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Before we go any further, we need to deal with a very important issue. In previous posts we’ve compared the perspective from a static position with that of an observer or object in a state of motion. Now we need to pin down what we mean by ‘a static position’.
This really is a fundamental question, going to the heart of all we’re talking about here. In conventional Relativity, as it’s commonly understood and applied, any position can equally validly be regarded as a static position: no one state in the universe can be regarded as a unique state of absolute rest, with all other states (aka ‘reference frames’) being in motion in an absolute sense. But this leads to the notion that a light beam passing one observer or object with relative speed c will also pass another observer or object moving at a totally different velocity with that same relative speed c. This is regarded as an objective truth, not simply a subjective experience on the part of the moving observer or object.
It would appear, then, that light is auto-adjusting its own speed to two different speeds at the same time, to suit those two different observers/objects - or indeed to suit a myriad of different objects all moving at different velocities (as things tend to in our universe). But we’re told that this is a misunderstanding, that the speed of light is the ultimate reality and everything else has to fit itself around that. It’s this that leads to the various bizarre situations discussed in previous posts.
A far simpler understanding, though, one that makes everything consistent and in keeping with what we might regard as common sense, is to see that something in those various observers/objects is causing them to experience light as if it’s always passing them (or interacting with them) at that same relative speed, c. That something is the fact that all of these objects and observers are themselves formed from flows of light energy, giving the impression that light is somehow adjusting itself to suit their situation.
The follow-on from this is the fact that there must be a unique state of rest, the base-state from which light speed c is measured. Logically this would be the base-state of the origin of the universe itself, the starting point for every photon of light in the cosmos. Conventional Relativity says that no such unique reference state exists, that the speed of light is the same for every state of motion in the cosmos.
In fact, such a unique reference state does exist, identified as unique by the one who was awarded a Nobel prize for mapping it. Proposed by George Gamow and colleagues in the 1950s and (accidentally!) discovered by Penzias & Wilson in 1965 (leading to one of a number of ‘accidental’ Nobel prizes), The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation is the ‘relic radiation’ from the time of the Big Bang, now reduced from intensely high frequencies to microwave frequencies by being stretched in wavelength with the expansion of the universe over the past 13.8 billion years.
This all-pervasive electromagnetic radiation forms a sort of ‘3-D wallpaper’ spread across the whole of the cosmos, uniformly in every direction (but with some crucial, though incredibly faint, variations). It effectively forms a backdrop against which every state of motion can be measured. The pictures below, taken by the COBE (Cosmic Background Explorer) satellite around 1990, show firstly the dipole anisotropy (‘variation in the two directions’) in which the CMB blue-shift in one direction and red-shift in the other direction gives the impression that the cosmos is rushing towards us from one direction and away from us in the other. The reality is of course that it’s us, i.e. our planet and solar system, that’s speeding through space across that actually-static backdrop at 600 kilometres a second towards a huge gravitational anomaly known as The Great Attractor, a quarter of a billion light years away.
The second picture shows the CMB with both the dipole from our solar system’s motion and the emissions from our galaxy removed, leaving just the ultra-faint fluctuations in that background radiation across the cosmos - a record of the variations in the energy distribution across the cosmos very shortly after the Big Bang. It’s these variations that have given rise to the ‘anisotropy’ - unevenness, lumps & bumps - in the universe that we see around us today. In other words we’re seeing the variations in energy distribution that led to the ‘lumps & bumps’, aka galaxies and galactic clusters, that form our present-day universe. George Smoot, that Nobel laureate who first mapped the CMB, himself likened it to “seeing the face of God”.
[A book recommendation here: ‘Afterglow of Creation’ by Marcus Chown, 1993, tells the whole story of the CMB and its discovery, in a very readable way.]
George Smoot’s own mission website states that: “This would seem to violate the postulates of Galilean and Special Relativity but there is a preferred frame in which the expansion of the Universe looks most simple”. It also records the fact that: “The CMB is then the standard frame of reference for cosmology work” - and indeed it is used as exactly that by all astronomers and astrophysicists. In other words, the CMB represents a unique static frame of reference by which all distances, directions and speeds in the universe can be measured. It would appear from this that the CMB is precisely the unique objectively static frame of reference that’s reckoned not to exist in the conventional view of Relativity.
That conventional view, which proposes that light behaves identically with respect to every (uniform non-gravitational) state of motion in the cosmos, is a misperception, clouded by the fact that objects moving relative to this unique reference frame are themselves affected by their own motion in such a way as to give that impression. We now need to look in more detail at how that false impression is brought about.
We need to start by thinking briefly about what we mean by relative speed. If I’m in my car, either static or moving, and another vehicle passes me in either direction I can assess its speed relative to me by considering how quickly the distance between me and that vehicle increases; that’s a question of distances and times, and my perception of those distances and times.
But if that vehicle actually collides with my car, the issue is quite different: it’s then a matter of how the particles of the other vehicle interact with mine – specifically, how the energy flows of one vehicle’s particles interact with those of the other. In this case perceived distances don’t come into it at all, it’s all down to on-the-spot angles and speeds of energy interactions, and the time-response of the particles involved.
We’ll look at that first issue in the next post (after the technical expansion of this one). Here we’re concerned with the actual interaction between two particles – or between a moving particle and light
Remember that in a static particle the energy-flow is cycling on the spot, no linear motion: we’ll think of it cycling vertically, just to keep things simple (more complex cycle patterns are dealt with in detail in the previous post). When the particle is moving - let’s say horizontally - the energy-flow forms a spiral (or a more complex version of this, again as dealt with previously). The pitch of the spiral represents the proportion of energy-flow travelling linearly (giving particle motion) compared with that flowing cyclically (giving particle structure and time-effects); the more sloping the pitch, the more energy flowing linearly (greater speed) and less flowing cyclically (less ‘ageing’ effects).
We’ve already considered the time-effect (time dilation) of that tilted energy-flow, now we need to consider other consequences - specifically, how the altered orientation of that energy-flow might affect interaction with other objects, and also with light.
It goes without saying that every particle or object is unmoving with respect to itself - that’s obvious. So from the perspective of a moving object, the energy-flows of static objects will approach it as if they are the ones that are moving - with the apparent pitch of moving objects. More than this, the energy-flows of other objects moving at other speeds will interact with our moving object’s energy-flows at quite a different apparent pitch than is actually the case.
This can be likened to a man who’s leaning forward but thinks he’s standing upright.(‘leaning’ here stands for orientation in motion and in time). He’ll see others who are upright as if they are leaning - and indeed their energy cycles will be at an angle relative to him, the angle that he’s leaning at. He’ll also see his personal ‘horizontal’ direction as a slope at the same angle he’s leaning at. So as other objects approach him at the true horizontal, they’ll appear to be coming at him from an angle up above - and he’ll assimilate their energy input as a projection onto his personal ‘horizontal’ direction
This has particular implications for light energy, which (of course!) travels at the speed of light and so has no time component in its energy flow. This energy flow will be projected by our man onto his personal ‘horizontal’, and so be assimilated as the component in that direction.
The angle of this projection is of course the same angle as the man is leaning at - representing time and motion components of a moving particle or object. So that projection will be exactly equal to an object’s ‘time’ energy-flow component. In other words, the true speed of that light will be scaled down by precisely the same factor as the object’s own time-experience. So the speed of that light relative to the object will be experienced as the true full speed of light!
[Slowed speed measured in slowed time = actual speed.]
So there you have it: motion of any particle, person or object causes their time-sense to be reduced to the vertical component of their tilted energy flows - effectively projected back through that ‘tilt angle’. In exactly the same way, their experience of a wholly linear energy-flow - light - will be projected down through exactly the same angle onto their subjective spatial axis, precisely balancing their time-dilation factor to give the subjective experience of true light speed. As shown here, this applies identically whether the light is moving in the same direction or the opposite direction to the object’s own motion.
In fact this is true regardless of the direction light is approaching a person, or any other moving object - whether that object is moving directly towards the light, directly away from it, or at any other angle! This is shown in full, in more technical detail, in the post: Quasiluminal: the maths.
No metaphysical property of light, no overarching cosmic principle, no bizarre properties of clocks or railway carriages … just light, forming every particle of matter in the cosmos and interacting with those particles in a perfectly logical way.
In the next free post, Transforming Reality with Spun Light, we’ll see how this false perception of full light speed by a moving object leads to precisely the shift in perception that’s given in Relativity for moving objects - what’s known as The Lorentz Transformation. The difference is that in Relativity it’s regarded as an actual objective difference in reality for those moving objects, whereas here we’ll see that it’s a subjective experience brought about by that state of motion and how it affects the energy flows of the moving object.
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