Hurkyl
Staff Emeritus
Science Advisor
Gold Member
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No, your meterstick is one meter.
Right. No matter how I move the meterstick, no matter what reference frame I put the meter stick in, its proper length is always one meter.
If the speed of light varied, and the length of a meter was defined by the speed of light, then we would measure the proper length of the meterstick as something other than a meter.
In order to prove that simultaneity is absolute, one must show that for any Length formula which is a function of speed, a contradiction will be arrived at, not just the Lorentz formula.
I don't see how that follows either.
The most important axiom of state theory, is that for any state x, and any state y, not (x before y and y before x)
Relativity of simultaneity doesn't contradict that axiom. In each reference frame, defining "before" in the classical way obeys this axiom. If you're doing what you "should" be doing relativistically and say that if two events, x and y, are space-like seperated, then it is false that x is before y and it is false that y is before x, thus the axiom holds.
Relativistic causality is a partial order, not a total order.
(IOW, in terms of relativistic causality, "x before y" only if x and y have a timelike separation... though this could probably be safely extended to lightlike separations as well)
Yes, didn't like it, alpha and beta seem fudgable to me, seems to make conclusions relative.
Well, you need to learn to tolerate it; no experiment can prove anything in the mathematical sense... you can only prove things to certain levels of accuracy and confidence.
(to be pedantic, the same is true about mathematical proofs; e.g. there's always the remote possibility that everyone in the history of mathematics overlooked a subtle mistake in the calculation that 2 + 3 = 5)