I Relativity of Simultaneity Questions

[PeroK]

I've ordered the book!
What you describe above is how I currently understand what a ref frame is - so I don't see how you concluded that I don't understand what one is. Can you please indicate what I have said to make you think this? I am wondering if I am just not explaining myself correctly.

In any case, the important thing is to learn and progress. If you already understand something, then that's fine.

 

[vanhees71]

You can move relative to a source of light, but you can't move relative to where light was emitted. Or, at least, not in your own rest frame.

Indeed, and maybe that's also a problem of a lot of confusion of students starting to learn relativity. One should not talk about the "invariance of the speed of light" but rather say the speed of light, as measured by an inertial observer, is independent of the velocity of the light source relative to that observer. Einstein formulated it in this clear and unambigous way already in his 1905 seminal paper. Why textbook writers haven't kept this good tradition, I can't say. The only sin in the 1905 paper is the introduction of "relativistic mass". Einstein rejected this idea however already in 1906/1907 after Planck's less well known paper about the special relativistic mechanics. A nice historical review can be found here (unfortunately there seems to be no freely accessible preprint):

https://doi.org/10.1119/1.3160671

 

[mucker]

Well the funny thing is, I just watched a YouTube video and get it now. Don’t know why i didn’t try it earlier, I think because YouTube is worse for reliability than the internet in general I didn’t trust it. Anyway, I was on the right path with my first question about motion (where I ask if the discrepancy is due to the moving observer not aware he is moving -post 3), but Was told I was wrong so abandoned it. I know that IS wrong btw, but if you look carefully and see the context my point is you should be able to see where I was going with it, and I was close the “getting it”. Ever since then I’ve been on a wild Goose chase and i was never going to figure it out as after I was looking in the wrong area.