Relativity Unmasked: How energy flows shape our experience of Reality.
Transforming Reality in a Universe of Light-Formed Particles
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An In-Depth Look at The Lorentz Transformation.
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One thing that must surely be agreed by everyone, whatever their view on Relativity, is that things will seem different from one state of motion to another: distances, speeds, even time itself can appear rather different from those varying perspectives.
Seen through the lens of conventional Special Relativity (SR), those differences are real: speeds of other objects, distances, times actually are different for observers travelling at different speeds - or for one in motion compared with one at rest, which comes to the same thing. When we look at this with awareness of the light-formed nature of material particles, though, it becomes clear that those differences are essentially observer effects - that true lengths, times, speeds are in reality the same for all observers in all states of motion.
In the previous two posts (overview and technical detail) we saw how the speed of light is perceived as being the same, c, relative to all observers and objects whatever their own speed; we also saw how this is a subjective experience due to the motion of those objects themselves, rather than being an objective reality as proposed by SR. We’ll now see how that subjective experience leads to exactly the same shift in perspective, in terms of speeds, lengths, times as is found to apply in SR - but in the spun-light understanding of matter this shift is again seen to be subjective, not an objective truth as proposed in that conventional view.
In SR perspectives are changed from one state of motion (of the observer) to another using a set of equations known as The Lorentz Transformation. These give times and distances - and so also speeds - in a new reference frame (state of motion) in terms of those same measures in the original frame.
Let’s look at a situation that will enable us to compare those measures in two frames:
We’ll have a signal box and a railway line, which we’ll regard as our static frame. Our moving frame is a long series of flat-bed trucks travelling at some constant speed v along the railway track, with a guard at the back who serves as our moving observer. G is also the origin, distance zero, for our moving frame. Our static observer is the signalman at S, in the signal box. Both observers set their clocks to zero as the guard G passes the signalman S. So the (position and time) for static and moving frames are synchronised at (zero, zero) as G passes S (essential for comparing readings later).
A short time later the signalman sends off a light signal from S, which reaches a reflector, R, beside the track at time t (by the signalman’s clock). The guard notes the times at which the light signal first passes him/her and then returns to him/her on being reflected.
From G’s perception of light travelling at speed c in their frame (see previous post) they can calculate the distance of the return journey G - R - G by simply multiplying the time for that return journey by c, then halving this to find the one-way distance, x’. The time that G perceives the signal to have arrived at R, t’, is found by subtracting half that return journey time from the time (on G’s clock) the signal gets back to G.
So we have an event - a light signal reaching R - for which we have a time in the moving frame, t’, and a distance from the moving origin G, x’. For the static frame, the corresponding values are x, the true measured distance in that frame, and t, the true time for that event measured by a clock at R synchronised with the signal-box clock (or time the signal was sent off from S plus half the light-time S-to-R-to-S).
In conventional SR the assumptions of the guard in calculating x’ and t’ are taken as actually being so (i.e. light speed relative to moving flat-bed trucks is actually c in both directions, according the SR perspective). This leads to a switch of values x and t in the static frame to x’ and t’ in the moving frame, known as The Lorentz Transformation, in which both pairs of values are reckoned to be equally valid, each representing a true situation. This is mathematically a hyperbolic rotation in spacetime - ‘hyperbolic’ because it involves the imaginary time dimension which brings in the square root of minus one (you don’t need to worry about that, it’s just background info).
If, though, we set aside the assumption of the relative speed of light being the same in all states of motion and instead analyse this situation as if light speed behaves in the same way as all other speeds in relative-motion situations, then what do we find? We find that the scenario described above gives the identical transformation for x and t to x’ and t’ - but with the latter corresponding to perceived values as experienced by the moving observer. I.e. the Lorentz Transformation is an observer effect rather than an objective reality.
But it gets even more interesting than this.
This analysis shows the Lorentz Transformation as used in SR correctly represents a shift from the static frame to a moving frame (though wrongly regarding it as a true objective fact rather than a subjective experience). However, SR sees this transform as symmetric: the same transformation that gives the shift from frame (i.e. motion state) A to frame B will, simply by reversing the velocity term v to -v, also give the shift from frame B to frame A.
Does this hold up in the spun-light perspective on the Lorentz Transformation? Is it really true that the same distortion of actual static-frame reality that’s given by this transform to match the situation as experienced by a moving observer or object will, from the perspective of that moving observer, restore that true reality by going through exactly the same process - the same set of equations - with just the v element changed to -v? This is surely like suggesting that if an image is distorted in one of those fairground distorting mirrors, that distorted image can be returned to its perfect original state just by reflecting that image in the same mirror, simply turned upside down!
This isn’t an issue for conventional SR, which sees shifts from one frame to another as rotations in spacetime - so just rotate the other way to reverse the process. This is a wholly self-consistent mathematical relationship with no explanation given or required as to physical causation of the assumed underlying principle (absolute invariance of the speed of light and all that follows on from that).
But in the true reality of light-formed particles there’s a clear distinction between the objective truth of the static frame and the perceptual experience of a moving frame - the two are not equivalent. So shifting from reality to illusion is not the same as shifting from illusion to reality.
Remarkably, though, further investigation of this situation yields the result that simply replacing v with -v in the original transformation does transform the perceived measures of space and time, in the moving frame, back to the true objective realities of the static frame. [It’s important to see that this isn’t a given: a neat mathematical relationship can’t be assumed to automatically represent a relationship between states in physical reality; we’re checking fundamentals of space and time here.]
In other words, perceptual experience in a moving frame and objective experience in the static frame are interchangeable via symmetric opposites of the same transform, just by reversing the direction of v.
To this we need to add one further step: so far we’ve confirmed that the Lorentz Transformation can take us from the static frame to a moving frame, and vice versa. But in practice shifts are almost always from one moving frame to another, not involving the objectively static frame; for example, even experiments in a lab on Earth are almost certainly being conducted at a speed of around 600 kilometres a second relative to that absolute static frame.
So can we be sure that the Lorentz Transformation will still cover such situations?
Yes. A reasonably straightforward bit of logical reasoning confirms that the Lorentz Transform applied for a shift from frame A to frame B, where both are in motion relative to the objectively static frame, gives results that correctly represent the change in experience of space and time measures generated by that shift.
So summarising: the spun-light perspective on physical matter gives rise to precisely the same shifts in perceptual experience between two states of motion as is given by the Lorentz Transformation, whether one or other, or neither, is the objectively static rest frame. We don’t even need to be able to identify that universal objective state of rest in order to be able to use this Transformation in respect of any two reference frames.
Putting that the other way round: a reality in which there is one objectively static universal rest state (aka rest frame) and all other frames (motion states) are moving at some non-zero velocity in absolute terms, measured from that universal rest state, gives a very convincing illusion of a cosmos in which light travels at the same speed relative to every other state of motion. This illusion has been accepted and universally adopted as de facto, for no other reason than that it fits all available data - as of course it must do, in keeping with the above analysis. This metaphysical concept has been accepted with no causal explanation of how it could be so, apparently with no attempt to identify any such causation, and apparently with no serious attempt in the past 100+ years - apart from the rationale given here - to find any more straightforward explanation for this appearance (preferably one that doesn’t place undue constraints on future reearch or propose untestable and apparently nonsensical side-effects).
The Take-Home Message from all of this is that all of the ‘relativistic’ effects which are attributed to the frame invariance of the relative speed of light, conforming with the Lorentz Transformation, are fully explained as experiential observer effects due to distorted experiences of time, distance and speed (plus one unquestionable property of matter - see the next free post). These experiences are themselves due to particles of matter being formed from light, and to those formative light flows incorporating a linear component in particles that are in motion.
Such ‘relativistic’ effects include, among others, the aberration of starlight and the velocity addition formula (‘the man walking along inside the train’); all applications of the Lorentz Transformation in particle collider experiments and other such situations are likewise fully consistent with the spun-light formation of matter. None of these require an absolute property of light speed in order to explain them.
The full details of the inner workings of the Lorentz Transformation - how spun-light reality gives the illusion of frame equivalence - can be seen in the (premium) post:
An In-Depth Look at The Lorentz Transformation.
This story wouldn’t be complete, though, without a visit to Relativity: A New Flat Earth Perspective? This free post gives an insight into one of the most bizarre aspects of conventional Relativity theory, as well as highlighting a genuine property of matter that’s a key element of the whole situation.
In the next free post after that we’ll look at the whole issue of inertia: why force is needed to accelerate any object; why every object gets heavier with increasing speed, approaching infinite mass as it approaches the speed of light; and why the Higgs boson could well turn out to be a red herring.
To see technical details relating to this post, including full maths, check out the premium post An In-Depth Look at The Lorentz Transformation.
In the meantime, be sure to check out Transfinite Mind for books plus free articles and presentations.