Einstein's Light Clock (time dilation)

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Einstein's Light Clock (time dilation)

Unread post by Siggy_G » Thu Jul 05, 2012 5:11 pm

The well-known thought experiment of a photon travelling between two mirrors within a moving vessel has made me wonder about a few things. This is a random image that illustrates and exaggerates the experiment (here mentioning a light clock, but it's basically the emitted photon and the detector that is of interest):

Image

While I understand the theoretical reasoning, I'm hoping someone can answer the following:

1) Has it actually be observed that a photon (e.g. a laser line) within a high speed travelling vessel moves with it - and doesn't lag slightly behind upon rebound?

2) If so, why does it move with it after it's emitted? Does the photon act like a thrown ball that already has a velocity in the vessel's direction when an electron emits it? It certainly isn't affected by the vessel's internal medium (air), which ought to be a vacuum anyway.

3) Is the photon detector small enough for an offset to be determined? If the detector has considerable width, a lagging photon will still hit it (slightly behind it's original mirroring position).

My suspision is that the experiment is a thought experiment only, and that in a physical scenario with high enough speed, one would detect that the photon rebounds slightly behind the detector (relative to the travelling direction) as if it travelled up and down while the vessel moves away from it. My next suspision is that in such an experiment, the light pulses may have a certain conical shaped emission, where some of the angular photons hits the detector regardless of an offset. The same goes for a detector that is too wide and catches the photon regardless of an offset.

In other words, such an experiment needs to be done at high speed and/or over large travelling distances between the emitter/mirror/detector. The detector also needs to be small enough for an offset photon missing it. Does anyone know if this has been done?

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Re: Einstein's Light Clock (time dilation)

Unread post by Goldminer » Thu Jul 05, 2012 5:33 pm

There are only two mirrors. Motion does not create three or more mirrors. This diagram and others trying to depict Einstein's relativity theory are ill conceived and totally misleading. Moving detectors pass through the space between the mirrors. If one of these detectors happens to encounter the "photon" in its travel from one mirror to the other, the "photon" will be detected at that place between the mirrors, otherwise nothing is detected. The diagram should depict multiple detectors, not mirrors.

This subject is being discussed on the following threads:

Relativity Linear Thread

apples and apples

Silly Einstein

I am working on a diagram to explain this to Michael V. I can't seem to get it to fit the forum's requirements.
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Re: Einstein's Light Clock (time dilation)

Unread post by Siggy_G » Thu Jul 05, 2012 6:08 pm

Well, the only thing of interest in such an experiment is to determine if an emitted photon, or laser line, really follows the motion of the vessel or not.

It certainly is irrelevant what an external observer, in a thought experiment, may see from his or her line of sight. It doesn't alter the physical scenario going on at all, where one adds line of sight motion to the photon motion and devides by c to get time dilation. But it seems some of these issues already are touched upon, from my initial look at the threads.

I wonder if they would say the same thing about sounds waves within the air inside a moving train. Inside the train the sound waves move radially at 340 m/s. But for an external observer the sound waves inside the train are calculated to move faster along the travelling direction. Find one physical error.

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Re: Einstein's Light Clock (time dilation)

Unread post by Goldminer » Thu Jul 05, 2012 6:54 pm

Siggy_G wrote:Well, the only thing of interest in such an experiment is to determine if an emitted photon, or laser line, really follows the motion of the vessel or not.

It certainly is irrelevant what an external observer, in a thought experiment, may see from his or her line of sight. It doesn't alter the physical scenario going on at all, where one adds line of sight motion to the photon motion and divides by c to get time dilation. But it seems some of these issues already are touched upon, from my initial look at the threads.

I wonder if they would say the same thing about sounds waves within the air inside a moving train. Inside the train the sound waves move radially at 340 m/s. But for an external observer the sound waves inside the train are calculated to move faster along the traveling direction. Find one physical error.
This thought of yours is the same line of thinking that Michel V, Webbo, Ardwolf, and others hold. I can't blame any of you for thinking such. The view comes about, I think, because we "see" things at at distance since ambient diffuse light reflects of of everything we see. We think we can see things in the distance. We think we can see a laser beam (in this case we can) because the beams light is reflected off of dust particles in the atmosphere. In the absence of dust, the beam can only be detected by being in it or seeing it reflected of of a surface. The distant object can only be seen when the wavefront from the reflected light hitting the object reaches our retina.

When the wave front or "photon" if you must have it, leaves the source, its whereabouts is unknown until it is detected somewhere. This is why a single short pulse must be used. With a continuously emitting source, there is no way of knowing when it started or stopped. Everything is just fantasy until distance and/or time from source to detection is measured. Thus the need for detectors. The thought experiment is meaningless without them, because they are required for any meaningful actual experiment. Explain to me how you determine something without detecting it?

You are absolutely right about sound.

IMHO, the problem with light propagation is that everyone wants the aether to behave the same way. It obviously doesn't.
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Re: Einstein's Light Clock (time dilation)

Unread post by Goldminer » Sun Jul 08, 2012 3:01 pm

Here is Siggy_G's figure:Image

An observer moving with the clock pictured on the right sees the situation on the left. An observer in either frame sees his own clock as the picture on the left.

The time t is the duration of time for the pulse to travel from one mirror to the other in either frame. The supposed diagonal is a fiction.

Consider this, which is Herbert Dingles's argument: The main tenet of Einstein's theory is that either frame of reference can be taken as being at rest. Therefore, the "time keeper" in either frame see's the clock in the moving (opposite his own) frame as running slow. The breakdown of logic should be obvious. One clock can be slower than the other, but then obviously the other clock must then be found to run faster. Each clock cannot be slower than the other! Einsteinians ignore this fact and proceed with their calculations, building mountains of additional "theory" upon this ludicrous foundation.

Suppose a well regulated clock with a very large face is visible through a telescope. Let's suppose we have another very well regulated clock which we set to the time we see on the clock in the telescope. When we move our clock next to the distant clock, we find our clock is set too slow. Why?

Did the motion slow our clock? No! Light travels at about a foot per nanosecond. Once the time registered on the distant clock leaves the clock, that time information is frozen in the wave front that must arrive at our retina through the telescope, before we can determine what time the distant clock indicates.

If we were 2 miles away when we viewed the clock, our clock is 10,560 nanoseconds slow, no matter where we put it.

Don't believe it? Do the experiment!

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Re: Einstein's Light Clock (time dilation)

Unread post by Siggy_G » Sun Jul 08, 2012 5:45 pm

PS: the referenced figure is not mine, but found on the net and shows a classic argumentation for this case – one that I am doubtful to.
Goldminer wrote:The time t is the duration of time for the pulse to travel from one mirror to the other in either frame. The supposed diagonal is a fiction.
Exactly. Which also means that this has nothing to do with time. What is observed is a light pulse with a velocity of c and a conceptual line for its distance or travel. In the local reference frame, things are simply observed like the left illustration. For an external observer the conceptual line is observed like the right illustration – which in turn is an illusional line, because the projection adds the vessel's motion to the pulse's motion. In other words, one does line of sight projections, claims the pulse physically had this motion, then makes time a variable for the projected motion to stay at c. This has to be wrong.

Now, when we do Earth based observations of planetary motions within our own solar system, we have to inverse engineer how the planets actually are moving. We're not assuming they're moving faster and slower, and sometimes backwards, due to the projected observations from our point of view. Nor do we gear time up and down. We're obviously correcting the line of sight projections for the physical scenario (i.e. due to Earth moving). Why don't we apply the same logic to a light clock thought experiment?

What would be just as interesting for this experiment though, is to figure out if a vertical light pulse (or set of photons) follows the vessel or not – or if the vessel travels away from it. It doesn't change the reference frame (or projection) issue, but would point to the nature of light propagation and/or an aether.
Goldminer wrote:Suppose a well regulated clock with a very large face is visible through a telescope. Let's suppose we have another very well regulated clock which we set to the time we see on the clock in the telescope. When we move our clock next to the distant clock, we find our clock is set too slow. Why?
Hm, if you set your own clock according to the image of a distant clock (which shows an old image due to the light's travelling distance) both clocks show the same time. You keep watching off set images and your own clock is running accordingly. What the distant clock actally shows locally is another issue. Or if you move fast away from or towards the emitting images. But yeah, nothing to do with slow going clocks, just light travel distance, velocity and observation. Labelling time (which really is just a derivation) as a physical factor causes the confusions.

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Re: Einstein's Light Clock (time dilation)

Unread post by Goldminer » Fri Jul 13, 2012 12:31 am

Siggy_G wrote:Well, the only thing of interest in such an experiment is to determine if an emitted photon, or laser line, really follows the motion of the vessel or not.
Determine means detect. Timing is important in understanding relativity. However, two or more clocks are not required. One clock connected by equal length conductors, be they fiber optic or wire, will do the job. Sensing the light pulse at the source starts the clock, sensing the pulse at distance stops the clock. Detectors are necessary because that is the only way to "follow the motion."
Siggy_G wrote:It certainly is irrelevant what an external observer, in a thought experiment, may see from his or her line of sight. It doesn't alter the physical scenario going on at all, where one adds line of sight motion to the photon motion and divides by c to get time dilation. But it seems some of these issues already are touched upon, from my initial look at the threads.
If by "external observer" you mean the moving observer, it most certainly is relevant, that is what relativity is all about.

" . . . [F]rom his or her line of sight." Yes, "line of sight" is confusing everyone. Ideally, observation should not "alter the physical scenario" or affect anything to do with the propagation of light. You are right about that, too. However, detection of the wavefront does take a small amount of energy from said wavefront, whether the detector is moving or not.

Einstein and company have fostered a mountain of confusion with his discussion of non-simultaneity and his superfluous clocks. Yet he poses that at the time the light pulse is initiated, his two origins are coincident, and his timer(s) starts counting. (t=0) Therefore observers, moving or not, located at the source, detect the pulse simultaneously. In fact, whenever observers/detectors are at the same place at the same time, their detections are simultaneous.

The "Galilean Transform" diagram does not specify to which coordinate system the source belongs. (another source of confusion) The source has to be in one or the other coordinate system. It cannot be in two places at once. If it is in neither, how come this hasn't been brought up? Obviously in his mirror Gedankin, the source is also at rest with the mirrors. Now, as you properly insist, the state of motion of the detectors does not affect the position of the mirrors or the source of the pulse.

As depicted in the left hand picture: Detectors placed along the path of the laser beam pulse, facing the source will detect the time lapse of the pulse, (known as latency) according to the distance from the source. Likewise, detectors facing the opposite mirror will detect the latency of the reflected pulse.

For the moving detectors, picture a mat or blanket of detectors as wide as the mirror separation, covered with detectors, and moving past the mirrors at a very fast but constant speed. When one of these detectors is momentarily at the same place and time as a detector in the mirror frame, when the mirror frame detector detects the pulse, it will also detect the same pulse. These detectors indicate if they have detected a pulse.

When the blanket is checked, we find a zigzag pattern of detectors that have detected the pulse. This is the only zigzag that happens. There is no "photon" zigzagging off of multiple mirrors. There is no problem with non-simultaneity. Einstein is a farce.

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Re: Einstein's Light Clock (time dilation)

Unread post by Goldminer » Tue Jul 17, 2012 11:34 pm

When the blanket is checked, we find a zigzag pattern of detectors that have detected the pulse. This is the only zigzag that happens. There is no "photon" zigzagging off of multiple mirrors. There is no problem with non-simultaneity. Einstein is a farce.
In the source frame, the construction of the detectors must incorporate identical count up timers which are started by a pulse sent to each one on equal length cables, this pulse in coincidence with the "light clock pulse." When each detector detects the mirror pulse, it tabulates the elapsed time. The detectors are bidirectional, to detect the pulse coming and going.

The moving detectors are bidirectional, too. However, they merely latch to the detected mode when the pulse is detected. Each detector in this moving mat only has one chance to detect the pulse. The timing is done by knowing the speed of the mat and the distance between latched detectors.

The speed of either frame is referenced to the opposite frame. There is no formula determining this speed other than the distance of separation vs the elapsed time per said distance.
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Re: Einstein's Light Clock (time dilation)

Unread post by Goldminer » Thu Sep 06, 2012 9:50 pm

Siggy_G wrote:Well, the only thing of interest in such an experiment is to determine if an emitted photon, or laser line, really follows the motion of the vessel or not.
Thanks for making this observation, Siggy! It set me off on a month long Odyssey to try and explain my insight concerning the foundations of Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity. I've been working on that project and haven't been posting here until I roughed it in. Then I found out about the FQXi Essay Contest and decided to present an essay there.

So . . . Here's the link. I had to shorten the article to fit their rules, so two of my diagrams are missing from it. These last two diagrams really put the dagger into STR. If anyone is interested, PM me and I will send them to you. They are too big to post directly to this forum. They are all drawn to scale so that you can overlay them to see exactly how relativity has missed the train, so to speak. (Some of my explanation had to be removed, too; so if interested, let me know on that, too.)

This "Light Clock Gedankin" seems to me to be the key to understanding my spherical diagrams. So far very few have admitted to understanding them.

By the way, Stephen Crothers has published two articles on how Einstein's General Theory is just a work of fiction too. Here and Here

In My Humble Opinion, 100 years of time and space fantasy has just crashed and burned!

Thanks again, Siggy.
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Re: Einstein's Light Clock (time dilation)

Unread post by David » Fri Sep 07, 2012 12:55 pm

Goldminer wrote:In My Humble Opinion, 100 years of time and space fantasy has just crashed and burned!
Is the light pulse in any way affected by the motion of the source? Or is it completely independent of the source? That’s the question posed. That is, if the source and mirror are moving fast enough, will the light pulse strike the wall to the left of the mirror, having missed the mirror entirely?

So my question is this: will the light pulse always strike the mirror dead center, irrespective of whether or not the source and mirror are at rest or in constant uniform motion?

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Re: Einstein's Light Clock (time dilation)

Unread post by Xantos » Sat Sep 08, 2012 5:24 am

David wrote:
Goldminer wrote:In My Humble Opinion, 100 years of time and space fantasy has just crashed and burned!
Is the light pulse in any way affected by the motion of the source? Or is it completely independent of the source? That’s the question posed. That is, if the source and mirror are moving fast enough, will the light pulse strike the wall to the left of the mirror, having missed the mirror entirely?

So my question is this: will the light pulse always strike the mirror dead center, irrespective of whether or not the source and mirror are at rest or in constant uniform motion?
As Einstein would have said it...the answer to your question is very relative to the physical properties around the observer-emitter. We know light has a finite speed just like the sound does. Their intristic shape is that of a wavefront. Laser pulse is nothing but a very condensed and directed beam of EM energy. Wavefronts like to expand, it's in their intristic nature to do so. Just like mammals like to procreate. Now analogous to the laser would be a sonic/vortex cannon, just like you can see it on the You Tube. The principle is the same. You direct the energy of the air into a giant "directed beam of energy" and shoot it. Lasers do that to. If you shine a laser onto a target 10 km away, you'd see that the circle grows with distance.

So to answer your question...I can't answer your question, because it depends of so many variables.
1. How close are the observer and emiter?
2. What is the medium they are in?
3. How fast are they moving?

Information in the Universe is propagated by waves/wavefronts. From the macroscopic effects of sound and light to the smallest of the quantum particles (even electron is sort of a wave generator). It is really time to put Einsteins fantasy to the end, or just chagne the semantics so that they reflect the reality.

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Re: Einstein's Light Clock (time dilation)

Unread post by David » Sat Sep 08, 2012 1:56 pm

Xantos wrote:I can't answer your question, because it depends of so many variables.
The whole point of this tread is to determine whether or not the light pulse is truly independent of its source. That is, does light have the same lateral motion as its source? Is anyone aware of tests that have proved this one way or the other?

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Re: Einstein's Light Clock (time dilation)

Unread post by Xantos » Sat Sep 08, 2012 6:02 pm

David wrote:
Xantos wrote:I can't answer your question, because it depends of so many variables.
The whole point of this tread is to determine whether or not the light pulse is truly independent of its source. That is, does light have the same lateral motion as its source? Is anyone aware of tests that have proved this one way or the other?
Since travelling at the speed of light is not feasible in the forseeable future...why not conduct an experiment with a laser, ultra slow-motion camera and a condensate that slows light to a more humane and practical speeds for experimentation? Shouldn't this kind of experiment prove or disprove that light supposedly "bends" with distance? Like they put model airplanes in a wind tunnel, they should test a light ray in a laboratory condition.



Just found this video on You Tube...it seems we have cameras fast enough. Now...make the experiment :)

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Re: Einstein's Light Clock (time dilation)

Unread post by Goldminer » Sat Sep 08, 2012 10:59 pm

David wrote:
Xantos wrote:I can't answer your question, because it depends of so many variables.
The whole point of this tread is to determine whether or not the light pulse is truly independent of its source. That is, does light have the same lateral motion as its source? Is anyone aware of tests that have proved this one way or the other?
Xantos is on the right track. (Thanks for the comments, Xantos)

Dave, please read my essay, linked here. It is a direct response to this thread. The article demonstrates that the speed of light is primarily related to the source emitting it. (contrary to Einstein's theory.) The speed of light that is published is measured using the source and detectors "at rest with the source" as the reference. All the palaver about measuring the incoming light speed from a moving source is fraught with circular reasoning. Such measurement is hard to do directly, the way conventional physicists go about it. (I have proposed a simple method in the "Silly Einstein" thread.)

Choosing a reference point from which to measure the speed of some object of interest is arbitrary. Here on Earth, we subconsciously use the ground as the reference. Once we leave the Earth, the choice is usually one of convenience. The late Bryan Wallace's book,The Farce of Physics explains how this is accomplished in the radar ranging of the planets. (done to determine their speed in relation to Earth. He shows that the best interpretation of the raw data is that the speed of light is variable, and is just c plus or minus the relative velocity between Earth and the subject planet, depending on whether the distance is decreasing or increasing.) His evidence disproves Einstein's STR, but is ignored and is just about scrubbed from the Web.

An inertial set of objects, such as a laser and a set of mirrors, is simply those objects in an unaccelerated state of being. To be "at rest with each other" does not mean that the whole group are not in motion compared to some other object. For instance, consider three unaccelerated objects: Pick one of them to be the reference object. One of the other objects is traveling at 1/2 c away from this reference; the other is traveling at 3/4 c at 90 degrees to the line between this reference and the afore mentioned object, towards the reference object, yet all are "inertial."

So, IMHO, the answer to your question is: yes the emissions have the same "lateral motion" as the source; provided you understand that all "speed" between "inertial objects" is relative and just depends upon which object is chosen as the reference point.

My essay demonstrates how, when and where the detection of a pulse of light can be determined to be at any particular place and time, simultaneously, for detectors "at rest with the source" or in motion relative the source. It is very simple. Einstein and associates were caught up in the clock and ruler rabbit trail, and missed this simplicity. The charts in the essay demonstrate the confusion they have.

While at the FQXI site, feel free to comment!

P.S. I had to cut two of the charts from the essay to fit their constraints. If you are interested, P.M. me for the whole article. I can't post them here, they are too large.
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Re: Einstein's Light Clock (time dilation)

Unread post by Xantos » Sun Sep 09, 2012 3:01 am

Hmmm...just had an idea. If I take my laser pointer and start moving it with high frequency left and right. There becomes a line, not a dot on the wall. My brother says it's because of how my eyes work but I think this is just another example of lights wavefront nature. If you think about it...it kind of makes sense. If you take that laser is a wavefront generator and wavefronts follow each other with certain frequency (colour) then it should be evident that as with other waves, a wavefront line should form perpendicular to the travel and the point of contact would lag behind, thus creating the line on the wall.

Have there been any Slow-mo camera experiments done in this direction.

I envision this experiment as:

1. laser pointer
2. put it on a mechanical oscilator of some arbitrary frequency (let's say 20 hertz) which rotates laser around vertical axis to about 45deg left and right
3. measure rotation angle of the laser with a rotation encoder
4. measure time interval
5. high speed camera is shooting perpendicular to the wall and not moving

Encoder and time combined should give us lag time i.e. time dilation.

With some luck, we should see a nice, wavefront effect i.e. line on the wall.

Now if you take this "Mach cone" of light and put it into the Einsteins gedanken...you can actually understand why the time dilation is there. Light doesn't really contract but it's the virtual line that is traveling with a certain angle, trying to hit the observer on the other side. Light speed maximum is thus preserved and not violated and time dilation factor is present because of that.

All that Einsteins gedanken (with two rockets flying side by side and laser pulse in between) is trying to do is explaining time dilation as the effect of light's own "Mach cone" but they chose strange wording and got distracted by some other facts.

If we look from the bird's eye view. Laser pulse would not bend! It doesn't have mass, it's a wavefront, it would just lag like a Mach cone when shot at almost luminal speed. So...there is a possibility that the observer wouldn't see the pulse...right away.

Just my thoughts...am I completely nuts? :D

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