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100 Years of Special Relativity
phrotoma writes "Wikipedia notes in their Selected Anniversaries section that today marks
the 100th anniversary of Albert Eintein's publication of the third of his four Annus Mirabilis Papers entitled On the Electrodynamics of
Moving Bodies; the seminal work that introduced the concepts which would come to be known as Special Relativity. This
event is also being commemorated in a UN endorsed celebration of physics: World Physics
Year 2005 with talks and events at public schools, museums, and universities the world over."
100 years according to which observer?
I already read about this tomorrow.
--------
This isn't the sig you're looking for. Move along.
100 years? I don't understand. That paper was published just two years ago, right before I embarked on my intersteller voyage travelling near the speed of light. I've only been gone two years, so clearly one of us has calendar issues.
In what reference frame?
Leif Ericson discovered it hundreds of years earlier, and the Native Relativians were already there anyway. Their boats were just to slow to test the theory.
Eurocentric insensitive clods!
sigs, as if you care.
Although he's a hero of mine, I've found only Einstein's "photoelectric effect" insights to be a work of genius - a "quantum leap", if you will (or even if you won't, how will I know? It's all the same to me...) Relativity is brilliant, and changed science and culture forever. But it's really an ingenious refinement of Maxwell's field equations, even more than extra precision added to Newton's formulas.
--
make install -not war
Nothing has equalled special relativity in 100 years? has it
You'd think it wouldn't be considered quite so Special any more.
My theory is just as credible as yours since it's only a theory and not a fact.
Ok, now that that diatribe is over, what's truly interesting is not that what Einstein proposed 100 years ago is still being studied and restudied, it's that one portion of it was recently confirmed. Frame dragging was only confirmed last year.
Certainly other parts have been verified (relative time for example) but this portion, frame dragging, puts things in a whole new light. We're not just bodies in space. Instead, are bodies are changing the space around us!
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
[Church Lady]
Well, isn't that special.
[/Church Lady]
Maybe you should educate the morons of tomorrow so they'll stop believing the leaders of tomorrow. - Dogbert
The guiness of Einstein was that he synthesized some more arcane work into some fairly simple equations, continuing to refine what we knew about the universe
But it's already common knowledge that we don't have a GUT yet, and everything we do have seems very complex and overdone, much the same as it was before E=mc2
I can't help but wonder if someone will come along in the next decade or so and synthesize these more complex equations into another step forward for mankind. Who knows? Maybe the answer is something like "42"
Was Worf A Programmer?
Cute.
The guiness of Einstein was that he synthesized some more arcane work into some fairly simple equations
My goodness, my Guinness!
Yes, very funny.
This is an incredible time to be alive and watching the strides made by physics. Recent developments in the creation of new forms of matter, and the coming experimental fusion reactor in France make the future hopefully brighter for man and mankind.
Lets hope we don't end up with a "Black Mesa" incident...
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
I've been circling the earth at near light speed for that long, you insensitive clod!
A guy walks into a bar... well, I forgot the joke, but the punchline is that he's an alcoholic.
... and being ONLY a "theory," won't be taught in Kansas public schools.
He changed a word in one of the sentences.
. html
From TA:
How can I be involved?
You can organize an event in your community!
Parent post:
How can I be involved?
You can orgasmize an event in your community!
I know this is slashdot, but you sir, are abusing the system.
Anyway here's the coralcache link of the *REAL* article.
http://www.physics2005.org.nyud.net:8090/aboutwyp
[ ] You understand relativity :)
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
like we have today. It is amazing he came up with his theories and yet during that time there was not precision instrumentation to observe and measure relativistic physics. I guess the Michelson-Morley was one instrument...
I've heard that there are sometimes said to be five Einstein "miracle" papers. What is the fifth one not included in this list?
Good coverage. For those in the Toronto, Ontario, Canada area, there are events being held @ the UofT. http://www.fields.utoronto.ca/programs/scientific/ 04-05/string-theory/strings2005/
for more info
=)
And just think -- under today's copyright laws of life+70, these papers would still be under copyright until 2025. Wikipedia is able to publish these today because copyright law was more sane a century ago.
I am sorry, nothing deserves 120 years of copyright protection. I doubt almost anything needs even 28 years. I weep for those who will be looking back 100 years from now.
That was one hell of a year. Any one of those would have established his reputation, but all three, and in the same year!!
It's just you. Really.
diegoT
While the rest of the globe celebrates the World Year of Physics, the UK has declared 2005 Einstein Year, why us and not his native Germany I don't know.
A somewhat bizarre range of events are and have taken place, from a hands-on lab in a lorry to an experiment looking for ghosts, to a poetry competition about time, space and energy.
You know who is to blame for nuking Japan? The Japanese. They only had not to attack Pearl Harbour.
"Long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead." (John Maynard Keynes)
Bwaaaa-hah-a-hhhahhhaa
Vote Quimby!
Einstein is working in a patent office
Smith: I'd like to patent this. I call it "Smith's Theory of Relativity"
Einstein browses through Smith's work, nods approvingly and then kills Smith with the overhead window door
-everphilski-
I wonder if the laws of physics prior to special relativity account for all the strange time relationships you can see in old movies, where people seem to move in rapidly varying relationships with respect to time. Thanks, Einstein, for making everyone move at a more predictable pace -- I figure things like growing seasons and skiing on moguls must have been much harder with the old physics.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
.. the same laws of electrodynamics and optics will be valid for all frames of reference for which the equations of mechanics hold good. We will raise this conjecture (the purport of which will hereafter be called the "Principle of Relativity") to the status of a, postulate, and also introduce another postulate, which is only apparently irreconcilable with the former, namely, that light is always propagated in empty space with a definite velocity c which is independent of the state of motion of the emitting body. These two postulates suffice ..
The thing that needs explaining to me would be "frames of reference". A difference between two frames can be that they are in motion with respect to each other. For example, take a spaceship accelerating to half the speed of light, starting from our resting position. The 2nd postulate explains that the speed of light can be a constant velocity c, both with respect to the frame of the resting observer and the frame(view) of the spaceship. This leads to the question: if you shoot a light ray(velocity c=the speed of light) from the spaceship moving with half= 0.5 c, how come the light ray moves with 1.0 c from the view of both observers, not with 1.5 c from the resting observer?As Einstein states, he then proceeds to reconcile the two seemingly paradox postulates by formulating laws of electrodynamics that will work.
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
I dunno, string theory looks pretty good from what I've read. Wish I could still follow the math :-)
Vote Quimby!
I think we have too many smart people chasing their tales in the internet world today. We have become more concerned with the internal..
Aside: I read the lin in you sig .
"suppose you have written an artificial intelligence engine, let's call it a call-center psychiatrist, how would you go about knowing if it was working okay?" Maybe another wuestion is. "How do you know if you would be better qualified to tell if its working than itslf..or one of IT'S OWN subroutines??
Half of the native residents of West Virginia are filing a lawsuit against the Einstein estate for his use of the phrase "It's all relative" when he was traveling through the state and asked what he thought of the state compared to New Jersey.
> The guiness of Einstein was that he synthesized some more arcane work into some fairly simple equations, continuing to refine what we knew about the universe [...] I can't help but wonder if someone will come along in the next decade or so and synthesize these more complex equations into another step forward for mankind.
I'm sure more guiness will help.
> But it's already common knowledge that we don't have a GUT yet, and everything we do have seems very complex and overdone, much the same as it was before E=mc2
FYI, Einstein didn't make things simpler; he made them more accurate.
If the universe is complex and overdone, we'll just have to live with complex and overdone theories.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Say relativity is 100 years old and the immediate thing that pops into my mind is Twins Paradox.
In fact it is the most difficult part of relativity to get straight. Because relative velocity of light is always 'C' - and how ?. Well time and distance measurements change with the speed you move. Newton only said speed was relative - he always maintained that displacement and time were absolute. After all absolute time predisposes of a creator for this universe - time began with the creation. Otherwise what was God doing before ?.
Anyway, it's been nearly 150 years since Darwin proposed his theories - still the debate continues. At least in physics there seems to be less religion messing up with it.
> Does that say more about the level of education among Slashdotters, or about our lack of creativity, or both?Education and a tendency to make clever inside jokes (imagine a bewoul..NO CARRIER). Anyone who has read about Aorist rods or about time travel was invented at the same time throughout history can appreciate that the joke is with the reader. The real point is that these jokes were modded up.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
I guess today is the day to finally listen to these...
http://www.teach12.com/ttc/EinsteinLectures.asp?a
Reletive to what?
If we are speaking in terms of the Earths timeline then it is 100years.
It doesn't make sence to assume that anything else.
100 years ago Einstein was publishing his theory. Today we're discussing intelligent design and how the dinosaurs attacked Noah's ark. Why do I feel we're going backwards? (low res images because of Slashdotting, I guess... can't find a high res version)
My website
indeed.
I guess today is a passable day to die.
OK, I just heard about this, it's bad enough that I have to drag around a separate PDA, phone, and laptop - now I find out I'm dragging space and time around with me as well?
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
I agree.
There is a cartoon at http://mnftiu.cc/ that is funny as hell in this regard. One of the characters is talking about "not being mean" to the red states and says something like:
"We've got the theory of gravity, lets not blow it"
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
LU + E = 42
It's also possible this number may have changed as the universe evolved, so is it something special or just arbitray?
Of course there is more to the universe than just Quantum Electrodynamics, so this number isn't the end-all be-all. You'll need to look at other coupling constants to get a larger picture.
So it's not 42, but it's not too far off ;-)
make world, not war
What's more worrying is the increasingly extensive politicization of science (yes, it's always been political but it's getting even more so), the concomitant drop in the general education levels and the rise of anti-science as a source of feasible political capital.
The owls are not what they seem
...seems just like yesterday. *pa-dum-psh*
> They only had not to attack Pearl Harbour.
You're assuming two things. First that they really did. It's illogical to think that the Japanese could have sunk so many ships that far from home without the help of the US Navy. The hawks in the Navy wanted war. They knew they would have to sacrifice some of thier own to see their dream come true.
Also, you're assuming Japan wasn't forced into defending themselves. After the US started the economic war of aggression against them, they had no choice but to defend themselves. The US attacked Japan in an attempt to start a war just as the US is now doing to the Muslims.
Please read a little history before posting garbage like that.
Skinner
http://www.democraticunderground.com/
As long as we are on the topics there has been some major innovations in the last generation in terms of relativity in the area of optics. That is what would you see if you were going near the speed of light. Turns out is is much more interesting than the typical "everything is shorter in the direction of motion" view of a generation ago. click here for movies with explination.
ANY theory is arguably the best lie to explain the facts. Currently we accept as fact, theories with expermental data, published in a refreed scientific journal. Good papers and bad papers alike.
Steven Wolfram, author of a 'New kind of science', spends the better part of 770 pages of the massive tome, proving the universality of celluar automatia and its relationship to causal networks. He claims that the link between causes...Something happned, followed by something else happening, is arbitrary. The best explianation is the first one (i.e. the best lie to explain the facts ).
Theories are NOT FACTS. Facts are the data on which theories are based, and Theories are WORDS, that explain the nature of physical reality.
So, Newtonian Physics, Relitivity, Quantium Electrodynamics, Quanium Chromodynamics and Strings, and Brane theories are LIES! But being arbitrary, they are the best lies to explain the facts.
YOUR theory is NOT as credible as mine, since I, in the intrest of science would submit it, and get published in a refreed journal. This is the accepted way to create agreement reality. Tiny Demons is a story by Issac Asimov.
The bending if light around the gravity hole of mercury was measured to be in alignment with Einstiens theories. This is PROOF, not a theory(lies), or a fact(Reality). Mr Wolfram, and the scientific process agree that the best lies to explain the facts is an arbitrary choice, and call it Truth, although hermanetics attributes a universality to truths.
Does the truth create the universality? or does the universality create the truth? Again, its Arbitrary.
It's worthy of note that one of the more obscure aspects of Einstein's theorum of Relativity is Frame Dragging, which predicts that time and space will be dragged around a spinning object's mass. This is being tested to an extremely high level of accuracy by the 4 most perfect spheres ever created in the Gravity Probe B (http://www.gravityprobeb.com/ experiment going on currently. The project is a 1 year flight with NASA and Stanford as the sponsors, and they are keeping mum as to interim results of the test. Supposedly the results will be announced in the near future after the 1 year test period is complete.
Just a shout-out to all my old sci.physics homies.
(Mods - this is actually on topic. You need to know the history of certain Usenet cranks to get it though)
Skinner, meet Occam. You two have a lot to talk about, so I'll leave you alone for awhile.
If only the fans of sci-fi would learn about special relativity, they would quickly learn that their dreams of intergalactic travel would quickly shrivel up. Consider the so-called "twin paradox" that would have a space traveler age quite differently than the people left behind. Here is a link http://theory.uwinnipeg.ca/mod_tech/node141.html with a brief explanation. Better ones can probably be found.
sig here
The level of reverence given around here to that site amazes me.
In a way, he did make things simpler too - most of the transformations arising from SR had already beeen derived elsewhere (e.g. when trying to explain the Michleson-Mosley experiment), but Einstein produced a simple rule (i.e. that physical constants are invariant) which led directly to those results - and several other interesting ones, too
You seem to have a good handle on this relativity thing, so maybe you can explain something to me that I have never really understood:
Imagine that I have a spaceship with a drive system on it that can sustain a 1G acceleration indefinately. The exact mechanism I'm going to handwave away... but I'm imagining something like a Bussard ramjet. The important parts are that it works by good old Newtonian action/reaction (ie, thrust - not some Star Trek space warping deal) that it can produce 1G of thrust, and that we can treat its fuel supply as massless and infinate.
As I understand how relativity works, as long as my velocity is a small percentage of c, I can accelerate at 1G no problem. But as my velocity approaches c, the energy required to maintain that 1G of thrust gets larger and larger, such that to go from "almost c" to "c" requires an infinate amount of energy.
How the flippin' hell does that mechanism work? What's there to slow the ship down; to act as the drag that requires increasing energy output to overcome it and keep my acceleration constant?
It's "Guinness"...
"I told you a million times not to exaggerate!"
NRAdude was only showing the relativity text in a Jewish Proverb. Is unhindered moderation justified? Relative to the proverb, its equal as two political members calling eachother terrorists; it's relative to your standing. Did Einstein not teach about a man standing on a train and pointing a flashlight-beam forward as being measured relative to the train? The same can be said for speach, modernly abused by everyone under the sun.
Well, this is because the fundamentalist wackos don't understand it at all. They don't understand evolution either, but they at least have a BS version of it to bash. Although, I have seen a few fundies mention that the theory of relativity is "only a theory" whereas the laws of thermodynamics are "laws" and thus somehow help their arguments. Basically, it is another "argument by semantics".
Crazy, crazy people...
Similar to the upcoming US election results
Alas, that isn't the case.
"Why can't everyone just be straight with me?"
"Because we live in a bendy world, dear."
If that paper had been published today it surely would have been about electroshock porn.
Theory Underlying SR: The Time Dimension is Moving Relative to The Spatial Dimension
/ / / / /
The Theory of Moving Dimensions
Dr. Elliot McGucken
mcgucken@jollyroger.com
In this paper I propose that the time dimension is moving relative to the three spatial dimensions. Such a concept may be used to explain physical phenomena encountered in relativity and quantum mechanics, while offering a path for the unification of Quantum Mechanics and Relativity.
Simply put, it is not possible to rotate an object into the time dimension without that object gaining a velocity. Thus the time dimension itself must be expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions. Another way of looking at this is asking, "Why does something always move when it is rotated out of the three spatial dimensions and into the time dimension?" If someone can conduct a Lorentz transformation on a ruler, and rotate it into the time dimension without it moving through the three spatial dimensions, I would very much like to hear about it.
Einstein's two postulates of relativity state:
I. The laws of physical phenomena are the same in all inertial frames.
II. The velocity of light in free space is a universal constant, independendent of any relative motion of teh source and the observer.
I propose that the two postulates may be expressed in an alternative manner, by stating the following law of moving dimensions:
I. The time dimension is moving relative to the three spatial dimensions.
This can be shown illustrated in several ways: Consider an expression for the space-time interval of zero length, or of the null vector, which traces a photon's path through space-time:
x^2+y^2+z^2-c^2t^2=0
or
x^2+y^2+z^2=c^2t^2
Which for one spatial dimension becomes
x^2=c^2t^2
or x=ct
by taking the derivative of both sides with respect to t, we get
dx/dt = d/dt (ct) = c
so
dx/dt = c
And hence the time rate of change of the spatial dimension relative to the time rate of change of the time dimension is equal to the velocity of light.
ct|
|
|
|
|
|/_______________
x
Also, if we trace the path of a photon on a space-time diagram, the only way for a photon to remain stationary in space time is to move at the speed of light, or to keep up with the expanding time dimension.
The null vector, which represents a vector of zero length in space-time, can only imply zero movement through space-time. Even though a photon moves through space at a velocity equal to C, it stays stationary in space-time. Is it not strange at first that in order to remain stationary in space time, a photon appears move at the speed of light through space? This is only because the time dimension itself is moving relative to space.
Einstein proclaimed that all objects travel through space-time at c.
Even though we perceive a ruler along the x axis to be stationary, it is yet traveling through space-time at the fixed speed of c, implying that time is moving through it. Rotate it towards the y axis, and its projection upon the x axis shortens, yet it still appears to be stationary, and it is still traveling through space-time at the rate of c. Rotate it into the time dimension, and it's projection along the x axis still shortens, but now it begins to move through the three spatial dimensions, while maintaining the fixed speed of c through space-time. Again, we see it move through the three spatial dimensions as it is rotated into the time dimension because the time dimension is moving relative to the three spatial dimensions.
As Brian Greene points out in the Appendix to Chapter 2 of The Elegant Universe, we note that from the space-time position 4-vector x=(ct,x1,x2,x3), we can create the velocity 4-vector u=dx/d(tau), where tau is the proper time defined by
d(tau)^2=dt^2-c^-2(dx1^2
"This indicates that according to the Lorentz transformation, nothing can have the same speed relative to both K and K' unless it is a ray of light"
You then calmly assert that this is nonsense and claim certain mathematical assumptions are to blame. However, even a moment's thought about this indicates that this makes perfect sense - The two frames are in relative motion to one another, and thus for any object the observed velocity would be V = Vframe+Vobject (or it's relativistic correction, for high velocities). So, unless both frames have the same Vframe (i.e they are the same frame), nothing but two rays of light can have the same velocity in both frames - as in the postulates of special relativity.
In effect, you have proved that Lorentz transformations are the ones which are consistent with SR.
Simply put, it is not possible to rotate an object into the time dimension without that object gaining a velocity. Thus the time dimension itself must be expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions. Another way of looking at this is asking, "Why does something always move when it is rotated out of the three spatial dimensions and into the time dimension?" If someone can conduct a Lorentz transformation on a ruler, and rotate it into the time dimension without it moving through the three spatial dimensions, I would very much like to hear about it.
I'm treating this as an open-source physics project, if anyone would like to join me at http://physicsmathforums.com/showthread.php?t=16
http://physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=80559
Theory Underlying SR: The Time Dimension is Moving Relative to The Spatial Dimension
The Theory of Moving Dimensions
Dr. Elliot McGucken
mcgucken@jollyroger.com
In this paper I propose that the time dimension is moving relative to the three spatial dimensions. Such a concept may be used to explain physical phenomena encountered in relativity and quantum mechanics, while offering a path for the unification of Quantum Mechanics and Relativity.
Einstein's two postulates of relativity state:
I. The laws of physical phenomena are the same in all inertial frames.
II. The velocity of light in free space is a universal constant, independendent of any relative motion of teh source and the observer.
I propose that the two postulates may be expressed in an alternative manner, by stating the following law of moving dimensions:
I. The time dimension is moving relative to the three spatial dimensions.
Also, if we trace the path of a photon on a space-time diagram, the only way for a photon to remain stationary in space time is to move at the speed of light, or to keep up with the expanding time dimension.
The null vector, which represents a vector of zero length in space-time, can only imply zero movement through space-time. Even though a photon moves through space at a velocity equal to C, it stays stationary in space-time. Is it not strange at first that in order to remain stationary in space time, a photon appears move at the speed of light through space? This is only because the time dimension itself is moving relative to space.
Einstein proclaimed that all objects travel through space-time at c.
Even though we perceive a ruler along the x axis to be stationary, it is yet traveling through space-time at the fixed speed of c, implying that time is moving through it. Rotate it towards the y axis, and its projection upon the x axis shortens, yet it still appears to be stationary, and it is still traveling through space-time at the rate of c. Rotate it into the time dimension, and it's projection along the x axis still shortens, but now it begins to move through the three spatial dimensions, while maintaining the fixed speed of c through space-time. Again, we see it move through the three spatial dimensions as it is rotated into the time dimension because the time dimension is moving relative to the three spatial dimensions.
As Brian Greene points out in the Appendix to Chapter 2 of The Elegant Universe, we note that from the space-time position 4-vector x=(ct,x1,x2,x3), we can create the velocity 4-vector u=dx/d(tau), where tau is the proper time defined by
d(tau)^2=dt^2-c^-2(dx1^2+dx2^2+dx3^2). Then the "speed through space-time" is the magnitude of the 4-vector u, ((c^2dt^2-dx^2)/(dt^2-c^-2dx^2))^(1/2), which is identically the speed of light c. Now, we can rearrange the equation c^2(dt/d(tau))^2-(dx/d(tau))^2=c^2 to be c^2(d(tau)/dt))^2 +(dx/d(tau))^2=c^2. This shows that an increase of an object's speed through space, (dx/d(tau))^2)^(1/2)= dx/d(tau) must be accompanied by a decrease in d(tau)/dt which is the object's speed through time, which also may be considered t
"The real point is that these jokes were modded up."
It's still a matter of relative time - or actually timing. 200 posts down the thread you get nothing for the same joke - unless of course the 'observer' begins to read at that point and then...I think it's got something to do with the Great Wheel of Karma.
billy - if two trains...
"Any two observers moving at constant speed and direction with respect to one another will obtain the same results for all mechanical experiments."
Galileo was trying to explain why its difficult to tell the earth is moving: when everything moves in unison its like relatively no motion at all. Thats why we dont have thousand mile winds at the equation, the soup doesnt pool to the east in its bowl, etc. The other image Galileo used was things and activities inside a moving ship.
Einstein amplified this to objects moving rapidly to one another with the assumption there is a maximum constant velocity.
>I like to completely miss the
>jokes with inane corrections
I like to touch my binkie in public.
make: target not found. Stop.
Theories of Relativity
Five specially commissioned short stories to mark the centenary of Einstein's discovery. Listen to them for next few days only here .
Share and Enjoy!
Artificial intelligence is the study of how to make real computers act like the ones in the movies.
I think the difference between evolution and relativity is its accessability. Evolution is easily boiled down to laymen with little science background- "you're great great great... grandfather was a monkey". Special relativity goes right over most people's head. Add into that the average religious nut has less education than the societal norm, and you end up with very few people making noise.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Heh, I was at a lecture last fall by John Schwartz (invented string theory). Three of my profs that semester were sitting in the row in front of me (PDE, Classical Mechanics, and Quantum Mech I). After the lecture, I commented that the math was way over my head, and they all said, yeah, me too! The key thing (arithmetically) seemed to be the wedge product, which is the "multiplication" operation in an exterior algebra. Look it up on mathworld... I still don't understand it yet. One of my other math profs has a whole book on the exterior algebra.
SIGSEGV caught, terminating
wait... not that kind of sig.
I think the point of confusion here is: What does it mean to be "moving" if it doesn't somehow involve the time dimension? The strangenesses that you point to all seem to amount to this same idea. I'm not sure what it would mean to say that the time dimension moves with respect to the spatial ones, or that "The null vector, which represents a vector of zero length in space-time, can only imply zero movement through space-time. " You have to be careful what you mean by motion if you take time out of the picture.
The standard point of view is that in some sense, everything in the universe is actually "stationary". A particle is represented by some world-line in spacetime, a curve in 4D which traces out its position as a function of time. Different reference frames are simply different choices of coordinate axes in this 4D space - the worldline is still geometrically "the same", I just describe it differently than you do. My axes might be spatially rotated with respect to yours, or have a different origin for the time/space coordinates. Furthermore, I might be moving at a different velocity, which turns out to correspond to a rotation that involves the time axis - my time axis might have spatial components in your reference frame. This latter bit gives rise to all the cute effects of special relativity - time dilation, lorentz contraction, etc. I have to do a coordinate transformation to match my measurements to yours - a Lorentz transformation.
General relativity throws in the complication of gravity - spacetime has curvature, and so you can't choose a global inertial frame (a single coordinate system over all spacetime with all the technical properties that you'd like it to have, in which particles move in straight worldlines). You'll have leftover accelerations and strange effects in the presence of gravitating mass (or energy). The expansion of the universe (a GR effect) is a statement that the "scaling" of the spatial axes with respect to the time axis is not constant, but changes as you move along the time axis - none of these axes need to "move" in some other way.
Anyway, that's the cleanest point of view I know of. I'll be the first to admit that I may not understand what you're saying, but I don't think there is any need in basic relativity for the concept of dimensional motion.
God man.. You already lost the argument with your stupid claim that something not "living up to its hype" is incorrect.
Don't you have anything substantive to add to the argument? Of course you don't..
Yes, things have really improved a lot in the 2000 years since people started using that nice Jewish fella Jesus to justify their hate and wars, huh?
Glad it's not like that now.
The problem with understanding relativity is that, not only is it not apparent in observable reality like Newton's Laws, but it goes against everything we see. It's completely incongruent with the way our mind works. Our brain can't understand time and distance being warped, and that a linear increase in speed doesn't actually mean a linear increase in speed.
You'd have more luck trying to explain how colours have different sounds, or how each day of the week has a flavour.
The wedge product is not the nasty part of string theory; exterior algebra is not yet required in the usual physics/engineering curricula, so a lot of experimentalists can get quite far without really understanding it, but it isn't really any "nastier" than, say, div,grad,curl, or the math involved in thermodynamic transformations.
The nasty part about string theory is the relativistic quantum field theory + supersymmetry + topology needed to *start* understanding strings. At least, that's what I gather. I only ever understood string theory talks up to the third slide or so. Barton Zwiebach seems to have an interesting introductory text, however.
Science thrives on critical review not on mindless repetition and building of shrines.
Enjoy.
Newton's laws *also* seem to be incongruent with how our mind works. That's one reason Physics 1 seems hard to so many people.
Really: every action has an equal and opposite reaction? You mean my body is pulling the Earth toward it with as much force as the Earth is pulling me toward *it*? Bodies remain in motion in a straight line? I can, in principle, throw a ball hard enough that "what goes up need not come down"? Astronauts float in their spaceships, but they are not "beyond the reach of gravity"?
Even basic Newtonian physics takes quite a bit of practice to become "intuitive" to any degree.
And yet things were going so brilliantly in the preceding years until he came and messed everything up.
Also, maybe you should read the post you are replying to before you reply.
discussion you're about 5 years too late (and no, that's not a joke or a play on words or anything). Sorry.
Aw... you're just blowing hot air!
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
do you think he'd be any less dead if he'd been a billionaire?
Your angry makes you look cute. Can I fuck you?
I wouldn't say that. Newtonian physics exists in three-dimensional space. The brain thinks in three dimensions. Eisteinium physics exists in at least four-dimensional space. Understanding it is not really possible to the human brain.
Poor innocent Japanese... BTW, what were they doing in China at the time?
"Long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead." (John Maynard Keynes)
The "mass increase" is different for forces that are parallel and perpendicular to the motion. Therefore some people use terms like parallel mass and perpendicular mass, which is strange if you want to keep mass as a scalar (directionless) quantity.
"Mass increase" is often used to regain the Newtonian formula F = ma for relativistic speeds: F = ma holds if you use the "modified mass" in place of m. However, this is not Newtonian mechanics any more, therefore we should forget about F = ma when talking about relativity.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
Isn't that the right question to ask instead of celebrating past glory or worrying about some freaks deliberating on Noah's ark being attacked by dinosaurs?
You can also just talk in terms of f=dp/dt in relativity, which is true with no invented "modified mass" (and coincidentally is how Newton wrote it IIRC).
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
'39
In the year of '39 assembled here the Volunteers
In the days when the lands were few
Here the ship sailed out into the blue and sunny morn
The sweetest sight ever seen.
And night followed day
And the storytellers say
That the score brave souls inside
For many a lonely day sailed across the milky seas
Ne'er looked back, never feared, never cried.
Don't you hear my call though you're many years away
Don't you hear me calling you
Write your letters in the sand
For the day I take your hand
In the land that our grandchildren knew.
In the year of '39 came a ship in from the blue
The Volunteers came home that day
And they bring good news of a world so newly born
Though their so heavily weigh
For the earth is old and grey, to a new home we'll away
But my love this cannot be
For so many years have gone though I'm older but a year
Your mother's eyes in your eyes cry to me.
Don't you hear my call though you're many years away
Don't you hear me calling you
All the letters in the sand cannot heal me like your hand
For my life
Still ahead
Pity Me.
'39 - Queen
From the album A Night At The Opera
Written by Brian May
If my call is important, why am I talking to a recording?
All five articles from Einstein (and many more important articles since 1799) have been published in the Annalen der Physik, the leading scientific journal at that time.
Thanks to the French digital national library Gallica, you can now access ALL (or nearly all) pages of the Annalen der Physik: on-line and from 1799 - 1930.
Obviously: to understand this publication, it helps a lot to read German, the former lingua franca of the science.
Click Preferences.
Select the Comments tab.
Scroll down to Reason Modifier.
Set Funny -3.
Click Save.
You will be rewarded with page after page of Informative, Insightful posts.
Read all about it Here in this superb documentary.
Relativity is brilliant, and changed science and culture forever. But it's really an ingenious refinement of Maxwell's field equations,
For an even dimmer view of Einstein's contribution to speical relativity, check out this E. T. Whittaker guy:
"In the autumn of [1905] . . . Einstein published a paper which set forth the relativity theory of Poincare and Lorentz with some amplifications, and which attracted much attention."
E. T. Whittaker, History of the Theories of Aether and Electricity, 1953.
http://www.dw-world.de/einsteinyear/
http://www.dw-world.de/einsteinjahr/
Frankly, he went offtopic. We're talking about relativity of time and he discusses time as we all thought of it before relativity came along. "What did God do before the beginning of time?" is what got him modded down, because it's a nonsense question.(It's a flamebait because it's a sensitive topic and it could turn this whole discussion into something else. Start a new story about religion, hey, we'd love it, but don't do it here.) Nobody knows what time is, let alone when did it start. The concept of "time" is something utterly problematic to define, though we all have some instinctual grasp of it, it's one of the highest level "induction" concepts about the world, it applies to so many things we think about, and because it's so important, it's pretty much 'promoted' into our subconscious, it's fully soaked into the fiber of every thought of ours. Relativity is an 'in your face' against this habitual induction, that time 'flows' uniform everywhere, simply because before it we had no reason to think otherwise. We're all happy and in awe about it, and that's what we want to discuss here, this superb finding, that looky look, who would have thought, time doesn't flow equally, and even though we don't completely understand what time is, at least we know something about it, something that can only bring us closer, deeper, more enlightened.
Excellent! Creationists trying to justify their beliefs with "laws of physics" that do not fit the wealth of data accumulated by physicists over the years discredit themselves in areas where there is more room for debate like biology.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Bah, of course it's going to be extremely difficult to explain how colors have different sounds and days of the weeks have flavors, you've got them mixed up. Personally, I think that today is a bit too bassey for my tastes, though the sky was a lovely shade of green mouse and telephone ice cream.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
It looks like such a serious post, and I wondered why it's still modded at 1, since you obviously took the effort and time to care.
I read and pieced the formulas apart in my brain about halfway through your post. The math is accurate, though unnecessarily complexly written - have you considered using beta and gamma notations instead of stuff like (1-(dx/dt)^2/(c)^2)^(-1/2)? But what you're getting is no different than what you started with.
There were a couple key phrases that grabbed my attention, such as "rotation meaning a shift into a different dimension" - because I still don't have a true, intuitive grasp of what rotation means, and as far as I know, yes, rotation means taking something that was x, and changing it into y, or sin into cosine, two quantities defining change into each other, such as oscillation energy from inertial into potential energies, and voila, you describe it best via a rotating vector and phase angles. Another key idea that grabbed my eye was that the photon has a null-vector in 4-d spacetime. But halfway through I gave up reading the rest, because I saw no meaningful way shown on how space changes into time, or time changes into space, or whether such concepts are even workable. True, space and time have the same nature, distance, just like electric and magnetic fields, or spring/mass oscillators have the unifying concept of energy, kinds of energy shifting, but where is the shift, where is the pheomenon that makes it happen? Back and forth, you loose space, you get time, now you get time, you lose space. You have to spell it out in more detai, something to the point.
Please realize that the 4d spacetime no longer has the concept of "speed", only "distance." You basically have 4 coordinates x,y,z,w (w being ict), and minkowski's geometry says that the "euclidian 4d-distance" along the "worldline" (ds2=x2+y2+z2+w2) is invariant to coordinate system changes. For photons this distance 0, and so is it for anything that moves with speed of light (ict messes with your mind, because ict^2 makes a negative quantity out of a positive time change, giving you 0 in a sum.) For other things it's different than 0, and it's a quantity of length units (meters.) When time becomes one of the full coordinates, nothing 'changes', you basically have a still picture, the snapshot of the whole universe, present and past, and everything fits into this one big coordinate system, behold your magic crystal-ball. Considering 'changes' you might as well say dx/dy, dx/dz, dx/ict, or whatever you want, there is no longer an undealt with variable, all information is contained in the path-coordinates, the world-line, dealing with velocities no longer introduces new useful information, such as when introducing time variable when dealing with a 3d space-world.
As far as saying that the space coordinates "flow' or shift through the time axis, they don't in the spacetime world, you got everything in one big picture, it's you, your 3d-mind who scans a 3d space with a 2-d plane, or the 4-d spacetime with a 3d-space, along the time axis, which is how we experience the world, nobody knows why, or does this question make sense even. Note that this means the space dimensions moving along the time dimension, we observe many spatial variables at once, simultaneously, but time always in sequence, and not how you titled it, the time dimension moving along the space dimension. That's not how we experience the world, and it'd be really interesting to experience it your way. Deja-vu could be when someone is experiencing many time-coordinates at the same time, being "present" in many time-coordinates "at once". See we even have difficulty experiencing many time coordinates at once, let alone how holding this awareness of many still temporal coordinates, while shifting through space, could mean something that makes sense.
Now whether time flows versus something else, that's just a variable change, or parameter substitution in math, where you take f(x) and make it into f(ay), thus x=ay. So what? x is
Think about this: Also, if we trace the path of a photon on a space-time diagram, the only way for a photon to remain stationary in space time is to move at the speed of light, or to keep up with the expanding time dimension. The null vector, which represents a vector of zero length in space-time, can only imply zero movement through space-time. Even though a photon moves through space at a velocity equal to C, it stays stationary in space-time. Is it not strange at first that in order to remain stationary in space time, a photon appears move at the speed of light through space? This is only because the time dimension itself is moving relative to space. Einstein proclaimed that all objects travel through space-time at c. Even though we perceive a ruler along the x axis to be stationary, it is yet traveling through space-time at the fixed speed of c, implying that time is moving through it. Rotate it towards the y axis, and its projection upon the x axis shortens, yet it still appears to be stationary, and it is still traveling through space-time at the rate of c. Rotate it into the time dimension, and it's projection along the x axis still shortens, but now it begins to move through the three spatial dimensions, while maintaining the fixed speed of c through space-time. Again, we see it move through the three spatial dimensions as it is rotated into the time dimension because the time dimension is moving relative to the three spatial dimensions. As Brian Greene points out in the Appendix to Chapter 2 of The Elegant Universe, we note that from the space-time position 4-vector x=(ct,x1,x2,x3), we can create the velocity 4-vector u=dx/d(tau), where tau is the proper time defined by d(tau)^2=dt^2-c^-2(dx1^2+dx2^2+dx3^2). Then the "speed through space-time" is the magnitude of the 4-vector u, ((c^2dt^2-dx^2)/(dt^2-c^-2dx^2))^(1/2), which is identically the speed of light c. Now, we can rearrange the equation c^2(dt/d(tau))^2-(dx/d(tau))^2=c^2 to be c^2(d(tau)/dt))^2 +(dx/d(tau))^2=c^2. This shows that an increase of an object's speed through space, (dx/d(tau))^2)^(1/2)= dx/d(tau) must be accompanied by a decrease in d(tau)/dt which is the object's speed through time, which also may be considered the rate at which time elapses on it's own clock d(tau) or the proper time, as compared with that on our stationary clock dt. As an object moves through space, it is rotated into the time dimension, and less wave fronts of time are allowed to pass through it relative to a stationary object, which bears the full brunt of wave fronts. Thus a moving clock will run slower, as all clocks are based on the probabilistic emission and propagation of photons, and as a moving clock catches up with the expanding wavefront of time, the chance that a photon will be emitted without being reabsorbed is diminished. Thus it is shown that the spatial and temporal dimensions are moving relative to one-another. The laws and equations of relativity and quantum mechanics rest upon this fundamental nature of physical reality.
Think about this:
http://physicsmathforums.com/forumdisplay.php?f=57
Also, if we trace the path of a photon on a space-time diagram, the only way for a photon to remain stationary in space time is to move at the speed of light, or to keep up with the expanding time dimension. The null vector, which represents a vector of zero length in space-time, can only imply zero movement through space-time. Even though a photon moves through space at a velocity equal to C, it stays stationary in space-time. Is it not strange at first that in order to remain stationary in space time, a photon appears move at the speed of light through space? This is only because the time dimension itself is moving relative to space.
Einstein proclaimed that all objects travel through space-time at c.
Even though we perceive a ruler along the x axis to be stationary, it
is yet traveling through space-time at the fixed speed of c, implying
that time is moving through it. Rotate it towards the y axis, and its
projection upon the x axis shortens, yet it still appears to be
stationary, and it is still traveling through space-time at the rate
of c. Rotate it into the time dimension, and it's projection along
the x axis still shortens, but now it begins to move through the three
spatial dimensions, while maintaining the fixed speed of c through
space-time. Again, we see it move through the three spatial
dimensions as it is rotated into the time dimension because the time
dimension is moving relative to the three spatial dimensions.
As Brian Greene points out in the Appendix to Chapter 2 of The Elegant Universe, we note that from the space-time position 4-vector x=(ct,x1,x2,x3), we can create the velocity 4-vector u=dx/d(tau), where tau is the proper time defined by d(tau)^2=dt^2-c^-2(dx1^2+dx2^2+dx3^2). Then the "speed through space-time" is the magnitude of the 4-vector u, ((c^2dt^2-dx^2)/(dt^2-c^-2dx^2))^(1/2), which is identically the speed of light c. Now, we can rearrange the equation c^2(dt/d(tau))^2-(dx/d(tau))^2=c^2 to be c^2(d(tau)/dt))^2 +(dx/d(tau))^2=c^2. This shows that an increase of an object's speed through space, (dx/d(tau))^2)^(1/2)= dx/d(tau) must be accompanied by a decrease in d(tau)/dt which is the object's speed through time, which also may be considered the rate at which time elapses on it's own clock d(tau) or the proper time, as compared with that on our stationary clock dt.
As an object moves through space, it is rotated into the time dimension, and less wave fronts of time are allowed to pass through it relative to a stationary object, which bears the full brunt of wave fronts. Thus a moving clock will run slower, as all clocks are based on the probabilistic emission and propagation of photons, and as a moving clock catches up with the expanding wavefront of time, the chance that a photon will be emitted without being reabsorbed is diminished. Thus it is shown that the spatial and temporal dimensions are moving relative to one-another. The laws and equations of relativity and quantum mechanics rest upon this fundamental nature of physical reality.
Rest Energy:
Where does an object's rest energy come from? It comes from fact that the expanding time dimension is moving, giving a stationary object a velocity of c through space-time, even when the object appears at rest on a lab table. This massive velocity relative to time, when translated into the spatial dimensions via a Lorentz rotation of the velocity 4-vector, is manifested in energy. E=mc^2.
The Photon's Null Vector:
How can we be comfortable that an entity of zero length moves at the speed of light? The only way for this to make sense is if the time dimension is moving relative to the spatial dimension. A null vector in space-time is defined by a photon, which moves at the velocity of light through space-time. So it is that to have zero length in space-time, an entity must translate thr
Sorry, I think the term "jerk" in my original post was taken out of context. For example, see third derivative/jerk/jolt.
i\hbar\dot{\psi}=\hat{H}\psi
What's the mechanical means to tell if I am floating in deep space or falling down a liftshaft (in a vacuum, obviously ;-).
The means by which you accelerate don't matter, which is why, at least that how I see it, why a clock near a gravity source goes slower. This notion is part of "General Relativity", I guess; Reading wikipedia, there is a line that reveals that since you don't feel an acceleration while falling, from your point of view as far as GR is concerned there is no acceleration - rather you are feeling a constant acceleration upwards while you are resting on the surface on the Earth, and a rather too rapid acceleration when you hit ground.I believe there is a theory by Minkowsky which views this the other way around and states that actually spacetime around a gravity source is constantly expanding. Unfortunately, the parameters and consequences of that theory would have to be adjusted to make it match Einsteins theories, otherwise it won't work, so it is a good question what you would gain from using a theory which states that objects near a gravity source are constantly shrinking in respect to spacetime, which is somewhat hard to imagine for real, even though I believe it works.
Is c(t) constant ?
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
His imagination was the key.to care about everything equally.Using no discrimination and no ego.That is difficult to do because our genes are programed for survival of the fittest.Part of the answer is 14 and 28 .It is too bad that all the other variables need omitting before a answer comes.I am sad to see no mention of max Planck.
A note on this subject: Einstein himself was quite contemptuous of know-nothings in the public. For example he once mocked: "They should all be ashamed...those who thoughtlessly make use of the miracles of science without understanding any more than a cow does botany." (1930) German physicist and Einstein biographer Albrecht Folsing digs up a number of sarcastic and irreverent quotes like this.
The reason why a moving photon doesn't move in spacetime is because you're dealing with the imaginary axis. Explain how the equation x^2+1=0 makes sense? How can the square of something be negative, so when you add it to something, it cancels it to 0? This is the fundemantal issue, and the existence of imaginary numbers was debated for a long time because they don't make sense, until Gauss settled and whole thing saying they have just as much right to exist as the rest of the numbers, even if they don't make sense. You could call this pragmatist philosophical stance - do imaginary numbers have any good use, value? If yes, good, we accept them as something valid. But you gotta be careful with the arguments around them.
See the reply to the previous message. In particular, "The null vector, which represents a vector of zero length in space-time, can only imply zero movement through space-time" is a false statement, because I can come up with a myriad of x^2+(ict)^2=0 numbers, so the (x,t) coordinate pairings can change, even though the "length" defined through ds^2=x^2+(ict)^2=x^2-(ct)^2=0 stays 0. Depends on your definition of "motion", are you looking at the ds^2 quantity, or (x,t)=const. Note that we're not dealing with moduli of complex numbers, which are always a positive real number, or 0, we're dealing with the guts of imaginary numbers. This is not your usual 2d-3d-4d vector space that you can picture, because of the definition of the invariant quantity called ds is not the same as the definition of unimaginary-uncomplex length used in Lorentz transformations.
Also, here are some thoughts about photons being emitted and reabsorbed. I don't believe in the "probabilistic" mumbo jumbo, even though the results are impressive, therefore pragmatic. Those funky Feynman diagrams are impressive, they give an awesome view and have a lot of value, but I'm still not convinced they tell the whole story. In particular, though electron diffraction is mind-boggling, I don't think determinism is done with. How about quantization of space, and spacetime, like the quantization of the dots on your computer monitor screen, and when an object passes through the dots, nothing really moves, except the color of dots changes according to some rules, including conservation of energy, momentum, etc. Behold your new understanding of how energy and mass and rest mass can be of the same nature - you could be just dealing with different floors and an elevator inside each space quantum-office-building. We know vacuum is not empty, but could it be that everything is vacuum, just space, just dots on a screen, and whether that portion of vacuum is an electron or a photon is only the state, or color of the dot, and motion, exchanging states happens according to some simple set of axioms? Also you don't do it with 'real' tiles such as squares or hexagons (do you even need to completely fill space, or can you leave random holes in it?), but come up with some unimaginable imaginary tiles that work all the time via math, but you can't picture them with your mind. Then you could say the electron is behaving randomly because of the way it encounters the next dot, or space quantum, and it has to decide which one to fall into on its path. Brownian motion is random, but it can be explained nicely on purely deterministic grounds. I think quantum mechanics is a temporary stage, like describing Brownian motion on probabilitic grounds because we simply have no evidence of atoms and molecules. We have to look at the smaller scale, and measure something, some experiment. Remember why Leonardo was chastized by the church? Because he believed in the piccolissimo. Infinite itself is mindboggling, if there is a way to avoid it, I welcome it, and I prefer imaginary numbers compared to infinity as an explanation. If you notice Schroedinger's equation has an ugly i in it (sqrt(-1)), which means the math of space quantization is hopelessly thrown into the world that doesn't make sense, and you have to walk on very firm mathematical ground, and ignore the naysayers and your own instincts. There are a lot of ways to describe the same thing, just think of Fourier series vs. regular Taylor series, which are just two ways of looking at the same thing, and equivalent. There are probably many other ways to look at the same thing, but we care about those ways that have the most 'meaning' and utility to us human beings, that fit our mental makeup. Just like in entropy we describe order as a single state, and disorder all the other states we can't really grasp, each one of those disordered states is really equivalent to our "preferred" ordered state, that we're biased towards. What I'm saying is that describing the same thing via Schroedinger's wave mechanics, or Heisenberg's matrix mechanics, or Feynman diagrams, or some funky space quanta, could be the same thing, and what really matters is not which one is true, because they all are, but which one pleases us most, and lets us head on towards the next discoveries, because we can comprehend it. Sometimes you have to give up comfort when you wander into new territory, including the acceptance of imaginary numbers, but look how much utility they have, if nothing else, in electrical engineering! Bewilderingly useful!
I meant Galileo, not Leonardo. I can't find the reference where I read it.
I also meant electron interference, not just diffraction, meaning sudden wave collapse everywhere, or, particles acting deterministically individually but statistically add up to wave behavior. I don't buy yet the need for the observer for a reality to exist.
Here are some thoughts, but we're really going off on tangents, but it's fun.
I can feel the direction of your text was to give examples of rotating time into space and space into time.
First of all I fully agree with your statement that any time measurement ultimately comes down to measuring the speed of light. But same is with length measurement.
Picking on the statement: All objects travel through spacetime at c? If the object is stationary, x=const, yet it's speed is c, dx/dt=c, plus it's ds^2=dx^2+(icdt)^2=0, that means if dx=0 then dt=0. If a stationary object moved through spacetime at the speed of light, it would have to experience no time change. That doesn't make sense to me, because I'm a prime counterexample right now, sitting still, yet experiencing dt. However it's not that simple, I'm made up of traveling electrons, plus we don't even know what protons and neutrons do, and part of why an atom doesn't collapse, why an electron doesn't fall down into the nucleus, could be some requirement that it has to move.
Also, back to the "if a stationary object is moving through space at the speed of light it has to experinece no timechange" and remove the "stationary" part, Let's assume I can live with the remaining. It seems the faster something moves, the slower its clocks go, but what happens when it moves with the full speed of light? You could say all its clocks stop, or entities moving with c experience no time change at all. You say this means they are rotated into the flat space dimension completely, and have none of the time component in them, so they don't experience the change of change, the time of time, the dt/dTau. The hair stands up on my back when seeing such phrases, when you talk about the expansion of time, the change of change, the time of time etc. You're basically either just doing a variable change, a scaling, or summoning yet another "space dimension" as the 4th axis, then you still abstract time away, as something subconsciously in the background, as your Tau. In any case a photon experiences dt, simply because it stays in my world, in my 3d-cut of spacetime, I don't leave it behind in time. Or does it stay in my world? This is a neat koan. For one, you could not talk about speed of light, the dx/dt=c, without the dt part. You could say photons don't really exist, except momentarily, for a dt=0 time, just when they happen to hit me, and then they disappear into the past, but what kind of utility do such concepts have? How did the photon get to me from that star. Well, the star emits an effect, not really a photon, just some effect, that propagates at the speed of light, then when the photon gets to me, it suddenly appears into reality, hits me and puff it's gone into the past, or absorbed away in the present? The effect is not really an object, so rules of existence don't really apply to it - can you feel the mess, the inutility of these ideas?
Since most stationary objects are not really stationary but made up of moving parts (atoms), and nothing except photons move with c, let's come back to the stuff that moves with v, yet they move through spacetime at c. Well, dx/dt=v, but you want dx/dt=c. One way to deal with this is to mess with the t part, the other is to mess with the x part. You mess with the t part, and saying that dx/dtau=c, while dx/dt=v, and you consider the dt/dtau. Have you considered the other way? dXau/dt=c, while dx/dt=v? In this case it is space that is contracted and stretched, which is at the guts of Lorentz transformations. Can you say "wavefronts of space", or "ether" pass through an object, make it expand or contract? You can pretty much find all the math and derivations in the trials and tribulations of making an ether work, between 1850 to 1930, and just simply flip the x variables into your t variables. Whatever reason those things didn't work out, you have to see how it applies to your tau things, except you are on even shakier and less intuitive ground. Because any time/length measurement comes down to the measurement