From "To Kill a Mockingbird" to "To Fry your Brain" (Relativity)

[xirtam]

The whole concept of time being relative to the speed of light seems to beg the question and be self refuting.

The velocity of light: 300,000,000 m/s, or about 186,000 mi/s.

Time: measured in seconds, time allowed to vary by 1/(1-v^2/c^2)

Given the idea that time is relative, but the speed of light is absolute, we come up with all these cool ideas like time and length diffraction. These are all based on the idea that the speed of light is constant.

Here's one of my problems with this situation. The formula for the velocity of anything is given by distance/time. Soooooo... if time in the denominator is relative, how the heck can the velocity of light be absolute? And if you mish-mash around and try to argue that distance and time change with relation to the velocity of light to maintain its "absoluteness", you're just making them all match each other, so from our perspective, we would have no way of empirically testing which one would actually be changing... right?

Einstein was a bum. A rather smart one, perhaps, but a bum nonetheless. Has anyone seen his proof for why the speed of light is constant? Seems more like a postulate to me.

Thoughts? Or am I the only one who cares?

 

[Pundit]

There are some parts of the theory that you seem to skip over. The speed of light is not absolute. It is slower in water than in a vaccuum. And "time" is more accurately defined as "the co-action of particles". That is why in different inertial frames, you get different observations with respect to displacements.



<< Einstein was a bum. A rather smart one, perhaps, but a bum nonetheless. Has anyone seen his proof for why the speed of light is constant? Seems more like a postulate to me. >>


I don't understand. What made him a bum?

 

[xirtam]

Ok. Let me rephrase. The speed of light within a vaccuum.

I have no problem with the speed of light messing with our *observation* of objects in different inertial time frames, but I don't see how that messes with the reality (i.e., the actual length) of an object in different inertial time frames.

My view of time is actually something like "the potential for events to transpire within the 'slide-show' of human history." Slide-show meaning that we as humans are always trapped in one frame at a time -- we're stuck in the present, we view the past, we cannot see the future. It's like we're walking backwards. Time to me is more of a perception than a dimension or a quantity. It seems like we have quantized it, though, as humans like to make up all kinds of random garbage to explain the world in which they find themselves.