Dear Mr. Wales,
You've sold us both short! :-) (<--please note
smiley, Mr. Poor!)
You have assumed that you could not have anything
helpful to say
about the physics of this situation, so you have
also assumed that
it cannot be simply explained if one tries hard
enough!
Since SR pertains only to rulers and clocks, and to
the results of
measurements made thereby, this should tell us that
it is not
exactly an inherently complex subject. (If you want
one of those,
try quantum mechanics!)
I believe that the average layman can see that
special relativity
does not pertain to E=mc^2, and my simple 5-step
proof should make
a believer out of you.
Here is a brief 5-step proof/explanation for the
average layman:
Everyone agrees that special relativity (SR) has
some sort of
mass increase,* just as everyone agrees that SR has
some sort of
time dilation and some sort of rod contraction. The
question is,
What is physically happening in these three cases?
[* a minor technical point, it's really a momentum
(which is simply
mass x velocity) increase]
Since most laymen feel much more comfortable
discussing a clock
and its rhythm than discussing mass and momentum,
and since all
three of the above SR effects are alike, it is much
better to
begin by using a simple clock-rhythm example.
Step 1:
Picture a single, normally-operating atomic clock
that is sitting
on a stationary table some where. (In "tech talk,"
it is continuously
at rest with respect to an inertial frame).
Step 2:
Note the fact that this clock cannot have more than
one atomic
(internal, time-keeping) rhythm. (A clock that had
two or more
different "tick rates" would have to be thrown
away!)
Step 3:
Note the fact that observers in different SR frames
will find
many "different rhythms" for this clock. (Indeed, in
SR, one and
the same clock has an infinite number of "different
rhythms.")
Step 4:
Reach the unavoidable conclusion that SR's "time
dilation" does
not pertain to a clock's intrinsic (atomic, in this
case) rhythm.
Step 5:
Apply this same argument to the other two cases
(i.e., to the
momentum and rod contraction cases), and similarly
reach the
equally unavoidable conclusion that SR does not
pertain to either
intrinsic mass or to intrinsic rod length.
(Not that anything more is needed, but strength is
added to our
argument by the fact that each of SR's cases are
reciprocal; e.g.,
I see your clock is "running slow," but you also see
_my_ clock
"running slow." If we were talking about real
(atomic, intrinsic)
clock rhythms, then this would clearly be a
physically impossible
situation, and the same applies to both the SR
momentum and rod
contraction cases.)
At this point, although we have not answered our
original question
about what was physically happening in these three
cases, we have
answered the question about what was _not_ happening
in these cases,
which means that we have answered the important
question Does SR
pertain to physically real (or intrinsic)
characteristics? And we
have found that the answer to this question is No.
This tells us all
we need to know in order to prove our main point
that SR does not
pertain to the equivalence of real mass with real
energy (which is
of course stated explicitly by the equation E=mc^2).
-----RR-----
Forgive me if I'm being naive, but I thought there
were no absolute time frames, and if any time frames
existed, then they must be relative for the reasons of
special relativity. This would mean that, while if one
person is comparing his atomic clock to another
person's clock that's on a space ship they would get
different results, internally, the clocks have a
constant rate.
LDan
PS. This sounds like a typical crackpot theory steming
from a fundimental misunderstanding of a science. I
think we should drop this because, even if it is
correct (which it isn't), it is still not for
Wikipedia until he gets through the Establisment and
writes a scientific paper on it.
__________________________________
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