Einsteins special relativity nonsense

@layman,

The proto-typical solipsist, George Berkeley, said that "to be is to be perceived. " He claimed, for example, that a tree existed if you were looking at it, but that it ceased to exist the moment you looked away.

For a solipsist, what you perceive is "real," and anything you don't doesn't exist.

If, for example, you "perceive" a change in pitch, then, by God, there HAS BEEN a change in pitch. End of story. So says the solipsist.

Put another way, for the solipsist "reality" resides exclusively in his own mind. There is no "external" reality. If a guy thinks he aint moving, then, by God, he AINT moving. If it's real "for him," then it's real. Period.

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@livinglava,

Logic and common sense, according to the argument presented here.

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@layman,

layman wrote:

Put another way, for the solipsist "reality" resides exclusively in his own mind. There is no "external" reality. If a guy thinks he aint moving, then, by God, he AINT moving. If it's real "for him," then it's real. Period.

This is all quite convenient for the solipsist. It means he is always right, and can never be wrong. There is no standard, such as "external reality," which can possibly be used to "fact check" him. Everyone is always right in what they think. Nobody can ever be wrong. Everyone gets a trophy.

Why? Because your thoughts are the only thing that are real. If your thoughts conflict with someone else's, no problem. You are BOTH right.

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@layman,

layman wrote:

layman wrote:

Put another way, for the solipsist "reality" resides exclusively in his own mind. There is no "external" reality. If a guy thinks he aint moving, then, by God, he AINT moving. If it's real "for him," then it's real. Period.

This is all quite convenient for the solipsist. It means he is always right, and can never be wrong. There is no standard, such as "external reality," which can possibly be used to "fact check" him. Everyone is always right in what they think. Nobody can ever be wrong. Everyone gets a trophy.

Why? Because your thoughts are the only thing that are real. If your thoughts conflict with someone else's, no problem. You are BOTH right.

That has nothing to do with relativity. You are confusing cultural relativism with general and special relativity, which deals with the physics of energy and time.

Answer the following questions:

1) Do you agree that the law of conservation of energy is absolute, or do you think energy can grow or shrink somehow?

2) Do you agree that light is a carrier of energy, e.g. that when 1watt-hour (1 joule if you prefer) of blue light leaves the sun, it cannot gain or lose energy upon being absorbed?

3) If blue light leaves a distant galaxy and its frequency shifts slightly toward red with the rest of the hydrogen spectrum emitted from that galaxy, then the same wave peaks have to arrive at a slightly slower rate than they were emitted?

4) Do you agree that the blue light emitted is the same as the one received, and that the frequency didn't change en route?

5) If the same amount of energy being emitted as blue light must be conserved when it is received at a slightly lower frequency, the rate of time has to change relative to the receiver, right?

- If the frequency of light changed and the time rate from the perspective of the observer was the same as the local time rate, then energy would have to be lost in transmission for the frequency to shift down.

- If an ambulance is coming toward you emitting sound waves from a siren and the sound waves are arriving at a higher frequency, then more energy is being received by you as listener than the ambulance is emitting: why? because the ambulance is adding energy to the sound by emitting each sound wave at a closer distance to you than the previous one.

So energy is conserved by adding the energy of the sound waves plus the energy added by the motion of the ambulance, and the total combined energy of sound + motion results in frequency increase.

The higher frequency you hear is actually higher because the motion of the ambulance has increased it. To the people on the ambulance, they hear the lower frequency because they don't have something moving the emitter of the sound toward them as it emits.

If you were sending sound back to the ambulance from your stationary position as it approaches you, the people on the ambulance would also hear your sound at a higher pitch because they are doing the work of receiving the sound waves at a faster rate by moving toward them. It is the same as riding a bike and feeling like there's a fan blowing on you even though there is no wind. Your work pushing the bike forward results in the air moving over you the same as if you were standing still in a breeze.

Now you can say the breeze is not real because there is no wind when you stop biking and stand still, but while you are riding the air moving over you is not a subjective perception but rather actual air moving at an actual speed (whatever speed you are going), which is no different than if you were standing still with a breeze blowing over you at the same speed.

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@livinglava,

Quote:

If you were sending sound back to the ambulance from your stationary position as it approaches you, the people on the ambulance would also hear your sound at a higher pitch because they are doing the work of receiving the sound waves at a faster rate by moving toward them.

Sound or no sound the ambulance would ALSO perceive a "frequency shift" if it aimed a doppler gun at you. It would detect the relative motion just like you do. In this case, the perceptions really are "reciprocal," unlike the lorentz transformations. The ambulance could, in theory, also accurately predict that we are hearing the pitch differently and even what pitch we are hearing.

I agree with some of your claims in this post, and disagree with others (and/or reject the factual claims which you pack into your "questions"). But I'm not going to go through them all, one at a time. I asked you a very general question about the doppler shift earlier, and you just ignored it.

So long as you think that a doppler shift is the result of something inherent in the light being sent, then we'll never agree on anything anyway.

The very reason we can detect motion via the perception of a doppler shift to begin with is that we assume we know how it would look if there was no relative motion between emitter and receiver. It would look "normal" instead of shifted.

And it has nothing to do with causing a change in time.

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@layman,

I have heard it argued (quite fallaciously) that "time dilation" is the result of a delay of signals due to transmission time.

It goes something like this: Assume two objects a light year apart are NOT moving relative to each other. Even so, each would be a year "behind" the other because it takes that long for the light to travel from A to B and from B to A.

Delays due to transmission time, like the doppler shift, are irrelevant to the issue of time dilation and, like doppler shifts, must be factored out of any attempt to ascertain time dilation (or the lack thereof).

You may well disagree with this, too. That is, you may think that since delays involve an element of "time," then they cause "time dilation," who knows?

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@layman,

layman wrote:

Quote:
If you were sending sound back to the ambulance from your stationary position as it approaches you, the people on the ambulance would also hear your sound at a higher pitch because they are doing the work of receiving the sound waves at a faster rate by moving toward them.

Sound or no sound the ambulance would ALSO perceive a "frequency shift" if it aimed a doppler gun at you. It would detect the relative motion just like you do. In this case, the perceptions really are "reciprocal," unlike the lorentz transformations. The ambulance could, in theory, also accurately predict that we are hearing the pitch differently and even what pitch we are hearing.

Predicting and measuring are two different things. Of course they can control for the pitch shift they measure and estimate what the emitted frequency is, but the point is that the received frequency truly is what it is in the receiving frame. It's not being subjectively perceived as having shifted. It has actually shifted due to the addition of energy from the motion.

What is a "doppler gun?"

Quote:

So long as you think that a doppler shift is the result of something inherent in the light being sent, then we'll never agree on anything anyway.

The very reason we can detect motion via the perception of a doppler shift to begin with is that we assume we know how it would look if there was no relative motion between emitter and receiver. It would look "normal" instead of shifted.

Now I am agreeing with you. We don't actually know whether there is motion, gravitation, or some other cause for the doppler effect. All we know is that the hydrogen and helium spectra of light are arriving at a shifted frequency from that we would receive from our sun.

For all we know, our sunlight could be blueshifted for some reason while the distant galaxies are emitting the true spectra of hydrogen/helium.

But regardless of whether you deem our sunlight or the distant galaxy's light to contain the 'correct spectrum' of hydrogen/helium, you have to admit that the light coming from both are arriving in the frequencies that they are arriving, and subjective perception is separate from that.

Quote:

And it has nothing to do with causing a change in time.

If you have a movie with a frame rate of 24 frames per second and you watch the movie at 30fps, you're going to see the action sped up. Likewise, if you are receiving red light as a blue frequency, you're going to see whatever you're looking at sped up.

That means one hour of time will pass for you while you see more than an hour of their time pass. Likewise, if the light is redshifted, you're going to see less than an hour of their time pass in the hour you sit and watch them.

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@layman,

layman wrote:

You may well disagree with this, too. That is, you may think that since delays involve an element of "time," then they cause "time dilation," who knows?

That is a separate issue. You could be viewing a delayed (moving) image of a distant galaxy whose time is elapsing at the same rate for you as observer as it is for them there. That would be different than viewing the same delayed moving-image of a galaxy whose time elapses for you at a faster or slower rate due to blueshift or redshift.

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@livinglava,

Quote:

you have to admit that the light coming from both are arriving in the frequencies that they are arriving, and subjective perception is separate from that.

No, I don't. And I won't. Nor will I agree that you are actually getting smaller if you are receding from me, even though the image I'm seeing of you IS actually getting smaller. No sense in pursuing this. It's not even on topic. The topic is neither cosmology nor doppler shifts. It is about SR.

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@layman,

layman wrote:

Quote:
you have to admit that the light coming from both are arriving in the frequencies that they are arriving, and subjective perception is separate from that.

No, I don't. And I won't. Nor will I agree that you are actually getting smaller if you are receding from me, even though the image I'm seeing of you IS actually getting smaller. No sense in pursuing this. It's not even on topic. The topic is neither cosmology nor doppler shifts. It is about SR.

Look at the picture in the link below of redshifted galaxies photographed by the Hubble telescope and tell me how the light coming from those galaxies can exhibit the spectrum of hydrogen/helium on a spectrometer if the shift was due to subjective perception.

http://spiff.rit.edu/classes/phys150/lectures/redshift/redshift.html

If the sunlight we receive on Earth suddenly shifted to red, would you also claim that was caused by subjective perception?

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@livinglava,

Why don't you just read the text?

Quote:

Redshift and evidence for an expanding universe

If we send light from a star through a spectrograph, we can look for shifts in the observed wavelengths of spectral features to tell us

is the star moving towards us or away from us?
how fast is it moving relative to us?

As you may recall, there is a relationship between the wavelength at which light is emitted by a source and the wavelength at which it is observed:

Note that it is careful to say "at which it is observed," and talks only about "observed (not "actual") wavelengths. And it is careful to distinguish this "observed" frequency from "the wavelength at which light is emitted by a source."

The observation is an illusion caused by relative motion. It is NOT indicative of an actual change in frequency in the light itself.

1 Reply

@livinglava,

I know it's a fool's errand, but I still can't resist trying to determine if it is even possible to get a solipsist to abandon his erroneous thought patterns.

Imagine two objects, A and B which are not moving relative to each other. A has always observed the light coming from B as unshifted.

Now A sends two spaceships away from it in opposite directions. S1 is travelling toward B and S2 is travelling away from B. Now, with the space of a split second,

2. S1 sees the light from B as blueshifted.

2. A sees the light from B as unshifted, and

3. S2 sees the light from B as redshifted.

Now, just ask yourself.

1. Do you really think that the light from B has radically contorted it's actual frequency 3 times in a virtual instant? Just to make sure that A, S1, and S2 are all "correct" in their varying (mis)perceptions?

2. Are all 3 observers seeing the wavelength of the light from B as it "really is?"

3. Or do you simply think that there is no "reality" apart from what an observer "sees," so the question is ridiculous. That in this case there are 3 separate realities, all "equally true?"

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@layman,

layman wrote:

Why don't you just read the text?

Quote:
Redshift and evidence for an expanding universe

If we send light from a star through a spectrograph, we can look for shifts in the observed wavelengths of spectral features to tell us

is the star moving towards us or away from us?
how fast is it moving relative to us?

As you may recall, there is a relationship between the wavelength at which light is emitted by a source and the wavelength at which it is observed:

Note that it is careful to say "at which it is observed," and talks only about "observed (not "actual") wavelengths. And it is careful to distinguish this "observed" frequency from "the wavelength at which light is emitted by a source."

The observation is an illusion caused by relative motion. It is NOT indicative of an actual change in frequency in the light itself.

The frequency of light is what the receiver observes. E.g. your body temp is @98F and so it emits blackbody radiation, which can be observed using an infrared camera. You don't see your infrared emissions, however, because they are going away from you toward outside observers. Granted you feel 98F, so if your infrared emissions were redshifting so that an outside observer measured your body temperature as being, say, 90F, that would not indicate your true temperature of 98F; BUT those infrared waves you sent out would really be the frequency that they are to the observer.

You are mixing up light as information about its source and the source itself. If the light/information coming from the source is redshifted/blueshifted, the information is not accurate BUT that doesn't mean you haven't measured it correctly.

It's the same as if I tell a lie and say water boils at 0C, that is not correct BUT you read it right and I did just send out the information, "water boils at 0C"

Now I understand that you want to say that the light as it is sent out from the source is the actual frequency of the light, but the simple fact is that the light itself is both frequencies simultaneously at both points of sending and reception, just as the ambulance siren is simultaneously both pitches, C and C#. The reason is that the two different inertial frames exist simultaneously in interaction with each other.

You want to say that there's only one inertial frame to the entire universe that's the stationary one and that all other moving frames exist relative to that one frame, but the reality is that the universe consists of all the different inertial frames interacting with each other, and what's more the 'frame' itself is an analytical construct we use to make sense of the interactions, not something that actually exists. In reality, all that exists are the different moving sources and receivers of energy and wave-compression/decompression occurs as part and parcel of their motion relative to each other.

So, yes I agree with you that the ambulance siren is emitting sound at a C pitch, but it is only C for listeners within the same inertial frame. A listener that's within the Earth's inertial frame will receive the siren waves in C# even if it's a fly two inches from the ambulance windshield. The sound pitch is determined by a combination of all factors working together to make it what it is. So the forward motion of the siren toward the listener is part of the mechanism that is compressing the sound waves to the frequency at which they are received. That is why the sound waves can actually be C# sound waves even though they are emitted at C.

It is no different than if you sing a C note into a microphone, which then sends your vocal tone electronically through a pitch-shifter that modifies it and then re-amplifies it as a C#. The re-amplified tone is truly a C# even though you sang a C note into the microphone. The change in pitch is due to the mechanics affecting it between the point of emission and that of reception.

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@livinglava,

You continue to demonstrate utter confusion about this matter. As I said before:

Quote:

No, I don't. And I won't. Nor will I agree that you are actually getting smaller if you are receding from me, even though the image I'm seeing of you IS actually getting smaller.

Nobody, certainly not me, said that the image you are seeing doesn't ACTUALLY present itself to your eyes. It does.

But it's an illusion. It does NOT encapsulate the actual truth of the matter.

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@layman,

layman wrote:

You continue to demonstrate utter confusion about this matter. As I said before:

Quote:
No, I don't. And I won't. Nor will I agree that you are actually getting smaller if you are receding from me, even though the image I'm seeing of you IS actually getting smaller.

Nobody, certainly not me, said that the image you are seeing doesn't ACTUALLY present itself to your eyes. It does.

But it's an illusion. It does NOT encapsulate the actual truth of the matter.

There are two truths:
1) the truth about the light waves present in the inertial frame in which they are received.
2) the truth about their source, which they represent to the observer by bringing information.

I agree with you that it is correct to use what is known about relativity to estimate what is actually happening at the source of the light.

I disagree with you that the light's frequency as it is observed within the inertial frame of the observer is a false frequency. Light is emitted/reflected/filtered/scattered/etc. yes, but ultimately it gets received/absorbed and for the absorber to absorb it, the receiving electrons must be 'tuned' to the same frequency as the light waves they are receiving.

So the light must exist at the frequency at which it is absorbed before it is absorbed, otherwise it would not be absorbed at all; and its existence at that frequency in that inertial frame occurs simultaneously with its existence in the emission frame at a different frequency.

The two inertial frames coexist and interact to cause the two different frequencies of the same light to occur simultaneously. The source and receiver can thus be interacting with the light at different frequencies, but only the receiver actually 'experiences' the light, because a source of light doesn't experience the light it is emitting any more than an actor on a stage can watch his own performance from the audience while performing it.

1 Reply

@livinglava,

livinglava wrote:

There are two truths: ...

I disagree with you that the light's frequency as it is observed within the inertial frame of the observer is a false frequency.

Like I said, you're hopeless. You are the perfect foil for some SR sophist to fool.

It may be that not every solipsist is an SR adherent, but it goes with the territory that every SR disciple is a solipsist.

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@layman,

layman wrote:

Nor will I agree that you are actually getting smaller if you are receding from me, even though the image I'm seeing of you IS actually getting smaller.

There is a difference between an image and the light that carries the information that ultimately gets interpreted as an image.

When you look in the mirror, you see the image behind the wall.

But the light that carries the image never goes behind the wall.

So you are right to say that a receding thing is not actually getting smaller as its image shrinks, but the light waves that are carrying the information about the shrinking image also exist in their own frame, separate from the image they carry.

Think about a projector in a movie theater. You see the image on the screen, but you also see the beam of light from the projector scattering above the seats. You know the movie image is only an inch or so when it comes out of the lens, but when it reaches the screen, it is 20 feet wide. You can't say that either the 20 foot wide beam that reflects off the screen or its one inch wide counterpart leaving the lens is the actual beam and the other isn't. They are both parts of the same beam, which changes size between the source and screen.

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@layman,

layman wrote:

livinglava wrote:

There are two truths: ...

I disagree with you that the light's frequency as it is observed within the inertial frame of the observer is a false frequency.

Like I said, you're hopeless. You are the perfect foil for some SR sophist to fool.

It may be that not every solipsist is an SR adherent, but it goes with the territory that every SR disciple is a solipsist.

Can you look at anything that's illuminated in your immediate vicinity and see that there are light waves present in the space of the illuminated objects before they actually reach and reflect off those objects?

If so, give some consideration to the frequency of those light waves where they are, in your room or wherever you are. They may have been emitted by a light bulb, the sun, or whatever; but just before they reflect off the illuminated objects they exist at a certain frequency; and that frequency is just as real as the one that was emitted by the light bulb or sun.

It is not sophism or solispism to recognize that light has a wavelength one inch before it reaches the object it illuminates. That is a real frequency of real light.

Your mind is just stuck with the inability to regard light as a thing separate from the source of the light.

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@livinglava,

The entire spectrum of "white light" can be selectively reflected off of any given object, sure.

But that has nothing to do with a doppler shift, which is an entirely different type of phenomenon.

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@layman,

layman wrote:

The entire spectrum of "white light" can be selectively reflected off of any given object, sure.

But that has nothing to do with a doppler shift, which is an entirely different type of phenomenon.

Ok, I get it. No matter what I say you're going to reply with something that slightly avoids the issue and makes yet another claim to persist in debate.

You're just being contrarian.

1 Reply

Einsteins special relativity nonsense

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