Relativity: Coming to Terms 4: Reality

Terms defined in this section: time dilation, length contraction, relativistic mass, theory, reality, post-processing, future, past, present

What parts of relativity are real and which are mathematical constructs mistakenly thought to be real? What is reality anyway?

Physical reality is determined through reasoning and the scientific method while metaphysical reality is determined through beliefs, emotions, consulting sages, divining rods and ancient texts. Ignoring the latter, something's real if it can be measured consistently. But it's more than that. Understanding the measurements correctly requires post-processing to overcome the illusion of perspective. The illusion of perspective can happen for both space and time. The farther away something is from you, the smaller and slower it looks. Yet you know it's not really smaller or slower because you apply post-processing to your observations. Relativists define post-processing as being only applicable to non-relativistic effects. For example, you can't apply your knowledge of relativity to understand why you see time slowing in a moving frame. That is not an optical illusion like a plane flying slower off in the distance due to your perspective, the time is actually slowing for the moving frame due to your perspective. Maybe they should differentiate the terms by calling one post-processing and the other relativistic post-processing.

The theories that describe reality must also be measureable, repeatable, predict the existence of yet unobserved phenomena and be falsifiable or disproven by yet other unobserved phenomena. The Theory of Relativity is based on unproven assumption and convention so I don't understand how it even qualifies as a scientific theory. A scientific theory is more than just an educated guess or a good story tying facts together, Wiki defines it just as much a fact as the facts it ties together. However, both facts and theories can change, unlike enduring beliefs, due to the application of higher resolution tools and through the discovery of new facts.

Measurable and repeatable real events can be plotted as points in spacetime. Relativity assigns two sets of coordinates to each of these points, one set is from a normal right angle x-y axes for the stationary frame and the other is from the angled axes for the moving frame. Lorentz transforms allow conversion between the two sets of coordinates. The time units spacing equals the length units spacing for each axes but because the moving frame's axes are angled, their unit spacing is longer and there are fewer time units and length units corresponding to the stationary axes. This graphically represents time dilation and length contraction. So each event has two labels depending on which coordinate system you're using, two labels for position and two time stamps for each point.

This is where much of the confusion surrounding relativity stems from and I don't have a good understanding of it yet. The points are invariant no matter how many labels you stick on them. To say some are from the future from one perspective because their label has an advanced time stamp on it is like saying your friend is from the future because his watch is running fast. (Not totally correct because his watch running fast due to a mechanical error is not the same as a watch running fast due to relativistic effects on time itself.) However, relativists insist that just by shifting your direction to the stationary frame, you could see through relativistic post-processing that your present included a view of the stationary frame's future that hadn't happened yet in the stationary frame. I think that's BS but I can't prove it. Invariance, simultaneity and the blurring of the distinction between time and distance conspire somehow to draw misleading conclusions about reality from relativity. Here's what I mean:

Is length contraction real or just a mathematical construct of time dilation? Well certain problems in relativity can be tackled from a length contraction perspective or a time dilation perspective but not both. For example, in the muon problem, if you solve it using time dilation you can't simultaneously apply the dilated time over a contracted distance because that would be like dilating the time twice. In fact the formulas for length contraction can be directly converted into the formulas for time dilation. Here's an example of that:

Let's convert t' to x' (time dilation to length contraction). The formula for gamma velocity, Yv=x/t', is critical to understanding how attaching Y to different variables within an equation can change the whole meaning of the equation. As shown in the last section, gamma velocity is the total velocity vector through space time and it equals the distance in the stationary frame per the time taken in the moving frame. Plugging velocity V=x/t into the formula for gamma v we get Yx/t =x/t' which reduces to t=Yt', the formula for time dilation. Now you're looking for a formula for x' that satisfies the formula for gamma v. Yv =Yx/t. If we group Y with t we get the formula for time dilation. If we group Y with x we get x'=Yx the formula for length contraction. Same derivation but two different formulas depending on which variable Y is grouped with. Similar mathemagic can be applied to the Lorentz transformations to convert length contraction to time dilation coordinates. So why have length contraction at all? Why not just have space fixed for all frames of reference, as it is in Brehme diagrams, and only deal with time dilation?

Relativity states that moving frames will have length contraction, increased relativistic mass and time dilation relative to the stationary frame observing it. But none of these phenomena are detected by observers in the moving frame of their own frame. They don't feel their bodies crushing due to length contraction, or that they're gaining weight or that they're starting to move in slow motion. So our perspective of their reality is different from their perspective of their reality. According to our definition of reality, there are now two separate realities, or are there?

Relativists say yes, there are as many realities as there are perspectives. Even though the exact same events happen in the same causal order in all these realities, the timing of the events is off. This is hardly a multiple parallel universe scenario. What's even more suspicious is that two of the effects we're seeing do not persist once the relative velocity between the two frames is reduced to zero. Again that depends to which variable you attach Y in the formula.

Let's look at relativistic mass. You can attach Y to the velocity variable where energy or momentum of a particle goes up as you apply more energy to get it to go closer and closer to the speed of light or you can attach it to the mass variable where people start believing that the mass growing is what's making it more and more difficult to push it closer and closer to the velocity of light. Now we wish to slow down the particle by applying energy in the other direction. But this input of energy doesn't get converted into mass. And what kind of mass is growing on these particles. It seems to be a smooth transition from energy to matter but matter is discrete so you're somehow growing fractions of electrons as the energy increases? . E=mc2 does not mean there's an automatic conversion between energy and matter any more than there's no difference between water and ice. Take an ice cube to the head and tell me there's no difference. Specific conditions are required to convert energy and matter. If you push a car up a hill, you have not added any matter to it which magically reconverts to energy when the car rolls back down the hill. You've just converted potential energy into kinetic energy, no mass to energy conversion is involved.

Isn't it less confusing just to group Y with velocity so that as the velocity increases, the energy imparted into the particle rises exponentially. There is no conversion of energy to matter. Relativistic mass does not persist once the particle slows down. It's the same with length contraction, it does not persist. Time dilation, as can be seen in the twin paradox, does persist. If we brought a GPS satellite down from space, it will have aged less than the atomic clocks it was made with on earth and that age difference will not go away like length contraction or relativistic mass.

However, even if we redefined reality for relativity as something that persists once relative velocity is removed, we still have the problem of the effects of time slowing in a relatively moving frame persisting once the relative velocity is removed. There are still 2 different realities where we see time slowing on a frame moving relative to us but they do not see their time slowing. Length contraction and relativistic mass are just math tricks but time dilation provides a profound redefinition of what reality is.