Was Einstein Wrong?

[munty13]

I think I have managed to disprove Einstein's Theory of Relativity. I could do with some more thoughts about where, perhaps, I have made a wrong turn. I'm sorry if it reads a bit like an article but I can assure you it's not been published anywhere (unfortunately!)

TZZZZzzzzzz... Have you ever picked up your sandal and tried to swat that annoying little mosquito you are sharing a holiday hotel room with? It will always confound us on just how many times we miss because the tiny swine is just too darned fast. After a time, the mosquito starts to take on the appearance of predicting our every move - it's practically taunting us. With science developing new ideas about the way we look at time, we are starting to understand that the mosquito is not necessarily moving fast, but that it is us whom are percieving things very, very slowly. New proposals about time are about to turn everything that we thought we knew about our Universe on its head.

Let's imagine the scene where I am about to try and bring my sandal down on the head of that pesky mosquito. In the room we have set-up two digital cameras (don't worry, nothing sordid's going on). One of the camera's has a shutter speed which opens and closes in seconds, while the other camera's using a shutter speed which is a thousand times faster and operates in milliseconds. By the time I have raised and lowered my hand, the mosquito has made good its' escape. It's as if the little brute saw me coming a mile-off, so let's see if by playing back the two films that were taken, we might catch a better idea of what's happening from the perspective of the mosquito.

Each camera has an LCD display which will play-back the film at the rate of one exposure per second. We'll start with the film taken where the shutter speed plodded and took a second to open and close. It shows me with my hand in the air, now it's halfway down and then it's ..SLAM... 4 seconds and it's all over. Next we play the film where the shutter speed was in milliseconds. Okay, so my hands in the air...... still in the air..... I count to 200 and it's barely budged an inch. I've got time to make a cup of tea, pop to the shops, and watch a bit of telly because this film is 1000 times as long as the previous one - it would take over an hour to watch it.


What the shutter speed is inferring as it opens and closes, is my rate of perception - or rather the speed at which neurons open and close circuits in the brain. The rate of perception is how long it takes the brain to process the outside world into information the mind can understand. This process in the brain is dictated by signals carried by neurons. If you reduce the distance travelled by these signals by half, you effectively double the speed at which the brain understands the outside world. Try to imagine that our blood-sucking fiend, on account of its very small size and very simple brain, is able to percieve reality much faster than I can - my vengeful sandal would appear like it was moving in slow motion. No wonder it felt like the mosquito was blowing raspberries at me.

Okay. Now for the biggy. What does this mean for Einstein's Theory of Relativity? Is it wrong? For his calculations Einstein required a measuring stick which was unchanging and invariable, and one which would remain as a reliable benchmark for any observer regardless of their position in space. It was something which needed to comply with both the macrocosm and the microcosm. Einstein's genius came in choosing the speed of light as that benchmark. Scientists now understand that Einstein fell into the trap of believing the speed of light is constant and independent of an observer, where in-fact, the speed of light is actually a variable that is wholly dependent upon an observer.

According to Einstein the speed of light in a vacuum is 300,000 km/s. It takes light travelling from the Sun, 9 minutes to reach our planet. Imagine then that we have two observers watching the night-sky from my backyard. In this experiment we are going to turn on a torch from the position of the Sun, 150 million kilometres away, and then we shall ask both our observers to make their own steady, ticking head-count to imitate a clock (1...2...3...4...) - and to count the time it takes for the light travel to Earth. One of the observers I shall take into my laboratory (think Weird Science), and shrink to a size where the distance travelled by signals in his brain are halved. We are effectively accelerating his brain's shutter speed to being twice as fast as normal, so that the brain is able to communicate with itself at a speed which is twice that of ours, and his mind will produce twice the amount of conscious thoughts.

This difference in the rate of perception would become much more apparent once we hear each observers' head-count - the observer we shrank will make a count that is twice the speed of ours. When we add up the seconds counted by this tiny little man, it reaches a figure that is no longer 9 minutes but nearer 18 minutes! Our dwindled chum has experienced the speed of light as 150,000 km/s - half its normal speed. This demonstrates that the speed of light is not a constant, and that the speed of light is dependent upon the rate of experience. Einstein's Theory of Relativity has been proven wrong. There's no such thing as space-time. The Universe has now been deflated from the four-dimensional space that we thought was there,<em> </em>and is now presented in its true nature - zero point energy. The balloon has well and truly burst.

Time is thus revealed as this incredible intrapersonal experience. Every living thing on Earth is revealed as its very own clock. The ticking hands of the clock of the Universe no longer exist, and on a very real and fundamental level, all we have is 'now'. In each and every single of one those moments which we so often overlook and discard, there is the potential of infinite possibilities.

Will scientists now be able to merge all the forces in the Universe with gravity into a Theory of Everything? Probably. But perhaps this is more of an opportunity for each and every one of us who live on this planet, to finally understand how important our own place is in the grand scheme of the Universe. For if you, as an indivual, were not here to make the simple act of observation - time and space would not even exist.

[dleviwing]

Actually Munty, you haven’t proven Relativity wrong, you’ve simply acquired a better understanding of it. The thing to remember is that science is based on our ability to measure. The speed of light make a good reference due to the fact that if everyone measures the speed of light the same way, they obtain the same numeric value and thus that becomes the correction factor for comparing subjective observations regardless of the observers motions. “The measurement of the speed of light in a vacuum is constant”. It's the spatial vacuum that's not constant.

The problem with Relativity is the improper interpretations touted as proof of the theory. The actual theory is Lorenz contraction; Relativity is nothing more than a mathematical methodology and does not have anything to do with Lorenz contraction. The bogus interpretations come from thinking Relativity explains Lorenz contraction; that’s apples and oranges.

BTW: Welcome to ToeQuest.

[Max™]

You've proven your version of Relativity wrong for sure, just as Dave has...

Unfortunately, you've also proven you're not talking about Special Relativity.

The speed of light as a constant IS NOT THE POINT OF RELATIVITY.

The point of Relativity is that all observers will measure the speed of light to be constant because changing your motion in a spatial direction affects your motion in the temporal direction.

Relativity explains Lorentz contraction as the relationship between motion through space and time, you would know this if you actually read up on it, as opposed to proclaiming it wrong without knowing what you're talking about.

[munty13]

Hello. Thanks for reading. I popped-out and fetched this from an explanation on Lorentz contraction:

"An observer moving with respect to an object will observe it to be contracted along the direction of motion by the factor:

where l' is the length observed by the moving observer, l is the length measured when at rest with respect to the object, v is the velocity of the observer, and c is the speed of light. If we express v as a fraction of the speed of light, we don't have to worry about the units it's expressed in."

http://www.fourmilab.ch/cship/lorentz.html

Lorentz contraction utilises the speed of light in a vacuum as a constant. All these observations are made with regards to the speed of light in a vacuum. The whole thing is based on the notion that the speed of light in a vacuum is exactly the same for any two observers in a room together. My theory proposes that it is possible for two observers in the same room, while measuring the speed of light in a vacuum, to come-up with totally different results for the speed of light. There's no need to complicate it further with relative velocities and/ or spaceships and/or blackholes.

What the speed of light in a vacuum is actually postulating is the speed at which neurons in the brain process information regarding electromagnetic radiation in a vacuum (in a laboratory). I think we have fallen into the trap of believing that the act of observation is infallible.

Systems in the brain work in milliseconds. Imagine what would happen if this speed was increased to attoseconds.

[Max™]

The speed of light in a vacuum isn't the central postulate of Relativity, it's just the yard stick used because it's massless nature helps explain the implications of tying motion through space to motion through time.

The point is that as you move faster and attempt to measure the distance covered by the light beam in a set period, your measurement of the distance covered wouldn't be correct if the duration you observe elapsing wasn't distorted.

[munty13]

"The speed of light in a vacuum isn't the central postulate of Relativity, it's just the yard stick ..."

But still, trying to understand the Universe under the constraints of having the speed of light as a constant, has become an enormous burden. Can you imagine the freedom in discovering that electromagnetic radiation can travel faster than 300,000km/s?

"...your measurement of the distance covered wouldn't be correct if the duration you observe elapsing wasn't distorted."

The idea of time falls apart when there is no longer a constant speed of light. Clocks are no longer hanging on the walls of the Universe. Time is unique to every observer, and defined by the rate at which we percieve energy in motion. The Universe reveals itself as a boundless energy - it's not restricted by anything, least of all the speed of light.

If your brain was somehow able to function in attoseconds rather than milliseconds, you could produce MILLIONS of thoughts, one after the other, in the same space of time it took me to produce only one thought.

[Max™]

It isn't about the clock speed of our brain.

I actually proposed in a paper I posted that the speed of light would be almost certain to change as the Universe aged.

I can imagine faster than light motion fine, in an accurate scientific manner as well.

Here is the point you're missing, I just realized what it is.

If the speed of light varied, this would hold true: a body with mass, in motion, or both will still measure the same speed as a body at rest would, because the moving/massive body is moving through time more slowly as a result of it's increased motion/interaction with space.

[munty13]

"It isn't about the clock speed of our brain."

I'm sorry but it is. It really is.

"...the moving/massive body is moving through time more slowly as a result of it's increased motion/interaction with space."

My experiment shows the speed of light in a vacuum can be a variable. It shows the speed of light is not a constant. If electromagnetic radiation were to travel faster than 300,000km/s - time would not start to go backwards. You would simply have electromagnetic radiation travelling at super- extremely low frequencies.

A body in space is no longer rolling on the blanket of spacetime. An object's velocity in space is determined by it's unravelling of potential energy into kinetic energy - and not the dent it makes in spacetime. If the potential energy was there - what is there to stop light travelling from one end of the Universe to the other in an instant?

[Max™]

Light doesn't travel, it propagates.

Light is like a note along a string, not a particle/wave packet in empty space.

Light is ripples IN spacetime itself.

That's why Einstein said "Every Tom, Dick, and Harry these days thinks he knows what a photon is, but they're wrong."

The speed of observation is irrelevant, it only affects us, but time dilation affects real physical processes.

Also, time wouldn't move backwards if you went faster than light, you would move through time the other way.

[munty13]

"The speed of observation is irrelevant..."

Theoretically, the speed of observation can be manipulated. The brain communicates at certain frequencies. What if these frequencies could be manipulated so that the rate of perception speeds up? A moment could be made to last much, much longer.

"That's why Einstein said "Every Tom, Dick, and Harry these days thinks he knows what a photon is, but they're wrong."

I'm sure I never mentioned photons but you and Einstein are probably right.