since the question of what is happening "right now" has no physical meaning in the block universe view. You simply have the same frozen spacetime, and different coordinate systems with their surfaces of simultaneity drawn at different angles, just like a piece of paper on which you can put different coordinate systems with their x-axes drawn at different angles, so in one coordinate system dot A and B may both lie on the x-axis while in another dot A lies on it but dot B lies below it. This is exactly analogous to the idea that in one coordinate system the event of my clock ticking 0 and the event of a distant signal being emitted both lie on the t=0 plane (ie they both happen at the same time) while in another coordinate system the event of my clock ticking 0 lies on the t=0 plane while the distant signal event lies above it (the event 'hasn't happened yet' in this coordinate system). If you can accept that the 'ontological reality' of the dots at different locations on the sheet of paper is independent of the choice of coordinate systems we lay on top of the paper, then you should also be able to accept that the ontological reality of spacetime with a bunch of events in it with intrinsic spacetime distances between them is independent of the choice of coordinate systems we lay on top of this spacetime.

 

[AnssiH]

Hmmm... I don't understand. Does the idea of block time tell us something about the ontological nature of what we usually think of as "beams of light approaching us"?

I mean, I don't really have problems in grasping the raw logic of this idea, and I don't even have problems in accepting the "ontological reality" of spacetime; that the world could basically operate this way.

But I don't understand how can one accept the idea of SR and still think that it is not necessary for events to basically run backwards from your point of view. What difference does it make that it is only your point of view? Obviously I understand there is no objective time flow which needs to reverse itself just because of you, and that passage of time is expressed by laying down the events on spacetime diagrams and using lines / planes in different angles to represent the "present" for different observer.

But when you do that, does not the change in the orientation of this plane of "present" actually mean that there are events which pass through it "backwards", and for this observer they will also occur in reverse order? (And don't worry, I understand this is not a problem for causality since it is exactly what preserves causality)

Block time view just reinforces that idea, doesn't it? Shouldn't we think of this as factual too? I mean, I really don't understand how could we have SR without this. The notion of present does change, doesn't that tell it all?

And even if you think of switching frames as switching from one "place" to another, it makes absolutely no difference to the reality around the observer. The reality around the observer in SR is that things around him slide in time in a non-absolute way, and possibly even backwards, yes?

 

[JesseM]

Hmmm... I don't understand. Does the idea of block time tell us something about the ontological nature of what we usually think of as "beams of light approaching us"?

I don't understand what you mean by this question. Since there is no flow of time in the block time view, a light beam only "approaches" us in the same sense that two lines drawn on a piece of paper can approach each other, there's no real change happening at the level of the block universe.

But I don't understand how can one accept the idea of SR and still think that it is not necessary for events to basically run backwards from your point of view.

What does "point of view" mean? Each observer only directly perceives things which happen at his immediate location, like light hitting his retinas. When observers talk about when distant events happen "from their point of view", what they really mean is laying a coordinate system on spacetime which they choose to use to analyze events, usually a coordinate system in which they are at rest. But again, this is just an aesthetic choice, each observer could use any coordinate system they wanted, there is no "ontological" truth about which coordinate system represents a given observer's "point of view" and which does not. In terms of the paper analogy, if you have lines at different angles drawn on the piece of paper, you could adopt the convention that each line's "point of view" would be described in terms of a spatial coordinate system where the y-axis is parallel to that line, but this would be purely a convention, you have no obligation to define the phrase "point of view" in that way.

Obviously I understand there is no objective time flow which needs to reverse itself just because of you, and that passage of time is expressed by laying down the events on spacetime diagrams and using lines / planes in different angles to represent the "present" for different observer.

No, the different coordinate systems do not "represent the present for different observers" at all, they are simply a set of different coordinate systems which can be used by any observers. Again, you can adopt the convention that each observer at a given moment uses the inertial coordinate system in which they are at rest, but this is purely a convention, you could equally well adopt the convention that each observer uses the inertial coordinate system in which they are currently moving at 0.7c along the x-axis, and that would define simultaneity "for them". In the block time view these are purely conventions, there is no physical or ontological reason for a given observer to say that one coordinate system represents his "point of view" while another doesn't.

 

[AnssiH]

I don't understand what you mean by this question. Since there is no flow of time in the block time view, a light beam only "approaches" us in the same sense that two lines drawn on a piece of paper can approach each other

Yes, and such is the case of all motion in block time view, it doesn't mean we could not think about information "being in motion" just like we think of anything else being in motion.

I understand this, and somehow I'm starting to get the feeling we are probably talking about the same thing with different terminology.

I mean I'm not at total loss here with these things. Obviously I understand that an observer cannot observe any information which is still on its way moving towards him (if I may call it movement).

I don't have any formal training on these things, I'm just self-taught, so that will probably show in my terminology, but I hope you could see through semantical issues without assuming in every turn that I don't understand anything about the nature of spacetime in SR.

(I think another thing that will show in my lack of formal training is that I probably view the same technical mechanics in totally different way than you might. But if the technical aspects are correct, there shouldn't be telling which semantical view is more correct than the other. Perhaps different takes on things could be seen as advantageous too?)

What does "point of view" mean?

When referring to POV, I mean the state of the universe around the observer whose POV I'm talking about. I am assuming there actually is a universe around me in certain state. I understand it is not in the same state for everyone else. Yet it is in one state from my point of view, even if I cannot see, hear or smell it.

In spacetime diagrams, my plane of simultaneity is expressing this state that I am talking about.

Each observer only directly perceives things which happen at his immediate location, like light hitting his retinas. When observers talk about when distant events happen "from their point of view", what they really mean is laying a coordinate system on spacetime which they choose to use to analyze events, usually a coordinate system in which they are at rest. But again, this is just an aesthetic choice, each observer could use any coordinate system they wanted, there is no "ontological" truth about which coordinate system represents a given observer's "point of view" and which does not.

Yes, exactly, it is an aesthetic choice, none is more right then the other, I understand. When I say the world is in certain state around me, I DO understand it is so only around me (and those who are at rest with me).


Ok, I understand, that the statement, "things must move backwards if I start moving away from the fast enough" can be understood in MANY different ways. Most of which are not how I mean it.

Is there ANY way at all for you to interpetate that statement so that it would seem correct for you? Can you see how I am only referring to how my plane of simultaneity is tilting in such a manner that somewhere there are events moving through it backwards? Can you assume that I might actually understand block time exactly the way you do, and that the meaning of the statement is the one that actually makes sense in SR?

Again, you can adopt the convention that each observer at a given moment uses the inertial coordinate system in which they are at rest, but this is purely a convention, you could equally well adopt the convention that each observer uses the inertial coordinate system in which they are currently moving at 0.7c along the x-axis, and that would define simultaneity "for them". In the block time view these are purely conventions, there is no physical or ontological reason for a given observer to say that one coordinate system represents his "point of view" while another doesn't.

Is there not a way to interpetate the information of block time in such manner that it actually tells what the state of the universe is around one observer? I mean, the universe must be in some state? Even if this information is invalid* for observers moving to other directions, and even if every observer can choose to think about the world as a block view, there still exists such a thing as "now" in which things are in certain state.

*And by invalid I don't mean non-existent, I mean "not the state of the world around them".

 

[JesseM]

When referring to POV, I mean the state of the universe around the observer whose POV I'm talking about. I am assuming there actually is a universe around me in certain state.

But that assumption is meaningless in the block time view! There is an actual spacetime "around" the observer in a 4D sense, but there is no "state of the universe" in the sense of a single 3D spatial slice through this 4D spacetime that somehow is ontologically preferred as that observer's "POV" than any other choice of slices. How a given observer chooses to slice up spacetime is a totally arbitrary matter of choice, just like the choice of how to orient the x and y axes in his coordinate system, there is no ontological truth about which choice should represent his "POV" and which shouldn't.

In spacetime diagrams, my plane of simultaneity is expressing this state that I am talking about.

But it is only "your" plane of simultaneity if we adopt the arbitrary linguistic convention that each observer defines "his" coordinate system to be the one in which he is currently at rest.

Yes, exactly, it is an aesthetic choice, none is more right then the other, I understand. When I say the world is in certain state around me, I DO understand it is so only around me (and those who are at rest with me).

No, you miss the point of what I meant by "aesthetic convention". My point was that even for a single observer, it is a matter of aesthetic convention as to what coordinate system, and which definition of simultaneity, he terms to be "his own". There is no intrinsic reason to attach one particular coordinate system to one particular observer. So there is no natural truth about what the world's present state "around you" is, we could equally well adopt the convention that the state of the world "around you" is defined to be whatever's on the surface of simultaneity of the coordinate system that is moving at 0.93c along the axis from the tip of your nose to a spot on the back of your head. Aesthetically this might be a lot uglier, but its not "incorrect" in any ontological sense. Also, note that even if you want to associate each observer with a coordinate system where they're at rest, it's still a matter of aesthetic choice to adopt the Einstein clock synchronization convention which results in different coordinate systems having different definitions of simultaneity; with a different clock synchronization convention you can have different inertial coordinate systems in motion with respect to each other which nevertheless all agree about simultaneity, although this is also uglier aesthetically because it means the equations of the laws of physics don't look the same in different frames (this would be true if you use the Mansouri-Sexl transformation instead of the Lorentz transformation, for example).

Ok, I understand, that the statement, "things must move backwards if I start moving away from the fast enough" can be understood in MANY different ways. Most of which are not how I mean it.

Is there ANY way at all for you to interpetate that statement so that it would seem correct for you? Can you see how I am only referring to how my plane of simultaneity is tilting in such a manner that somewhere there are events moving through it backwards? Can you assume that I might actually understand block time exactly the way you do

Not if you think there is any intrinsic, non-arbitrary reason to associate a particular definition of simultaneity with a particular observer, no.

Again, you can adopt the convention that each observer at a given moment uses the inertial coordinate system in which they are at rest, but this is purely a convention, you could equally well adopt the convention that each observer uses the inertial coordinate system in which they are currently moving at 0.7c along the x-axis, and that would define simultaneity "for them". In the block time view these are purely conventions, there is no physical or ontological reason for a given observer to say that one coordinate system represents his "point of view" while another doesn't.

Is there not a way to interpetate the information of block time in such manner that it actually tells what the state of the universe is around one observer? I mean, the universe must be in some state?

Not as I understand the "block time" view. If reality is just a 4D block, I can't see why there would be any intrinsic reason to associate certain ways of laying coordinate systems on this block with certain observers, any more than there is reason to associate certain spatial coordinate systems layed on a diagram on a piece of paper with lines that are part of that diagram. Aesthetically it might be simpler to use a coordinate system where the observer is at rest or a spatial coordinate system where the y-axis is parallel to the line in the diagram you're focusing on, but in neither case would I say there's any ontological reason you must make this association between coordinate systems and worldlines/lines in the 4D block/2D diagram.

 

[leandros_p]

So now what is puzzling is simply the immediate history of your worldline, right before the moment you finally observe the event. Since the moment the observed event "actually happened" is in the raw logics decided by the inertial coordination system you are in WHEN you observe it, this leaves it unexplained what was happening to the information while it was propagating and you were NOT yet in the inertial coordination system in which you made the observation.

It seems that in the raw logics there is this sort of causal connection between "the moment of something being observed" and "the moment of the information being dispatched from the source". Only that the direction of this causality is running from the observation (future) to the dispatching (past).

I.e. even if someone messages you 10 light seconds away, "I will send a test signal towards you 5 seconds after sending this", you may think then that this test signal must be following the message 5 seconds afterwards -> it must be halfway on its way towards you already. Only this is not true in the case you decide to change your direction rapidly into inertial coordination system that is receding from the source.

AnssiH, First, I apologize for the long post.

An event does not carry any physical information. For example, the light coming from the sun does not carry any physical information, as an event, other that of a position on space-time map of reality.

The measurements made from physical events help us to map reality, but they do not explain reality neither do they provide a causal connection for physical information, other than providing information for changes of the map of reality. In an analogy, an event that is happening at your neighbourhood has a “place” for the map of your neighbourhood, but when you change neighbourhood the same event is meaningless on the map of your new neighbourhood. (I will use the analogy of “neighbourhoods” and “maps”, for the rest of this message)

Therefore the created information of two flashes of light, as two physical events, traveling in the same direction separated by the time of 5 seconds have a meaning of created information of an event for an observer, but this information does not define the reality by which this physical information was produced by a physical agent, nor does it define the reality of the physical messenger of the information. Actually, it is the other way around: the reality defines both the production and the messenger of the information. The reality is the "causal connection" between the event and the observer . This "causal connection" is defined by Einstein in the constancy of space/time ratio, which is expressed by the constancy of speed of light.

Now, it seems odd to say that the omission of the observation of the second flash of light (which is the concomitant of changing the relative inertial frame of the observer after the reception of the first flash) carries the same physical information to the observer, as the physical information that is carried by the observation of the first flash. The carried physical information is not the production of the flash of light or the transmission of the flash of light in space-time. The presence of flash of light and its absence are both providing physical evidence of the same physical information about the reality of space-time, which is the consistency of the reality of the observer. In an analogy to the above example of moving between neighbourhoods, the presence and the absence of observation of events from your maps when you move from the one neighbourhood to another does not makes you to lose faith neither in maps nor in reality. You know what maps are good for, and you know that for each neighbourhood you need to use different map which is describing different events, appropriate for the reality of each neighbourhood.

But an observer is not obliged to observe everything, no matter how much space or how long time the observation covers. An observer is not obliged to receive all created information by events produced from the raw material of reality. This is due to certain “limit” that is introduced by the finite nature of the velocity by which the information of physical events travels towards the observer. The absence of observation of created physical events does not negate reality.

On the contrary, the example of the two flashes of light bonds the observer with the reality of space-time regardless of created events. The absence of the observation of the second flash of light when we change reference frame means that our “map” is the proper one for our new “neighbourhood”. The absence of observation of the second flash of light is an absence of a position of an event on the space-time map of reality of the new reference system.

The "history of my worldline" is not the history of present and of past events, but it is the history of my present and of my past reference systems. It is a history of present and past “maps” of my reality. When these references are chained in succession then the reality of space-time defined by the two axioms of Einstein "traverse" through them, producing a consistent reality for the observer through which light is always present as a physical constant for all reference systems, but it may be either present or absent as an event depending on the relative position of the observer.

In this context, the reality (the raw material of space-time) is consistent for the observer, but it is inconsistent for the events depending on the "position" of the observer. In an analogy, the reality of moving between neighbourhoods is consistent for an observer but when he moves to the new neighbourhood the map of the previous neighbourhood is inconsistent.

PS: Unforunately we do not know how to construct a global/universal map. We only know how to construct local maps.

Leandros

 

[mitchellmckain]

... what I've picked up is that while the speed of light is the absolute speed limit, one could still travel hundreds of light years in a fraction of a second because near the speed of light, hundreds of light years could turn into few hundred meters. (of course hundreds of years of time has passed in the destination)

That is correct. Though you should modify the parenthetical: (of course hundreds of years will have passed at the destination according to the interpretation of simultaneity used by an observer at the destination, assuming the desination is not itself moving relativistically with respect to your starting location).

So now what is puzzling is simply the immediate history of your worldline, right before the moment you finally observe the event. Since the moment the observed event "actually happened" is in the raw logics decided by the inertial coordination system you are in WHEN you observe it, this leaves it unexplained what was happening to the information while it was propagating and you were NOT yet in the inertial coordination system in which you made the observation.

It seems that in the raw logics there is this sort of causal connection between "the moment of something being observed" and "the moment of the information being dispatched from the source". Only that the direction of this causality is running from the observation (future) to the dispatching (past).

I.e. you cannot decide when some information begins to propagate, UNTIL you know for certain which way you are moving at the moment of observation. Obviously you don't know "which way you are moving" for certain until you actually observe the information, and thus you also know the moment of dispatching ONLY once you have observed the information.

I.e. even if someone messages you 10 light seconds away, "I will send a test signal towards you 5 seconds after sending this", you may think then that this test signal must be following the message 5 seconds afterwards -> it must be halfway on its way towards you already. Only this is not true in the case you decide to change your direction rapidly into inertial coordination system that is receding from the source.

I think you are confusing the observers conclusions with the raw information. Yes his interpretation of data will depend on the inertial frame in which he will make the observation but not the the raw data (the photons) which is traveling toward him.

Lets follow through on your example and say that after receiving the message you accelerate to 86.60254% of the speed of light away from him. When you do that then according to the coordinate system appropriate to your new inertial frame the first light signal arrived 2.68 seconds after he sent it from a distance of 2.68 light seconds away (using the lorentz transformations on t = 10s and x = 10 ls). After that due to time dilation you determine that he actually sends the second signal 10 seconds after he sent the first on your clock (in your new space-time measure) and during that time he has traveled 10(.866) = 8.66 light seconds away so that the signal must travel 8.66+2.68 = 11.34 light seconds requiring 11.34 seconds to reach you.

From his point of view he does wait only 5 seconds but after the light travels only 5 light seconds, the first signal reaches you, and you start moving away from him at 86.60254% of the speed of light. This means that the light will take an additional time t = 5 + .8660254 t to get to you. Solving this equation you get that t = 37.32 seconds, the time between the arrival of the two signals at your location according to the sender.

This agrees with time dilation because for you the time between the two signals was 10 s - 2.68 s + 11.34 s = 18.66 s which is only half the 37.32 seconds according to the sender. This is half rather than twice because these two events occur in the same place only in your coordinate system not his. The time between the events of sending the light signals takes half as long for the sender because these two events occur in the same place only in his coordinate system not yours (in your new inertial frame).

 

[AnssiH]

Not if you think there is any intrinsic, non-arbitrary reason to associate a particular definition of simultaneity with a particular observer, no.

So you really don't think there is any definition of simultaneity for an observer that might be more meaningful for him than the other definitions? You don't see any meaning in the phrase "there is a light signal approaching me now" at all? You have no idea what one could possibly mean by saying that? Because world is a stationary 4D block, not something where we could say things are actually happening?

I'm not asking "can you see how it might be wrong to say it THIS way", I'm asking if you can see ANY sense at all in that? Yet you answered "not if..." what does the "if" imply, do you mean there is some tiny opening for such interpetation that it might make sense to you?

Should I take it that block time is the ontological interpretation of the world according to SR? No sense of simultaneity exists at all, not even subjectively? The simultaneity planes don't mean anything at all, and I've been incorrectly thinking they represent "the present" for a single point in a world line? Are you are saying that that's not the case?

I mean, I'm sorry, but this just seems like technical nit-picking to the degree of trolling, it really does... Or then we just don't understand each others at all...

 

[AnssiH]

AnssiH, First, I apologize for the long post.

No problem at all. Thank you for bothering :)

On the contrary, the example of the two flashes of light bonds the observer with the reality of space-time regardless of created events. The absence of the observation of the second flash of light when we change reference frame means that our “map” is the proper one for our new “neighbourhood”. The absence of observation of the second flash of light is an absence of a position of an event on the space-time map of reality of the new reference system.

Yes I understand the nature of spacetime. You seem to be pointing out basically the same concern that Jesse is. Perhaps I better just modify my question so that it makes better sense in SR terminology.

Can your plane of simultaneity change its orientation in relation to events?

If so, does this mean that events (or "dots that represent events" whatever), pass through it backwards? Backwards in the sense that usually they pass through it other way around.

If the answer is "yes", then we are basically there.

As for if it is ok to say that "events can occur backwards", I think is completely a semantical issue. If I say it, it is not wrong per se, is it? Unless you want to make it wrong by pointing out something about the nature of time, or about the nature of simultaneity, or about the nature of events, or about light or information propagation or about what you can actually see when receiving photons or something. None of this matters as long as you DO accept there actually is a world around you, and there is a semantical meaning in the phrase "things happen", or in "motion". I don't care about how many different semantical meanings someone can think for words like time and motion.

 

[AnssiH]

I think you are confusing the observers conclusions with the raw information.

No.

I am simply assuming there is world around us where things are in motion even when we are not witnessing it. I'm starting to get the feeling that this is very unorthodox idea.

And by motion I mean the very ordinary meaning of motion that everybody use in their everyday life. I don't care if motion is not actually motion when drawn on paper.

Believe me, I understand that even if the tilting of a plane of simultaneity implies that events are occurring in backwards order, no one can actually SEE something moving backwards. That's not the point at all.

Oh man, I hope I never need to get a physicist to "move" his car, because it would be a looooong day... ;)

 

[leandros_p]

Can your plane of simultaneity change its orientation in relation to events?

If so, does this mean that events (or "dots that represent events" whatever), pass through it backwards? Backwards in the sense that usually they pass through it other way around.

If the answer is "yes", then we are basically there.

If I understand your question correctly, the answer is absolutely yes.

An observer calculates the positions of the events in his space-time map. The positions of events on the map are picturing the physical reality. There is an iconic relation between the ontology of reality and the calculation of positions of events: the space-time map of events depicts physical reality.

We have to understand that space-time reality is both finite and at the same time without limits. This antinomy/paradox of unlimited, but yet finite, physical reality is obliging us to produce a space-time map, constituted from observations/calculations of physical events that has a horizon. The “horizon” of the map of space-time means that there are real physical events that are “beyond” physical interaction with the reference system of the observer. Physical reality allows the observer to picture the physical events on a space-time map, but there is a limitation on simultaneous depictions. This limitation forms a boundary which acts like a horizon for the observation. I would say that “the plane of simultaneity change its orientation in relation to events” which are depicted on the space-time map of the observer, If I am allowed to use your phrase.

If you combine both axioms of Einstein:

1)The laws by which the states of physical systems undergo change are not affected, whether these changes of state be referred to the one or the other of two systems of co-ordinates in uniform translatory motion.

2)Any ray of light moves in the "stationary" system of co-ordinates with the determined velocity c, whether the ray be emitted by a stationary or by a moving body.

then you get the result that the observer of physical events is able to observe physical reality bounded in a horizon of events, although he can move within an infinite space-time reality. This is, according to my understanding, the physical meaning of time/space relativity.

You can also check the following presentation "[URL 9: Special Relativity II"]"simultaneity and causality"[/URL] for the terms: “causally connected events” and for “causally discounted events”


Leandros

 

[JesseM]

So you really don't think there is any definition of simultaneity for an observer that might be more meaningful for him than the other definitions?

Some coordinate systems might have more aesthetic or practical value to the observer, but their definition of simultaneity is not "more true" for that observer in any ultimate physical or ontological sense, no.

You don't see any meaning in the phrase "there is a light signal approaching me now" at all?

I can see what it might mean if you reject block time and take the view tha time "really flows", but not if you accept block time.

Because world is a stationary 4D block, not something where we could say things are actually happening?

According to the block time view, yes.

I'm not asking "can you see how it might be wrong to say it THIS way", I'm asking if you can see ANY sense at all in that? Yet you answered "not if..." what does the "if" imply, do you mean there is some tiny opening for such interpetation that it might make sense to you?

Again, the "if" is if you accept block time. You don't have to, of course--this is philosophy, not physics. But there can be no empirical reason to favor one definition of simultaneity over another in relativity.

Should I take it that block time is the ontological interpretation of the world according to SR?

No, like I said, block time is a philosophical viewpoint, you can accept SR without accepting block time.

No sense of simultaneity exists at all, not even subjectively? The simultaneity planes don't mean anything at all, and I've been incorrectly thinking they represent "the present" for a single point in a world line? Are you are saying that that's not the case?

It's not the case that physicists see these definitions of simultaneity as anything other than a convention. Remember, they are based on what is commonly referred to as "Einstein's clock synchronization convention", where each observer assigns coordinates based on a network of rulers and clocks which are at rest relative to himself, and where he synchronizes clocks based on the assumption that light should travel at the same speed in all directions in his coordinate system, so if a flash is set off at the midpoint of two clocks in his system, they are considered "synchronized" if they both read the same time when the light from the flash reaches them. The fact that this is referred to as a "convention" shows that physicists would not say there is any physical reason why you must synchronize your clocks in this way. Certainly things will be a lot more elegant if you do it this way, though, since this convention means that the laws of physics will obey the same equations in each inertial coordinate system, whereas if you use some other convention you will have to use different equations in each coordinate system. Still, nothing is stopping different observers from each using a set of clocks and rulers which are at rest relative to themselves but synchronizing their clocks in such a way that all observers agree on simultaneity (as I mentioned earlier, this would result in the transformation equations derived by Mansouri and Sexl rather than the Lorentz transformation for mapping different observer's coordinates to each other's), and likewise nothing is stopping different observers from defining "their own" coordinate system to be one that is measured by rulers and clocks which are not at rest with respect to themselves.

I mean, I'm sorry, but this just seems like technical nit-picking to the degree of trolling, it really does...

I'm confident that if you asked any physicist, they would agree with what I've said here, there's nothing physical that requires any observer to use a particular coordinate system or a particular definition of simultaneity. They wouldn't say there's anything incorrect (although it is less elegant) about using the set of inertial coordinate systems provided by Mansouri and Sexl, for example, as long as you made sure to find the correct equations for the laws of physics in each coordinate system. And remember, in general relativity, with the laws of physics stated in terms of tensors, there is even less reason to prefer one set of coordinate systems over any other, because the laws of physics will obey the same tensor equations in any coordinate system you can think up, a property known as diffeomorphism invariance (unlike in SR stated without using tensors, where only when you use the set of inertial coordinate systems provided by the Lorentz transform do the equations of the laws of physics look the same in every coordinate system).

 

[mitchellmckain]

No.

I am simply assuming there is world around us where things are in motion even when we are not witnessing it. I'm starting to get the feeling that this is very unorthodox idea.

You were "confusing the observers conclusions with the raw information" in the what you said in the portion I quoted, but perhaps this is only a problem with how you were trying to express yourself and that this is not the real source of confusion. So forgive me if I am wrong but I am going to make a guess, based on the statement which you just made, about what may be the real trouble.

No one is denying that there is a real world out there, it is only that in special relativity this real world is a four dimensional one that is not Euclidean. Given all four coordinates of an event, that event will be found precisely at those coordinates. However, these coordinates are not constants but are a functions of an inertial vector and for numerical coordinates an inertial vector (or inertial frame) must be selected and plugged into the coordinate functions. This does not make them or the world any less real. What it does do is strongly change is how that world is put together. It completely isolates events from each other, which are not causally connected because they have a spacelike distance between them. Eventually they reach out and touch each other in some later event and through that later event they become connected in a definite way, but before that happens, they might as well be in different universes, because they cannot affect each other in anyway. They cannot even say whether the other event has or has not happened yet. They are truly independent of each other.

If there is such a thing as clairavoyance then to bridge that space-like gap would be equivalent to an ability to see the future and all the difficulties, puzzles, paradoxes and contradiction which that involves. Restricted small region of space like the Earth the limitation of a tenth of a second hardly presents any problem. If a clairavoyant can see what is happening on the other side of the Earth it would be difficult to detect a less than a tenth of a second delay in what he or she sees, don't you think. If this ability does exist then by all accounts it is no where near clear or reliable enough to be bothered by such a time delay.

Anyway, back to our previous example of the two signals, I suspect that what may bother you is that before you accelerate, you interpret that the second signal is already 5 seconds into its journey and after you accelerate (if you really could supply the truly astronomical energies and forces to accelerate that fast), the message has not been sent yet, but that you have to wait an additional 7.32 seconds after you received the first signal before the second signal will even be sent. Yes, this is a startling result. But the truth is that both of these, are interpretations only with no definite reality, because there is no already happened or not yet happened in relation to events which are separated from us by space-like distances. The event is real and out there with its four inertial vector dependent space-time coordinates, but until those 10 seconds (or 11.34 seconds if you run away from it as in the example) have elapsed that event is practically in a different universe. It could have been an enormous antimatter explosion which will vaporize the Earth but for those initial 10 seconds it is in another universe.

Did you know that two equal sized asteroids hitting each other at a relative speed of 94.3% of the speed of light would produce as much energy as a non-relativistic collision if the one of the asteroids was pure antimatter? At a distance of only 10 light seconds and asteroids big enough to be noticed, that would be just such an Earth vaporizing event. The forces in the universe are enormous and destructive beyond belief and the way that special relativity keeps them apart from us is very comforting.

Believe me, I understand that even if the tilting of a plane of simultaneity implies that events are occurring in backwards order, no one can actually SEE something moving backwards. That's not the point at all.

Oh man, I hope I never need to get a physicist to "move" his car, because it would be a looooong day... ;)

NOTHING occurs in any backwards order, EVER! There is for example (our previous example) no inertial frame in which the two signals are sent in a different order. There is no inertial frame in which the signals are going back to the person who sent them. There is in fact no inertial frame in which the signals are traveling anything less than the speed light towards you. If events are separated by space-like distances there is no order, period. If events are separated by a time-like distance they are causally connected and the order is absolutely unchangeable in any way whatsoever! You cannot say that you accelerating makes the signal go back to the sender, that is pure imagination. Before you receive the signal any idea that the signal is already sent is also pure imagination. It is only in setting up problems this by simultaneously set up events separated by space-like distances, that we can create this illusion of a reversal of events, and this is pure imagination as well. When time has advanced to the point where a later event is connected to two separate events, which are themselves separated by a space-like distance then and only then can those two events, mutually, both be said to have already happened and are in the past, even though which happened first is a matter of opinion and much like who hit who first in a fight between squabbling children, it doesn't really matter.

As for moving moving his car, who better than the physicist, who can tell you what methods will be a complete waste of time because it is physically impossible. You may wish to keep warm exerting effort to feel like you are doing something useful, while the physicist freezes trying to think of something that will really work. But then, who is doing the real work in that case?

 

[AnssiH]

Some coordinate systems might have more aesthetic or practical value to the observer, but their definition of simultaneity is not "more true" for that observer in any ultimate physical or ontological sense, no.

Again, the "if" is if you accept block time. You don't have to, of course--this is philosophy, not physics. But there can be no empirical reason to favor one definition of simultaneity over another in relativity.

Sure, there is no empirical reason to favor one definition over another, but my point should still hold; if you accept the second postulate as part of reality, you must accept the full impact it has on reality. It makes no difference what it looks like on various paper abstractions of reality, or that the observer can interpetate the reality from any given inertial coordination if he so wishes.

All that matters is that isotropic nature of information propagation absolutely requires events to sometimes move from the so-called "future" back to the "past".

I mean Lorentz-contraction too is something that cannot be directly observed and is brought fourth by the exact same mechanic; relativity of simultaneity. Yet it is thought to be something that happens in real world, because the second postulate necessitates it.* And the full effect of the simultaneity planes onto the experience of reality for an observer must be taken into account in the twin paradox too. Lorentz-contraction belongs to the same class of phenomenons as "events moving backwards", and a host of other effects. We cannot pick and choose here.

Yet when I describle how the second postulate leads into "events occurring backwards" the point of view of one observer, I find it quite odd that suddenly there is this denial about the reality of this; suddenly the relativity of simultaneity is just some sort of abstraction. Well, I say if one denies this, he must also deny all the other effects of relativity of simultaneity, like Lorentz-contraction.

*Although I still don't understand how to solve the problems that arise from the asymmetric nature of Lorentz-contraction; the plane of simultaneity tilts only for the observer that actually changes direction from "rest". Since the observers has volume, the plane of simultaneity should tilt separately for every physical element of the observer, causing him to stretch by the same amount that the other observer contracts. The information in the bell-paradox page didn't really explain how to solve this, so I guess I'll start another thread about it soon...

Thank you leandros for your post too. I agree with you, and I would add that at every moment there exists one plane of simultaneity for any given observer that has more meaning that the other planes of simultaneity; it describes the actual state of the real world around the observer at that moment.

 

[AnssiH]

Given all four coordinates of an event, that event will be found precisely at those coordinates. However, these coordinates are not constants but are a functions of an inertial vector and for numerical coordinates an inertial vector (or inertial frame) must be selected and plugged into the coordinate functions. This does not make them or the world any less real. What it does do is strongly change is how that world is put together. It completely isolates events from each other, which are not causally connected because they have a spacelike distance between them. Eventually they reach out and touch each other in some later event and through that later event they become connected in a definite way, but before that happens, they might as well be in different universes, because they cannot affect each other in anyway.

Yes, this is exactly the way I've understood it.

When I said "I am simply assuming there is world around us where things are in motion even when we are not witnessing it" it means that the world around me does possesses a definite state that is more true to me than to an observer moving to another direction. That is, in my coordinate system there exist events that are simultaneous for me. And this is the state on which my observations are eventually based on.

Perhaps I should not call what the plane of simultaneity describes a "reality", since in SR something like block time is in many ways more objective than that, but I really cannot think of any other words to express this "reality" that is "meaningful for the experience" of a single observer. (I understand it is not actually "the experience" of a single observer)

Anyway, back to our previous example of the two signals, I suspect that what may bother you is that before you accelerate, you interpret that the second signal is already 5 seconds into its journey and after you accelerate (if you really could supply the truly astronomical energies and forces to accelerate that fast), the message has not been sent yet, but that you have to wait an additional 7.32 seconds after you received the first signal before the second signal will even be sent. Yes, this is a startling result. But the truth is that both of these, are interpretations only with no definite reality, because there is no already happened or not yet happened in relation to events which are separated from us by space-like distances.

Yes, that is the startling result I got too, and my intention was to get an ontological interpetation to such a thing. I take it that your interpetation is that the different inertial coordination systems are, in a sense, "detached" from each others. So that you don't need to assert that the light signal had been sent twice from the "point of view of a single world line". (And I still don't mean about what the observer actually sees)

It still bothers me that other effects of relativity of simultaneity, such as Lorentz-contraction, are still interpetated to be "real" for the worldline of an observer. I don't know what criteria for picking and choosing we could use here.

We hear about Lorentz-contraction all the time, but never about how SR also predicts that when changing direction, the actual state of the world around us undergoes such a transformation that some events must move back and forth between our subjective past and future. It seems to me that the reason we don't hear about this is that it sounds so absurd that people don't really want to interpetate it like that.

But really, it can be said that length contraction for an object occurs simply because the "far end" of the object "swoosh" forwards or backwards in time more than the "near end". How is that any more fantastical than events moving forward and backward in time? How can we accept the other but not the other?

btw, about the "truly astronomical energies to accelerate that fast", you don't really need much energy at all since this same thing should occur every time you change direction at all; it just occurs further away from your position. If the length of the plane of simultaneity is thought to be infinitely long, then even the most miniscule change of direction causes it to cross its own history at some finite distance from here.

Did you know that two equal sized asteroids hitting each other at a relative speed of 94.3% of the speed of light would produce as much energy as a non-relativistic collision if the one of the asteroids was pure antimatter? At a distance of only 10 light seconds and asteroids big enough to be noticed, that would be just such an Earth vaporizing event. The forces in the universe are enormous and destructive beyond belief and the way that special relativity keeps them apart from us is very comforting.

No I didn't know that, that is very interesting.

NOTHING occurs in any backwards order, EVER! There is for example (our previous example) no inertial frame in which the two signals are sent in a different order. There is no inertial frame in which the signals are going back to the person who sent them.

Yeah, Jesse made this point too, it leads to the idea of detached inertial frames, which is kind of interesting.

I mean I understand that nothing occurs backwards for a single inertial frame nor do any signals arrive to different inertial frames in different order.

The question was whether the "actual (subjective) state of the universe around a single world line" can proceed in such a manner that things "move" backwards. And obviously here we are talking about such a world line that changes from one inertial coordination system to another.

Of course I understand that the signals could never arrive to this observer in a backwards manner, that's not the point. The point is simply to comprehend what is occurring to the real state of the world around me when I change direction.

I mean if you imagine a virtual reality program that is showing how the Lorentz-contraction occurs from a clairvoyant point of view (well, you kind of have to have a clairvoyant view), this same VR progam would necessarily display events occurring in backwards manner.

Obviously things are not moving in backwards manner anymore when they are actually observed by a natural observer. The same objects that are moving backwards "temporally" are also moving closer to us "spatially", and causality is preserved. (I am aware that there are many semantical pitfalls in the previous sentence. Let's try to get over them)

But in order to achieve this feat of working causality together with the second postulate of SR, things MUST move backwards for the clairvoyant observer. And since it is the clairvoyant observer who sees "the world which springs the experience of the natural observer", this should tell us something about the actual ontological nature of the world around us (as described by SR)?

You cannot say that you accelerating makes the signal go back to the sender, that is pure imagination. Before you receive the signal any idea that the signal is already sent is also pure imagination.

That is true, but then we face the problem that I described in the last thought experiment in this thread, regarding blue and purple observer. The world must possesses some state around the observers when they were making their bet.

We must assert that the state of the world around the purple observer must have been such that the light signal WAS on its way.

Can we now assert that the state of the world around he blue observer was such that the light signal was NOT on its way yet? Because he was going to change direction?

It would be hard for the blue observer to stay as friends with the purple observer :(

That is to say, it seems that in SR we must "imagine" things really move backwards that way, or then we need to come up with another ontological interpetation of the actual "subjective" world around us. What other choices do we have?

 

[leandros_p]

I agree with you, and I would add that at every moment there exists one plane of simultaneity for any given observer that has more meaning that the other planes of simultaneity; it describes the actual state of the real world around the observer at that moment.

I think that I have to clarify that from my point of view "the plane of simultaneity for any given observer describes the map of the actual state of the real world around the observer at that moment".

I do not know if this just a difference of semantics for your point of you, but I think it is more than that. It means that reality as a physical term is transcendental, it is beyond elaboration. But, at the same time we can elaborate a plan/map of reality. I think that the other forum members participating in this thread describe this difference, in their own responses.

The "actual" state for the real world can be described only as relative information arranged and classified by a scientific methodology. This is the result of communicating with reality through physical consciousness.

The observer does not come in direct ‘contact’ with a physical event. The observer is always using a messenger in order to access the message of a physical event. The only way that could provide to the observer the reality of the actual state of the real world is to unite the observer with the essence of the world. Of course this is not how the science of physics works. This is the work of metaphysics.

We have to abandon our firm conviction that science is a methodology that provides the knowledge of the actual state of reality. Science is a methodology that provides information of the actual state of reality, therefore "the plane of simultaneity for any given observer describes the map of the actual state of the real world around the observer at that moment". The ‘map’ is information arranged and classified by a scientific methodology which administers ratios of quantities and qualities.

Having said that, I wonder how a map of the actual state of the real world can be useful for an observer. This question was answered by the two axioms of Special relativity. Einstein invented and provided for us a scientific mapping methodology that is the same for every observer and for every position of space-time world. According to Einstein's axiomatic proposition the scientific ratio of information is defined by the constancy of speed of light. The emerging maps of physical reality through Einstein's proposal are different for each observer, who is following this methodology, but this not paradox.

Even in classical physics the planes of simultaneity are different for two observers, and the results of physical measurements of events of real world are becoming equal only if the positions of the two observers are normalized according to a common reference system.

But, Einstein accepted as an axion that we can not find a common reference system for two observers, under certain space-time positions.The normalization of classical physics according to a common reference system is an illusion.

That is to say, it seems that in SR we must "imagine" things really move backwards that way, or then we need to come up with another ontological interpetation of the actual "subjective" world around us. What other choices do we have?

Let me give you another point of view, trying to answer your question (which was not addressed to me, but I find it very interesting. I apologize to Mitchell McKain for intervening. I am looking forward for his reply on this.)

SR explains the paradox of subjective world around us in the sense that we are being informed, or not being informed, about the real events of the world by physical messengers who travel in a finite velocity. Therefore some messengers do arrive at our space-time position and others fail to arrive at our space-time position. The failure of arriving in our position is not a failure of reality; reality exists in the most objective way. The failure of the messenger to carry the information in our position is generated from our inability to stay in an absolute immobile position of space-time. The messenger always travels towards our position but we never stay still; we are the ones that move backwards and forward, not the events of reality of things.

In this context, it is not that “some events must move back and forth between our subjective past and future”, but the messengers that carry the information about the events are moving back and forth in relation to our space-time variable position. So, there is no ontological subjectivity of the actual world around us, there is only informational subjectivity of the mapping of the actual world around us. In an analogy, our ‘map service’ is waiting for the messengers of the universe, which travel with a velocity no greater than the speed of light, to arrive at our space-time position to register the information that they carry for each objective physical event. The succession of registration of this information on the map of reality produces our subjective interpretation of the map of reality. But we must understand that we can not produce ontological conclusions by looking at a map of reality.

Unfortunately, scientific methodology does not produce ontological data. It merely produces subjective information of measurements and calculations which we call physical observations.

Finally let me say that from my point of view, ontological reality is not observed. It is experienced from within, for that ontological reality is not the subject of science.

Leandros

 

[mitchellmckain]

Yes, this is exactly the way I've understood it.
Perhaps I should not call what the plane of simultaneity describes a "reality", since in SR something like block time is in many ways more objective than that, but I really cannot think of any other words to express this "reality" that is "meaningful for the experience" of a single observer. (I understand it is not actually "the experience" of a single observer)

You can call it whatever you like but it has no objective reality. Regions of space time separated from you by space-like distance are in a gray area between already happened and not happened yet. Already happened because nothing you do can change them in any way and not happened yet because they cannot affect you in any way. So everything in this region of space-time could be said to be simultaneous with your current moment. For example, on a planet 10 light years away all events between those which you can now conceivably see with a telescope and the time on that planet when they could conceivably see your current moment with a telescope, all those events are simultaneous with your current moment. Yet these events take time to leave this extended region of simultaneity.

Yes, that is the startling result I got too, and my intention was to get an ontological interpetation to such a thing. I take it that your interpetation is that the different inertial coordination systems are, in a sense, "detached" from each others. So that you don't need to assert that the light signal had been sent twice from the "point of view of a single world line". (And I still don't mean about what the observer actually sees)

No it is not the inertial coordinate systems that are detached from one another they are all just in our head anyway. It is the regions of space-time separated by space-like distances which are detached from one another. You simply cannot say that a signal "has been already sent" until you receive the signal, for then and only then does it pass from "simultaneous" to "already happened". Likewise you cannot say that it has "not been sent yet" unless a light signal can reach that location from yours before it is sent.

It still bothers me that other effects of relativity of simultaneity, such as Lorentz-contraction, are still interpetated to be "real" for the worldline of an observer. I don't know what criteria for picking and choosing we could use here.

Well it just goes to show that the word "real" is pretty ambiguous and we really need to invent more precise word to describe these things. When I say that the coordinate system associated with an inertial frame is not real, what I mean is that we construct them to aid in calculation but that it has nothing to do with what events have already happened and what events have not happened yet. When we say that Lorentz contraction is real it means that it does not for example block the light of stars passing in front of it or stars passing behind it as if it were such a length. On the other hand, the contraction is not real in another sense because we are simply seeing the back end after it has already traveled towards its front end.

We hear about Lorentz-contraction all the time, but never about how SR also predicts that when changing direction, the actual state of the world around us undergoes such a transformation that some events must move back and forth between our subjective past and future. It seems to me that the reason we don't hear about this is that it sounds so absurd that people don't really want to interpetate it like that.

It makes more sense to me, to change our understanding of past, present and future to fit the Minkowsky structure of space-time like this:

\.future./
.\.../
p.\.../.p
r..\.../..r
e...\../...e
s...\/...s
e.../\...e
n.../..\...n
t../...\..t
./...\
/..past..\

Where the simultaneous present extends to all regions of space-time which are not causally connected to our present moment. Then these divisions of past, present and future will remain completely unchanged by any change in velocity or inertial frame.

But really, it can be said that length contraction for an object occurs simply because the "far end" of the object "swoosh" forwards or backwards in time more than the "near end". How is that any more fantastical than events moving forward and backward in time? How can we accept the other but not the other?

Because it is not really a matter of what sounds reasonable to the scientifically unititiated but a matter of what is consistent with our scientific observtions. As crazy as special relativity sounds to the non-scientist it makes perfect sense to the scientist, not like quantum physics where scientists are even more confounded and flabbergasted than the non-scientists.

btw, about the "truly astronomical energies to accelerate that fast", you don't really need much energy at all since this same thing should occur every time you change direction at all; it just occurs further away from your position. If the length of the plane of simultaneity is thought to be infinitely long, then even the most miniscule change of direction causes it to cross its own history at some finite distance from here.

I do not understand what you are saying. to accelerate to 86.6% of the speed of light not only requires energy equivalent to your mass energy (or to put it another way it requires half your mass in antimatter fuel with an equal part of regular matter to annihilate it with). And to accelerate to this speed even if you have this amount of energy is no laughing matter. At a reasonable acceleration which we know will not kill us of one g it would take a year and eight months to get to 86.6% of the speed of light. To do so in a few seconds would require a few hundred million gees which is way beyond what solid steel could endure let alone the human body.

I mean if you imagine a virtual reality program that is showing how the Lorentz-contraction occurs from a clairvoyant point of view (well, you kind of have to have a clairvoyant view), this same VR progam would necessarily display events occurring in backwards manner.

This is no idle question for me since I am writing just such a program as you have seen. But it does not yet have the capability you are suggesting. It has a relativity of simultaneity demo but it does not run things backwards and forward to make everything conform to coordinate system of the inertial frame of the the ship. Instead, time passes everywhere in agreement with the inertial frame of the sun, which in my program does not yet move around the center of the galaxy. This means that everything just speeds up when the ship travels at relativistic speeds. My program does not even have the ability to adjust the date at all. The trouble is that it has objects which move freely under the influence of gravity and is constantly integrating their motion.

But in order to achieve this feat of working causality together with the second postulate of SR, things MUST move backwards for the clairvoyant observer. And since it is the clairvoyant observer who sees "the world which springs the experience of the natural observer", this should tell us something about the actual ontological nature of the world around us (as described by SR)?

But physicists do not believe in clairavoyance and in fact only believe in local reality, something which quantum physics has now made very difficult. It is like being backed into a corner only to have to corner vanish from beneath their feet. From there they can either accept the downfall of determinism, reject either quantum physics or special relativity, or refuse to think about the nature of reality at all. I am in the first category and most physicists are in the last category.

But anyway, like most physicists, I accept the Minkowsky structure of space-time as quite real and it troubles me no more than it troubles them. I simply accept that events separated by space-like distances cannot be put into any real temporal order.

That is true, but then we face the problem that I described in the last thought experiment in this thread, regarding blue and purple observer. The world must possesses some state around the observers when they were making their bet.

Ah yes but these two are just exercising their mouths without any real meaning coming out of them. They can bet on and argue about nonsense until they are blue or purple in the face if they want, but what they are arguing about is not in fact a state of the world around them but only a state of their own minds. The signal has neither "already left" nor has it "not left yet," or both of these at the same time if you like. So both blue and purple are, in fact quite incorrect, and both would lose their bet, if the truth prevails, or, if you like, both are correct and both win the bet equally.

 

[JesseM]

Sure, there is no empirical reason to favor one definition over another, but my point should still hold; if you accept the second postulate as part of reality, you must accept the full impact it has on reality. It makes no difference what it looks like on various paper abstractions of reality, or that the observer can interpetate the reality from any given inertial coordination if he so wishes.

You are still completely misunderstanding the second postulate. It only says that if you construct coordinate systems in the way Einstein specified in part 1 of his 1905 paper--using a system of measuring-rods and clocks which are all moving inertially and at rest relative to each other, and with all the clocks synchronized using Einstein's clock synchronization convention--then you will find that the laws of physics obey the same equations in each of these coordinate systems (the first postulate), and that the speed of light is the same in all these coordinate systems (the second postulate). There is nothing in these postulates that says you must use such a coordinate system, and there is nothing in them that says light cannot move at a velocity other than c in whichever coordinate system you use. It's a simple if-then statement, saying that if you use the type of coordinate system he describes in part 1, then the two postulates should hold (the two postulates are described at the beginning of part 2 of that paper).

I mean Lorentz-contraction too is something that cannot be directly observed and is brought fourth by the exact same mechanic; relativity of simultaneity. Yet it is thought to be something that happens in real world, because the second postulate necessitates it.*

Nope, Lorentz contraction also depends on your coordinate system, and there is nothing that says you can't use a coordinate system where it works differently. Relativity only says that if you construct inertial coordinate systems in the way Einstein describes using his clock synchronization convention, then Lorentz contraction will obey the equation l = L \sqrt{1 - v^2/c^2}.

And the full effect of the simultaneity planes onto the experience of reality for an observer must be taken into account in the twin paradox too.

Nope, the twin paradox can be analyzed in any coordinate system you like, and provided you have the correct form for the equations of physics in that coordinate system, you will get the correct answer. And note that even if you use the inertial coordinate systems which are normally used in SR, there is no need to think about "tilting planes of simultaneity" or anything like that, because the usual approach is to pick a single coordinate system, and to say that if a given clock's velocity as a function of time in that coordinate system is v(t), then between the time t_0 when the clocks depart each other and the time t_1 when they reunite, that clock should have elapsed \int_{t_0}^{t_1} \sqrt{1 - v(t)^2/c^2} \, dt. No matter which inertial frame you pick, this will give the correct answer for how much time each clock has elapsed between the time they depart and reunite, and you will always find that the clock that moved non-inertially elapsed less time than the one that moved inertially. No need to switch between different frames, or consider different definitions of simultaneity, at all (see the spacetime diagram explanation from the twin paradox FAQ).

Yet when I describle how the second postulate leads into "events occurring backwards" the point of view of one observer, I find it quite odd that suddenly there is this denial about the reality of this; suddenly the relativity of simultaneity is just some sort of abstraction. Well, I say if one denies this, he must also deny all the other effects of relativity of simultaneity, like Lorentz-contraction.

No one is denying them, just pointing out that they are coordinate-dependent, and the first and second postulates only say that if you construct your coordinate systems in a certain way then you will see Lorentz-contraction and simultaneity work a certain way.

*Although I still don't understand how to solve the problems that arise from the asymmetric nature of Lorentz-contraction; the plane of simultaneity tilts only for the observer that actually changes direction from "rest". Since the observers has volume, the plane of simultaneity should tilt separately for every physical element of the observer, causing him to stretch by the same amount that the other observer contracts. The information in the bell-paradox page didn't really explain how to solve this, so I guess I'll start another thread about it soon...

There is no problem with Lorentz contraction if you pick a single inertial coordinate system and stick with it. Your confusion arises because you imagine Lorentz contraction would work the same way in some sort of non-inertial coordinate system which moved along with an accelerating observer, which is simply not true.

 

[pervect]

Assuming:
- Every event happens at some actual moment
- We can figure out the moment by knowing our distance to the event when it happened and the speed of light
- The notion of time is the same for every co-moving observer, regardless of the history if their world lines.
- Special Relativity holds true

I haven't had time to study this closely, but I have my doubts that all of the above can be true. For instance, in the Rindler metric of an accelerated observer, not every event in space-time has a coordinate, which is my interpretation of what you mean when you say "happens at some actual moment".

One can certainly come up with other coordinate systems in which every event does have a coordinate. But when one selects such a coordinate system, the notion that "the time coordinate is the same as that of a co-moving observer" is no longer true.

I was thinking about this some more, and I noticed that I was requiring every event to have unique coordinates, while you did not necessarily make that assumption (what I called coordinates you called by a different name, so your entities do not necessarily have all the properties that my coordinate-entities do).

If we relax the requirements that coordinates be unique, I think your approach could work, unless there is some other obstacle that I haven't noticed.

What I don't like about your approach is that it incoroporates obsever-dependent quantities into "reality".

Note also that your philosophical approach is not required - it's just one way of thinking about things. (That's a general category of any sort of philosophy - as long as it's self-consistent, it generally doesn't matter).

If you don't like some elements or conseqences of your philosphical assumptions, there are alternatives. I hope I have sketched out enough information to allow you to explore at least some of them. Basically, an alternate approach and the one I use is to get rid of the idea of "simultaneity" as being a part of "reality" and put it in the category of "observer dependent quantities".

 

[Longstreet]

This whole post is just opinion. It's not scientific at all. You can see that for yourself but this is just so you don't make ten posts about how unscientific I'm being; so save your fingers.

I actually argue that nothing is “real”. For instance, trees don't exist. A tree is simply a construct we have come up with to help us remember where to get oranges or apples or go to keep from getting eaten by a lion. The universe doesn't know what a tree is. Atoms will just go where they will and don't care about whether they are part of a tree. And of course I have to relate a tree with other things like apples and atoms and being able to climb them, but those are also simply constructs we have come up with to cope with reality. Ok, but enough of that, time to talk about these constructs.

I think one of the main things is the non-inertial reference frames you are trying to avoid, and this is true even without special relativity. Say you have an inertial reference frame and an object takes a curved path, say from some force. You can make a new coordinate system where the object is stationary the entire time, or in it's own "inertial" reference frame. However, this has some strange properties. The new coordinate system fixes everything by bending the paths of everything else by applying fictional forces. In classical physics this is not a problem because we can simply define "the" coordinate system where our lines are all nice and straight and apply forces that don't seemingly spring out of no-where. Unless of course we're just masochists and really like doing that.

First off I am really not familiar with GR at all. I pretty much know what assumptions you can and can't make. However, I think the main problem here is that since we can't have “the” universal coordinate system, we run into major problems when things start taking curved paths.

If I may, when you run away from the clocks the light signal looks like it's being bent. So not only do you worry about light going at the speed of light, but it seems to have to travel farther as it takes this weird path that you didn't expect. I think this is resulting in the whole light “line” getting shifted back at the source when you crunch your acceleration into a point, which makes it seem like something *really* funky is happening. I am having a hard time understanding your diagrams though so I'm only guessing.

On the another issue, however, I think Einstein held the belief that the universe had “a” state whether or not we were observing it. This is pretty evident as he trys to combat the “Copenhagen Interpretation”, such as with the EPR paradox. This thread is about relativity, I know, but that goes to the question of what reality is from Einstein's point of view.

Thanks,

 

[mitchellmckain]

On the another issue, however, I think Einstein held the belief that the universe had “a” state whether or not we were observing it. This is pretty evident as he trys to combat the “Copenhagen Interpretation”, such as with the EPR paradox. This thread is about relativity, I know, but that goes to the question of what reality is from Einstein's point of view.

This is off topic, but I already opened it above myself. Your understanding of the Copenhagen interpretation is coming from its detractors and is certainly not how it is expessed today. Accordingly, the universe has a state whether it is observed or not, but it is a quantum state (consisting of a wave function) not a classical state (consisting of positions and velocities of point particles). Bohr may have said at one time that reality was created by the act of observation but this was an unfortunate way of expressing only that the measuring process creates the result of the measurement. The measuring process alters the quantum state of what you are measuring to a state which is consistent with the result of the measurement. But that does not mean that reality has no definite state before the measuring process but only that this definite quantum state does not necessarily have a definite value for classical quantities such as position or velocity.

 

[AnssiH]

I think that I have to clarify that from my point of view "the plane of simultaneity for any given observer describes the map of the actual state of the real world around the observer at that moment".

I do not know if this just a difference of semantics for your point of you, but I think it is more than that.

Yeah, it is more than semantics. Although I have explored different approaches during this thread. One has been that the actual state of the world exists, and changes the way that is evident from the planes of simultaneity. And another has been that there is a kind of "physical" detachment between different inertial coordination systems, which falls close to planes of simultaneity merely describing a "map of reality"

We have to abandon our firm conviction that science is a methodology that provides the knowledge of the actual state of reality. Science is a methodology that provides information of the actual state of reality

Yeah, that's how it would seem regarding SR, although I am a bit uncomfortable with this. I feel a strong need to really find out the actual mechanic of things, and I am not happy with merely coming up with the right numbers. And I do believe that we, mere humans, are actually able to understand the real mechanics of the universe, all the way from the most fundamental interaction(s).

Even in classical physics the planes of simultaneity are different for two observers, and the results of physical measurements of events of real world are becoming equal only if the positions of the two observers are normalized according to a common reference system.

I'm not sure what you mean by this, but let it be said that it is the postulate, that the speed of light is "attached" to each perceiver, which is what causes the relativity of simultaneity. That is, if the speed of light was attached to something that is absolute for everyone, like the source of the light, then the notion of simultaneity would be absolute (albeit the natural perceptions of the observers would be just as non-simultaneous as in SR)

SR explains the paradox of subjective world around us in the sense that we are being informed, or not being informed, about the real events of the world by physical messengers who travel in a finite velocity. Therefore some messengers do arrive at our space-time position and others fail to arrive at our space-time position. The failure of arriving in our position is not a failure of reality; reality exists in the most objective way. The failure of the messenger to carry the information in our position is generated from our inability to stay in an absolute immobile position of space-time. The messenger always travels towards our position but we never stay still; we are the ones that move backwards and forward, not the events of reality of things.

This is very interesting, and this is just the kind of dialogue I would hope I see more. There's just this lack of desire to explain these things, perhaps due to most people having a purely technical point of view to SR.

That stuff you wrote immediately suggests something about the ontological nature of SR, which the time block view or timespace diagrams don't. Very good.

If we accept that view, it also tells us something about, say, Lorentz-contraction. In that view, Lorentz-contraction exists only in the imaginary "map of the actual state of reality", until the information of fast-moving objects actually reaches us so to "manifestate" the contraction as reality (although the visual image of Lorentz-contracted ship might not LOOK contracted, but that's another issue altogether)

And in that view it would be just as WRONG to say that "when a ship accelerates, it contracts", as it would be to say "when you accelerete away from things, their time slows down, possibly to the point of them moving backwards". Yet we hear about the contracting ships all the time.

Unfortunately, scientific methodology does not produce ontological data.

This made me wonder if theory of relativity and quantum mechanics are the only scientific theories that do NOT produce ontological data? Are there other such theories? Like the evolution theory, that tells us exactly what happens in the actuality of the world, and it immediately has a very clear ontological meaning.

 

[AnssiH]

It still bothers me that other effects of relativity of simultaneity, such as Lorentz-contraction, are still interpetated to be "real" for the worldline of an observer. I don't know what criteria for picking and choosing we could use here.

Well it just goes to show that the word "real" is pretty ambiguous and we really need to invent more precise word to describe these things.

You are so very right about that. I think it is one major part of the problem in the discussion of these things, that words like "reality" and someones "perspective" become very ambiguous in SR.

There's a three kinds of "reality" in this discussion.

One is the kind of block time view reality, objective data, not attached to an observer per se.

Another is the reality that an observer perceives with his senses.

And then there's the intermediate reality between these. The fuzzy "present" region for each observer. I would think this reality too must describe a single "state" for everything per each moment, even if it were permitted that some object could enter the same state multiple times.

It makes more sense to me, to change our understanding of past, present and future to fit the Minkowsky structure of space-time like this:

\.future./
.\.../
p.\.../.p
r..\.../..r
e...\../...e
s...\/...s
e.../\...e
n.../..\...n
t../...\..t
./...\
/..past..\

Where the simultaneous present extends to all regions of space-time which are not causally connected to our present moment. Then these divisions of past, present and future will remain completely unchanged by any change in velocity or inertial frame.

Yeah, that is all very well, and that's the way I think about it too, or more to the point, the way I think about the technical side of it.

But it does leave completely unexplained, what IS occurring in the "present" region. Of course it tells us how to treat it technically so to "come up with the right numbers", but it doesn't say what is its meaning to the world around us. And that is the topic of this thread. I.e. should we think that ALL the events in the "present" region exist at the same time, or that only some set of events exist, as a subject to the inertial coordination system of an observer, or something else?

As crazy as special relativity sounds to the non-scientist it makes perfect sense to the scientist

It makes perfect sense to me too, at least logically, and I had already accepted that SR means things move through my notion of time in my perspective just like I described, until the idea was shot down in this thread, without offering much of an alternative. I mean it is not an alternative to offer "this is what it looks like in block time view" or in Minkowski spacetime. Minkowski spacetime is what implied to me to my own conclusions in the first place. My conclusions are sitting on the technical descriptions, and they don't change by describing the same raw logics differently.

And I'm thinking part of the reluctance to talk about these things occur because we simply don't know what is going on ontologically. It gives us comfort to think that at least we have the numbers, but it is a grave injustice to science to just decide "we can never find out and there's no point to even ask the question". Call me old-fashioned, but I do think every phenomenon we can perceive has a solid explanation that tells us exactly what is going on around us, and a sheet of paper with a spacetime diagram on it apparently doesn't do this.

btw, about the "truly astronomical energies to accelerate that fast", you don't really need much energy at all since this same thing should occur every time you change direction at all

I do not understand what you are saying.

I'm saying that you need the astronomical energies ONLY if you wish to have the plane of simultaneity to cross its history at a very close distance to you, but if it suffices that it crosses 1000 lightyears from here, the needed acceleration is not that strong. And the effect should be technically the same regardless of if it happens three meters from you, or in another galaxy.

I mean if you imagine a virtual reality program that is showing how the Lorentz-contraction occurs from a clairvoyant point of view (well, you kind of have to have a clairvoyant view), this same VR progam would necessarily display events occurring in backwards manner.

This is no idle question for me since I am writing just such a program as you have seen. But it does not yet have the capability you are suggesting.

I urge, I urge you to please make a program that demonstrates Lorentz-contraction. :)

You will have to make a decision about the ontological nature of the "present" region.

Since you are demonstrating Lorentz-contraction, which is not a "visual illusion" but a description of the actual "unseen" state of the universe, you WILL have to make such an ontological decision that you will display the very state that the planes of simultaneity describe, through a clairvoyant view.

And having made that decision, it immediately leads into a system where you must potentially display the "actual" states of the world moving "backwards". (Especially if you amplify the effect by slowing down C)

Also, if you consider having a VR environment where more than one person can navigate around, you will notive such a system cannot be implemented at all. Because when these persons are trying to see how both of them Lorentz-contract when they are approaching each others, you must also display the actual FUTURE state of each person, which obviously you cannot know, since the doings of the real persons cannot be deterministic. (Although they can be in the real world)

The trouble is that it has objects which move freely under the influence of gravity and is constantly integrating their motion.

Yeah, I think to display Lorentz-contraction, you should probably stick with SR, and omit gravity from the equation altogether. Just have objects that can move around, and perhaps have little clocks attached to different parts of each object to display how Lorentz-contraction is, in fact, merely about time.

But physicists do not believe in clairavoyance

Obviously not, but it seems like it's a good word to communicate when one is talking about the actual state of the "present" region per observer, instead of the visual perceptions or of the whole present region in the spacetime diagram. So thanks :)

It is like being backed into a corner only to have to corner vanish from beneath their feet. From there they can either accept the downfall of determinism, reject either quantum physics or special relativity, or refuse to think about the nature of reality at all. I am in the first category and most physicists are in the last category.

Yeah, exactly so. And I think it is kind of wrong to refuse to think about the nature of reality for a physicist. Even if one has to say "I don't know", it's still better to at least try to find out. And if one doesn't care, he is always running the risk of getting a completely wrong idea about something and so eventually coming to a dead end in his theory.

Since you work on virtual worlds, you are probably painfully aware, how there always exists multiple technical mechanics to achieve the exact same end result. But still only one of these radically different mechanics is similar to what is occurring in the real world. So if you are just to stare at the numbers, you will never be able to tell what the actual mechanic is that spawns these numbers -> you could never make any meaningful progress.

As for me, I'm not sure if I belong to any of the three categories. When I'm backed to a corner in that way, it really pains me that I don't seem to have the true knowledge of the system (universe). And then when I start thinking, and I am willing to unlearn; back up on my path of learning as far as seems necessary to solve the issue. I am willing to backstep so far as to reject SR, if that's necessary. But I don't know if it is, and removing SR from the scientific worldview also pretty much means building the whole worldview again from scratch. Not for the weak at heart! :O

So let it be said I am not particularly glad about the concerns I am raising... I would be sleeping better at nights if I really grasped the ontological meaning of SR, but it is starting to seem this is impossible. If it was possible, someone would have done it, and I would know about it, I think.

 

[AnssiH]

Nope, Lorentz contraction also depends on your coordinate system, and there is nothing that says you can't use a coordinate system where it works differently.

I seem to have a lot of trouble interpetating your points correctly. That could be my failure.

I don't understand what you mean by "nothing says you can't use a coordinate system where it works differently". Are you saying, that everything I've ever heard of Lorentz-contraction is simply not true? That one could just decide it doesn't happen, or happens completely differently, by simply choosing a different coordinate system for himself? How can I interpetate the ontological meaning of such statement? How can we just "choose" what happens out there? I must be totally missing your point here.

Nope, the twin paradox can be analyzed in any coordinate system you like, and provided you have the correct form for the equations of physics in that coordinate system, you will get the correct answer.

Yes of course. But regardless of the technical method you solve it with, the reality is still that the other twin aged more. And it can be said, that the critical moment is the turnaround phase during which the plane of simultaneity, which is attached to the turning twin, does tilt.

This has an ontological meaning to the state of the "earth" from the point of view of the spacetwin (what is it?), and that meaning is the same for each different technical method to solve it. The ontological meaning doesn't change even if you change the math expression of the same thing.

Yet when I describle how the second postulate leads into "events occurring backwards" the point of view of one observer, I find it quite odd that suddenly there is this denial about the reality of this; suddenly the relativity of simultaneity is just some sort of abstraction. Well, I say if one denies this, he must also deny all the other effects of relativity of simultaneity, like Lorentz-contraction.

No one is denying them, just pointing out that they are coordinate-dependent, and the first and second postulates only say that if you construct your coordinate systems in a certain way then you will see Lorentz-contraction and simultaneity work a certain way. There is no problem with Lorentz contraction if you pick a single inertial coordinate system and stick with it. Your confusion arises because you imagine Lorentz contraction would work the same way in some sort of non-inertial coordinate system which moved along with an accelerating observer, which is simply not true.

I am not assuming an accelerating inertial coordination system at any point. This is very interesting though, I mean I know you are pointing out things are coordinate dependent in SR, to which I point out that an observer actually does exist in a coordination system so it cannot be said that the whole "present" region surrounds him at each moment, for example.

And everything you point out is something I agree completely, but I am kind of wishing there was a comment made about what do you think the world around you is like right now? You cannot just say that you are surrounded by a "block time", without adding some words about what is the actual meaning of such statement?

For example, do you believe, that right now, there is information approaching you steadily from your monitor? Do you think the monitor is in certain state right NOW (as oppose to all the possible states it could be in the "present" region), which you will perceive a short moment later? And if you do, then what do you reckon would have happened to that state, had you accelerated rapidly to another intertial coordination system, say, receding from the monitor?

 

[AnssiH]

I was thinking about this some more, and I noticed that I was requiring every event to have unique coordinates, while you did not necessarily make that assumption

Well yeah, I'm not sure. I think it kind of depends on the technical way to interpetate SR. I think we can attach unique 4D spacetime coordinate for each event, if we then just let different observers "read" the event from different locations. If we say that the plane of simultaneity of each observer is simply "reading" the data of the spacetime, then each event still has single unique coordinates, while a single observer could read the same coordinates multiple times. (Of course in this case, each state of a beam of light on its way towards the observer is also static information that can be read multiple times, and so multiple readings don't mean multiple signals sent to observer)

Anyhow, that's just another technical way to look at SR, it doesn't necessarily say anything about the ontological nature of it.

If we relax the requirements that coordinates be unique, I think your approach could work, unless there is some other obstacle that I haven't noticed.

Well it's the only approach I have been able to make work all the way. Could be I am missing something as well.

What I don't like about your approach is that it incoroporates obsever-dependent quantities into "reality".

Yeah, that's exactly the concern I am having, I'm glad you noticed it. It is kind of backwards logics, and that's not good at all. But then I would like to point out, that the technical, raw logic of Lorentz-transformation is backward in the same way, and that's what we are basically using to describe the effects of SR, like length-contraction.

If you don't like some elements or conseqences of your philosphical assumptions, there are alternatives. I hope I have sketched out enough information to allow you to explore at least some of them.

Yeah, I think you have. Thanks. I'd hope people were talking about these issues more in general. I think some interesting ideas might arise.

 

[AnssiH]

Say you have an inertial reference frame and an object takes a curved path, say from some force. You can make a new coordinate system where the object is stationary the entire time, or in it's own "inertial" reference frame. However, this has some strange properties.

Yeah, I don't think that's a good way to do things. Objects that move along curved path don't see the light rays moving straight, that should tell them they are absolutely curving or rotating. We cannot just attach a rotating frame on a spinning disk and expect everything else in the universe to behave physically correctly in this rotating frame.

First off I am really not familiar with GR at all. I pretty much know what assumptions you can and can't make. However, I think the main problem here is that since we can't have “the” universal coordinate system, we run into major problems when things start taking curved paths.

If I may, when you run away from the clocks the light signal looks like it's being bent.

Well, in the original pictures I had not included any acceleration at all, since it just tends to confuse people. The acceleration was instant. And in those examples, we can make that assumption, because I was not describing what happens while someone is accelerating, at all. I was just describing someone who is in one inertial coordination system, to move to another inertial coordination system.

In the last thought experiment, I added a little curve there, just to show that the object could accelerate from one direction to another, without interfering with how the planes of simultaneity are thought to behave in the inertial coordination system.

It's not like there's some kind of momentary "problem" during the change of direction, but this issue actually exists for quite a time while the object is moving uniformly. (The straight lines are uniform motion, not acceleration)

On the another issue, however, I think Einstein held the belief that the universe had “a” state whether or not we were observing it. This is pretty evident as he trys to combat the “Copenhagen Interpretation”, such as with the EPR paradox. This thread is about relativity, I know, but that goes to the question of what reality is from Einstein's point of view.

Yeah, I would agree, that's pretty much how I've understood Einstein's writings. And there are other examples. For example, he participated in the discussion about rotating disk paradox, when physicists started to consider Lorentz-contraction as some kind of optical illusion, so to get rid of the problem of the spokes not contracting. Einstein thought this was pretty serious misunderstanding (and so would I!) and made a comment on the problem.

http://freeweb.supereva.com/solciclos/gron_d.pdf
page 5:

In February 1911 V.Varićak claimed that according to Einstein’s theory the Lorentz contraction is a sort of observational illusion, and that in reality bodies are not contracted when moving. He thus concluded that there is no paradox. Einstein considered this misinterpretation of the theory of relativity to be rather serious and therefore gave an answer where he explained the relativistic meaning of the Lorentz contraction.

 

[JesseM]

Nope, Lorentz contraction also depends on your coordinate system, and there is nothing that says you can't use a coordinate system where it works differently.

I seem to have a lot of trouble interpetating your points correctly. That could be my failure.

I don't understand what you mean by "nothing says you can't use a coordinate system where it works differently". Are you saying, that everything I've ever heard of Lorentz-contraction is simply not true? That one could just decide it doesn't happen, or happens completely differently, by simply choosing a different coordinate system for himself? How can I interpetate the ontological meaning of such statement? How can we just "choose" what happens out there? I must be totally missing your point here.

It's not a question of whether it "happens" or "doesn't happen", it's a question of whether the laws of physics are such that it would happen if you chose to use the type of inertial coordinate system described by Einstein. No matter what coordinate system you use, it should be easy enough to figure out how your coordinate system maps to an inertial coordinate system of the type he describes (just figure out how a set of physical clocks and rulers moving inertially as Einstein described would behave in your chosen coordinate system), and to check and make sure that the laws of physics as you see them would obey the two postulates of SR when mapped into any such inertial coordinate system. As long as they would, then SR is correct in your universe, it doesn't depend on whether you actually choose to describe the universe and the laws of physics in terms of such an inertial coordinate system.

Nope, the twin paradox can be analyzed in any coordinate system you like, and provided you have the correct form for the equations of physics in that coordinate system, you will get the correct answer.

Yes of course. But regardless of the technical method you solve it with, the reality is still that the other twin aged more. And it can be said, that the critical moment is the turnaround phase during which the plane of simultaneity, which is attached to the turning twin, does tilt.

But I don't see why you think it's important to analyze it in terms of how simultaneity in the accelerating twin's own instantaneous inertial rest frame would shift. Like I said, the normal procedure would not be to try to figure out how things look from the accelerating twin's "point of view" in the first place, but just to figure out how everything looks in an inertial frame.

As an analogy, say you have two paths through 2D space which meet at two points, and one path is a straight line between the two points while the other has a curve in it, just like the spacetime diagram of the two twins in the twin paradox. You want to figure out the length of the two paths, and you can do so by drawing an x and a y axis, figuring out the equation for the slope of each path as a function of the x-coordinate, S(x), and then evaluating the integral \int_{x_0}^{x_1} \sqrt{1 + S(x)^2 } \, dx between the endpoints of the path x_0 and x_1, which unless I'm mistaken should give the total length of each path (note that for a small section of the path where the horizontal change is dx and the vertical change is dy, the slope will be S=dy/dx which means dy=Sdx, and the length of that small section will be \sqrt{dx^2 + dy^2} = \sqrt{dx^2 + S^2 dx^2} = dx \sqrt{1 + S^2}). Of course you will find that the straight-line path between the two points is always shorter than the non-straight path; that's just simple geometry. Now, if you liked you could associate each point on the non-straight path with a coordinate system where the x-axis was exactly parallel to the path at that point, and you could point out how along the section of the path that's curved, the y-axis of the coordinate system associated with each point is changing its angle. But would this really be the best or clearest way to understand why the non-straight path is always longer than straight path? Doesn't it make more sense to pick a single coordinate system to use to find the length of both paths, or just to point out that the geometry of 2D space is such that a straight line is always a geodesic and will thus be the shortest possible path between two points?

This has an ontological meaning to the state of the "earth" from the point of view of the spacetwin (what is it?)

No it doesn't. There is no ontological reason why you must consider the traveling twin's "point of view" to involve a series of inertial coordinate systems in which he is instantaneously at rest and which all use Einstein's clock synchronization convention. Even if you want to consider the traveling twin's "point of view" here as involving a series of inertial frames where he's instantaneously at rest, you could equally well consider a series of inertial coordinate systems which use a clock synchronization convention that insures they all agree about simultaneity, which would mean you'd use the transformation derived by Mansouri and Sexl to transform between these coordinate systems.

The ontological meaning doesn't change even if you change the math expression of the same thing.

In relativity the only facts that are considered truly "physical", which is perhaps close to what you mean by "ontological", are facts that don't change in different coordinate systems, such as the proper time along a particular path (the time as measured by a clock moving along that path). But the way the Earth clocks behave from the traveling twin's point of view is not such a physical fact, because it depends entirely on what non-inertial coordinate system the traveling twin chooses to use. There simply is no physical fact about this question, any more than there's a physical fact about my x-coordinate at a particular time. And unless you believe that some coordinate system is "metaphysically preferred" despite the fact that it's not physically preferred, then there should be no ontological fact about this either.

No one is denying them, just pointing out that they are coordinate-dependent, and the first and second postulates only say that if you construct your coordinate systems in a certain way then you will see Lorentz-contraction and simultaneity work a certain way. There is no problem with Lorentz contraction if you pick a single inertial coordinate system and stick with it. Your confusion arises because you imagine Lorentz contraction would work the same way in some sort of non-inertial coordinate system which moved along with an accelerating observer, which is simply not true.

I am not assuming an accelerating inertial coordination system at any point.

"accelerating inertial coordinate system" is an oxymoron. You are assuming a non-inertial coordinate system, because you are considering what things look like from the accelerating twin's "point of view". Even if you choose to just imagine what things look like in a series of inertial coordinate systems in which he is instantaneously at rest, if you stitch these observations from different inertial coordinate systems together and say, for example, that earth-clocks tick forward very fast as he accelerates, then you have created a de facto non-inertial coordinate system.

This is very interesting though, I mean I know you are pointing out things are coordinate dependent in SR, to which I point out that an observer actually does exist in a coordination system

I guarantee you that any physicist would say that the idea that "an observer actually does exist in a coordinate system" is completely meaningless, that there is no physical reason that a given observer should be uniquely associated with a particular choice of coordinate system, associating observers with coordinate systems is wholly a matter of convenience or aesthetics. Your belief that some coordinate systems represents the "truth" about that observer's "point of view" in an ontological sense is wholly idiosyncratic to you, it is not part of SR as any physicists understand it, and you have provided no physical argument as to why this belief makes any sense.

And everything you point out is something I agree completely, but I am kind of wishing there was a comment made about what do you think the world around you is like right now? You cannot just say that you are surrounded by a "block time", without adding some words about what is the actual meaning of such statement?

OK, it means there are events at various spacetime distances from me, and at different spacetime distances from each other, on the 4D manifold of spacetime.

For example, do you believe, that right now, there is information approaching you steadily from your monitor? Do you think the monitor is in certain state right NOW (as oppose to all the possible states it could be in the "present" region), which you will perceive a short moment later?

Not if "right NOW" is assumed to mean there is some unique ontological truth about a "present moment" associated with me, as opposed to just meaning something about the current time-coordinate in an arbitrary choice of coordinate system. If I draw two lines on a piece of paper and pick a point on one, do you think there is a unique ontological truth about how far the other line is from that point in the "horizontal" direction, one that does not depend on an arbitrary choice of how I orient my horizontal x-axis and vertical y-axis?