Hi Frank, Horace, Steve and Terry, Thank you for the most interesting posts. This gives me a lot to think about.
Jack Smith --------------- [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: But atomic clocks do not work by radioactive decay. They work by electron level transitions. I think the change is due to Beta-atm drag. The earth drags the aether as it rotates. The resulting change in electron resonance is essentially a Doppler effect of the Beta-atm. http://tycho.usno.navy.mil/cesium.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_clock I actually recently purchased the HP 5071. The spare Cesium tube was $10k. I believe the polar flight *has* been done. I'll see if I can find a reference. Jack Smith wrote: Another interpretation of this data is that the half life increases when the clocks are moved in the direction of the Earth's axial spin, and the half life decreases when the clocks are moved in the opposite direction. Terry aka hohlraum wrote: But atomic clocks do not work by radioactive decay. They work by electron level transitions. Frank Grimer wrote: I didn't think they did, Terry. I only gave that example cos if radioactive decay is affected by its environment then one would expect everything on a larger scale to be affected ... Stephen A. Lawrence ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: The mismatched readings from planes going around the world in opposite directions is a consequence of the Sagnac effect. If you want to reproduce it yourself just obtain a laser-ring gyroscope. They're common items, available commercially, used in navigation, and they depend intrinsically on the Sagnac effect. You don't need an airliner to do it, though using an airplane and a clock instead of an interferometer is admittedly far more dramatic. The effect falls out trivially from special relativity. It also falls out of "Lorentz aether theory", which uses the same math as special relativity (so of course it gets the same results). Ballistic theory is killed dead by the Sagnac effect; as far as I know there is no way to patch it up to handle this case. There are no special properties of particular elements nor nuclear transitions involved. It's just that if you want to measure the effect using a clock, rather than using an interferometer to observe wavelength shifts in light, you need to use a very, very precise clock because the effect isn't very large, and right now that means using a cesium clock. Otherwise any old clock would work just as well. The speed of the flights is not a factor, either -- the same time lag will be observed no matter how fast they go. However, in order to keep the precision with which one needs to keep time down to something manageable, it's important to go quickly. If you used a ship and retraced Magellan's route instead of using an airplane, for instance, the tiny difference in the readings would be totally lost in the accumulated inaccuracy of the clocks over a period of several months. Frank Grimer wrote: The following stuff from the Beta-atmosphere Yahoo group seems to have been largely covered by other people but I may as well include if for completeness of the archive: ===================================================== fgrimer ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: Date: Tue Dec 6, 2005 5:17 am Subject: The Hafele and Keating Experiments I am sorry to have to subject the readers of this B-atm. group to a chunk of relativity stuff but the point which Webster Kehr expresses so clearly will be crucial to understanding the working of servomechanisms within materials. I confess I was so impressed with the clarity of Kehr's explanation that I congratulated him by e-mail and received an acknowledgement the very next day (ain't the Net a wonderful asset for expediting research). ---------------------------------------- Webster Kehr wrote: http://pages.sbcglobal.net/webster.kehr/files/Detection.pdf The Hafele and Keating Experiments The Hafele-Keating experiments of 1971 are among the most famous experiments in the history of physics. Their experiments were designed to test the validity of Einstein's SR and his General Theory of Relativity ("GR"). Hafele and Keating twice flew four cesium atomic clocks around the world in commercial jets, first eastbound, then westbound. Their experiments proved that "time," as measured by atomic clocks, is a function of the direction, velocity and altitude of jet airplanes. The direction and velocity of the airplanes were factors of the SR and the altitude of the jets was a factor of the GR.[8,9,10,11] I should note that "time" in this case is the "actual time" as measured by the atomic clocks. Compared to the time kept by a stationary atomic clock at the U.S. Naval Observatory ("USNO"), which stayed on the ground, the eastbound clocks measured time slower than the stationary clock and the westbound clocks measured time faster than the stationary clock. Prior to their experiments, Hafele correctly predicted that the westbound clocks would measure time faster than the stationary clock.[8,9] The Hafele-Keating experiment is considered a proof that the SR and GR are valid theories. But the H-K used a very different version of the SR than was proposed by Einstein in 1905. For example, in the "old SR" of 1905, every element in the experiment was considered, or could be considered, an "at rest" relative reference frame. This was the entire intent of the concept of "relative reference frames." For example, if there were ten jet airplanes flying at ten different velocities in ten different directions, any one of these ten airplanes could be used as the "at rest" reference frame, for the formulas of relativity, to determine the "relative time" between it and any of the other planes. ========================================= Comment by Frank: Now this assumption of "ten jet airplanes flying at ten different velocities in ten different directions" is always what I understood Special Relativity to claim - but as you can see, those slimy bastard relativists shifted the goalposts. ========================================= Webster Kehr wrote: By 1971, however, the concept of "relative reference frames" had been totally eliminated. In the "new SR," used by Hafele and Keating, none of the two sets of jet airplanes or atomic clocks in the experiment were allowed to be considered "at rest." Not even the stationary atomic clock at the USNO could be considered "at rest." In the "new SR" used in the H-K, only one "at rest" reference frame was allowed and that was "a nonrotating observer looking down on the North pole from a great distance" [9] or to put it more simply: "a nonrotating point high above the North Pole." ========================================= Comment by Frank: In other words, an absolute reference frame for rotation with respect to the stars - with respect to the non-curvature of water surface in a bucket to bring it down to the most mundane level. [Quoting from "Relational Mechanics" by Andre K. T. Assis, 1999 (This book can be purchased at Amazon.com.) p. 217 "... relational mechanics predicts the appearance of a real gravitational centrifugal force exerted by the distant universe spinning around the bucket. We can then say that this centrifugal force presses the water against the wall of the bucket making the water rise on this wall until the centrifugal force is balanced by the gradient of pressure." p.259 "... the main lines ... have already been laid down: no absolute space or time; only relational quantities should be involved; all forces should come from interactions between material bodies; for point particles the force should be directed along the line joining them and should obey the principle of action and reaction; ..." p. 261 "... We have been able to eplain the coincidence of Newtonian mechanics that the universe as a whole does not rotate relative to absolute space or to any inertial frame of reference. In other words, we have explained why the kinematical rotation of the earth is identical to its dynamical rotation ... We have derived the fact that all inertial forces of Newtonian mechanics, like the centrifugal force or Coriolis forces, are real forces ... This also explains the concavity in Newton's bucket as due to a relative rotation between the water and the distant universe ..." p 159 ``In our view, the theoretical concepts of length contraction, time dilation, Lorentz invariance, Lorentz's transformations, covariant and invariant laws, Minkowski metric, four-dimensional space-time, energy-momentum tensor, Riemannian geometry applied to physics, Schwarzschild line element, tensorial algebras in four-dimensional spaces, quadrivectors, metric tensor ..., proper time, contravariant four-vectors and tensors, geodetic lines, Christoffel symbols, super strings, curvature of space, etc. have the same role as epicycles in the Ptolemaic theory.''] ========================================= Webster Kehr wrote: This "at rest" reference point was not part of the experiment, meaning there was no atomic clock at that point. The "at rest" point in the H-K was many thousands of kilometers from any of the atomic clocks that were part of the experiment! The entire concept of "relative reference frames" was that any object that was part of the experiment could be considered "at rest." No object in the experiment was ever considered "at rest" by Hafele and Keating. It is important to emphasize that the observer or point is "nonrotating." If the observer rotated with the earth, then a stationary point on the equator, for example, would be viewed as being "at rest" relative to the observer's viewpoint. However, because the observer is not rotating, then a stationary point on the equator would be moving at a velocity equal to the (angular) rotation velocity of the earth at that latitude (i.e. zero degrees north). Thus, the "stationary" clock at the USNO was considered to be in motion due to the rotation of the earth (i.e. its velocity was measured relative to the rotation velocity of the earth at its latitude) because the observer was not rotating.[9] Thus, the "stationary" clock was actually in "motion." Let's call a spade a spade. Hafele and Keating could be said to have used a "local or localized Absolute Reference Frame ("local ARF") and a local or localized Absolute Time." By "absolute" I mean that the "at rest" reference frame they chose was not part of the experiment and did not move (relative to other objects), and did not rotate, during the experiment. By "local" I mean that they did not use the URF [Universal Reference Frame?] of CMBR [Cosmic Background Radiation? which is probably due to absorption and emission by "dust" rather than due to some postulated Big Bang] (which had not been discovered by 1971), or the reference frame of the sun's barycenter (which Hafele and Keating obviously would have known about), or the galactic barycenter (which they should have known about), but instead they used a reference frame within the ionosphere, which is "local" to the earth, meaning it travels with the earth in its motions in the universe. The choice of an "at rest" reference frame thousands of kilometers from the experiment was clearly not the intent of the original SR, but was added by Einstein before or during 1920 when he started talking about the center of a rotating disc as the one and only allowable "at rest" reference point.[12] Einstein's change of mind from using "at rest" reference frames that were part of the experiment, to using a single local ARF (Absolute Reference Frame) that was thousands of kilometers from the objects in the experiment, was undoubtedly due to empirical data. Einstein was known to have been working on the Doppler effect of canal rays (a predecessor to today's atomic clocks) prior to 1908.[13] In fact, the 1919 Nobel Prize was awarded to Johannes Stark for the discovery of the Doppler effect in canal rays, which discovery was made by Stark in 1905.[14] Hafele and Keating did not invent the concept of using an "at rest" reference frame on the extended axis of the earth, they knew what they had to use before they did their experiments. The two articles written by Hafele before the experiment prove that. They knew that if they used the stationary USNO atomic clock as their "at rest" reference point the formulas of the SR would not have worked with the actual data. Even before the H-K it was known that in order to get the formulas of the SR to work it was necessary to pick a localized ARF (Absolute Reference Frame) on the extended axis of the earth. It is probable that the reason Hafele and Keating used "a nonrotating point high above the North Pole," instead of the center of the earth, is because its use made it easier to visualize and explain why the stationary USNO atomic clock had to be in motion. =================================================== Comment by Frank: As usual with "independent thinkers", Webster Kehr has a lot of nutty other ideas which I certainly don't subscribe to. But credit where credit's due - he seems to have nailed the essentials of the HK experiment firmly to the doors of relativity's cathedral - for which insight I am very grateful. On Jan 19, 2006, at 8:11 AM, Stephen A. Lawrence wrote: The speed of the flights is not a factor, either -- the same time lag will be observed no matter how fast they go. However, in order to keep the precision with which one needs to keep time down to something manageable, it's important to go quickly. If you used a ship and retraced Magellan's route instead of using an airplane, for instance, the tiny difference in the readings would be totally lost in the accumulated inaccuracy of the clocks over a period of several months. Horace Heffner wrote: Interesting about the speed independence. Reminds me of the old Jefimenko's clocks issues discussed here some years back. There is something I have not understood about the twin paradox, and relativity in general. SR appears to be based solely on observational differences, i.e. retardation. This is true of Jefimenko's view also, except possibly for relativistic mass changes. However, in the case of the returned twin, the two twins stand next to each other at the end. They are in the same reference frame. If there is a difference in age between them then that difference can not be simply a result of retardation. If the "permanent" clock difference effect is due to acceleration (GR effects), and the journey consisted of only brief acceleration phases, followed by long segments of uniform motion, then it seems that the final clock difference from a long journey would be the same as that of a short journey with the same accelerations and no coasting. You might find it interesting that in his book *Retardation and Relativity*, Jefimenko takes a different but interesting view of the relativistic clock paradox. He says the clock speed is a function of what kind of clock is being obeserved in motion. He calculates the speed of various natural clocks. His calculations for the twelve clocks were based on "the fundamental laws of electromagnetism and mechanics with no input from relativity theory (although we shall use the longitudinal and transverse masses, which may be regarded as either experimentally obtained masses, or as relativistic concepts)" (p. 237) However, his EM equations, based on retardation, are similar to SR based equations. His view is interesting. In the twin paradox, as viewed by Jefimenko, perhaps the "young" twin may have varied aging effects, depending on the mechanics of some specific chemical interactions ... [Jack Smith writes; The following is an abbreviation of a very interesting post which I have completely archived.] On Jan 19, 2006, at 8:11 AM, Stephen A. Lawrence wrote: The speed of the flights is not a factor, either -- the same time lag will be observed no matter how fast they go ... Horace Heffner wrote: Interesting about the speed independence. Reminds me of the old Jefimenko's clocks issues discussed here some years back. There is something I have not understood about the twin paradox In the case of the returned twin, the two twins stand next to each other at the end. They are in the same reference frame. If there is a difference in age between them then that difference can not be simply a result of retardation. If the "permanent" clock difference effect is due to acceleration ... Stephen A. Lawrence wrote: That's a useful way to think of it, at least in the sense that it's the acceleration which breaks the symmetry and resolves the apparent logical paradox: the twins are _not_ identical, and the one whose path diverged from a geodesic is the older twin. But it's not the whole story, as you also observed ... Horace Heffner wrote: You might find it interesting that in his book *Retardation and Relativity*, Jefimenko takes a different but interesting view of the relativistic clock paradox. He says the clock speed is a function of what kind of clock is being obeserved in motion. Stephen A. Lawrence wrote: Perhaps, but doesn't this make rather nasty hash of the principle of relativity? I.e., it suggests that physical laws change rather dramatically as a result of a change in speed, which seems peculiar. In other words, if I'm carrying two different kinds of clocks, and I take off in a spaceship, I would then see the two clocks running at different rates. This would be disturbing, particularly if the two clocks happened to be represented by two different enzyme reaction paths in my body ... So do I understand this? He is suggesting that there is an absolute stationary frame, the principle of relativity is false, and one can determine one's absolute velocity by observing various kinds of clocks? ... Horace Heffner wrote: Interesting about the speed independence. Frank Grimer wrote: I think one has to be careful what one means by speed independence here. In it's rotation the earth (and clocks on its surface) is moving in relation to the Beta-atmosphere which reduces the speed of the caesium clock. If you go towards the setting sun then it is not that the clock will speed up. It is that the slow running will be reduced to a minumum when the speed is stationary in relation to the local B-atm. Going round towards the rising sun slow running will be increased. But the difference in speed between planes and ships is small compared to light speed. If one projected a caesium clock at close to the speed of light relative to the absolute frame of reference for motion then its speed would slow right down since mass is the reciprocal of internal closed path velocity (see IHM note on Beta-atm.Yahoo site). The fact that the caesium clocks rate can be altered merely by flying it around the globe shows the utter insanity of using it to define length. If you do, then you end up with the ludicrous result that the distance around the globe clockwise is different from that around the globe widdershins. On Jan 19, 2006, at 6:35 PM, Stephen A. Lawrence wrote: http://www.physicsinsights.org/linear_twins.html Horace wrote: Actually I have a lot of interest but no time to really dig into this. However, I must say that it does seem to me that the issues are simplified by looking at things one dimensionally, and such a simplified system is sufficient to examine the critical issues. The difficult math seems to me to disappear in a flash! 8^) No longer are fancy transforms and distance functions required. Further, we can look at each flash from earth as a single photon. As the traveler departs in a straight line away from the earth transmission point, and distance from earth gets greater, the photons arrive further apart in time, and red shifted for the same reason, the wave peaks arrive slower, thus time back on earth appears to the traveler to slow down. However, no matter what kinds of accelerations the traveler has experienced or is experiencing, he keeps receiving his regular periodic set of photons from earth. The only thing that changes are the time increments sensed by the traveler between photons, and their colors. No matter where he is or how far he goes or how he accelerates, assuming a fast rate of photon transmission from earth, there are always photons in route from earth to the traveler. As the traveler turns about, and returns, the rate he absorbs those photons increases, and he sees a blue shift as well, for the same reason, i.e. the wave peaks arrive faster. The earth increments its clock each time a photon is transmitted. The traveler can increment his on board "earth clock" each time he receives a photon. He can use a similar clock to the earth clock to keep track of his local time. As the traveler closes the distance to earth on the return trip, fewer photons are in flight with passing time. Assuming the traveler's on board clock was not affected by his acceleration, his "earth time" clock and local clock will come back in synchronization. Further, his earth time clock and earth's clock will be in perfect synchronization upon arrival. If not, the number of photons sent and the number received can not match, which is nonsense. The only other way for the traveler's clock to not agree with the earth clock, or his own "earth time" clock for that matter, is for the traveler's clock to have been affected by the acceleration. Frank wrote: I think one has to be careful what one means by speed independence here. Steve wrote: Here's what we mean by that: Consider a rotating disk. Select a point on the perimeter. Send two signals around the disk, starting from that point, circumnavigating the disk, and returning to that point (which has, of course, moved by the time the signals get back to it). Make sure the two signals travel at the same speed relative to the rim of the disk. The signal which went around in the same direction as the disk's rotation will arrive back at the start _after_ the signal which went the other way around. The difference in the arrival times is a function of the rotation rate of the disk, but it is _not_ a function of the speed of the signal. Fast signal, slow signal, the absolute delay between the return of the signal on the "fast" path and the return of the signal on the "slow" path is the same. As I mentioned previously, this can be demonstrated without the use of any clocks, and in fact it is demonstrated all the time. Current generation inertial navigation systems use ring-laser gyroscopes which only work as a result of this effect. In a ring-laser gyro the signal is a a light pulse carried in a fiber optic cable, and it travels at roughly 3/4 C relative to the rim of the disk. The signal speed is the same in both directions, relative to the disk (signal speed on a moving body is trivial to measure, and if it weren't invariant with respect to the motion, moving computers would not work). The arrival time difference is measured by looking at interference fringe shifts between the counter-traversing pulses, and it's used to determine the rate at which the disk is turning, which datum is used by the navigation system. It's sometimes claimed that the Sagnac effect is difficult to explain in special relativity, or that the math is a horrible mess. That's not true. The effect is actually pretty simple; in fact it can be explained in a few pictures without a (whole) lot of messy math. See here: http://physicsinsights.org/sagnac_1.html In a nutshell, the rotation doesn't make a difference; straighten out the path so it's just a long straight rod that's being traversed, and it becomes a lot more obvious what's going on. Frank wrote: In it's rotation the earth (and clocks on its surface) is moving in relation to the Beta-atmosphere which reduces the speed of the caesium clock. If you go towards the setting sun then it is not that the clock will speed up. It is that the slow running will be reduced to a minumum when the speed is stationary in relation to the local B-atm. Going round towards the rising sun slow running will be increased. But the difference in speed between planes and ships is small compared to light speed. If one projected a caesium clock at close to the speed of light relative to the absolute frame of reference for motion then its speed would slow right down since mass is the reciprocal of internal closed path velocity (see IHM note on Beta-atm.Yahoo site). The fact that the caesium clocks rate can be altered merely by flying it around the globe shows the utter insanity of using it to define length. If you do, then you end up with the ludicrous result that the distance around the globe clockwise is different from that around the globe widdershins. Steve wrote: Ring-laser gyros make hardly any sense, it's true. You're right. However, they exist and they work. All of special relativity has this problem: Intuitively it's absurd. But it's born out by an enormous mass of experimental data. But there's a point you may have missed in the "airplane" experiment. The two aircraft don't arrive back at the starting point at the same moment. According to each airplane's onboard clock, the time to go around the world was the same -- that doesn't depend on the direction! And so neither does the distance the airplane traveled. What changes is how long it takes in Earth-minutes for the planes to go around the world. At the point at which the planes meet -- which is _NOT_ the starting point, because they got back to the start at different times -- they really have traveled different distances, and their clocks really do show different readings. There's no contradiction and little surprise in that. The odd thing is that they don't get back to the starting point at the same time. Horace wrote: If a one dimensional photon counting clock model, as laid out just prior, makes any sense, then faster than light travel can make sense as well, assuming he has a very high Isp drive, like a ZPE drive. As the traveler exceeds the speed of light, he simply does not see any photons from earth. This does not mean he is traveling backwards in time. It only means his communication with earth is cut off (unless of course he has some spooky action at a distance communication device.) When he the traveler turns around, he eventually starts receiving the photons again, but very much blue shifted. When traveling faster than light relative to earth, his earth clock merely stops, it doesn't run backwards. His own local clock, however, keeps on ticking. Again, without some change in the traveler's clock due to acceleration, all the clocks must be in synchronization upon his return.
