The Relativity-must-be-wrong Fallacy

Let the critic beware their own limited understanding.

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A little knowledge is a dangerous thing

Readers of this Substack channel will be well conversant with a perspective on the scientific evidence which offers a very different take on the effects of Special Relativity (SR) from the conventional explanation for these effects.

It would be over-simplistic and fallacious, though, to assert - as many have done over the past century - that certain counter-commonsense outcomes of conventional SR show it to be unquestionably wrong. Even today a quick search on the internet yields a rich supply of critics who assert with some feeling that obvious contradictions or other errors prove that SR, as a theory, is untenable.
Such criticisms include proposals that experimental readings are incorrect, inaccurate or even fudged. They also point to apparent self-contradictions, such as: two clocks each being faster than the other - at the same time; a train or other object being two or more different lengths at one and the same time; a pair of events, A and B, occurring A-before-B and B-before-A on the same occurrence of those two events.

Sure, such situations would appear to be patently nonsensical. But let’s not overlook the fact that thousands of universities and other research establishments, tens or even hundreds of thousands of highly-qualified physicists, have found it possible to live and work quite comfortably with such apparent contradictions. They’re not unaware of them, nor are they so dumb as to regard them as irrelevant. On the contrary, they are in the main highly intelligent people, sufficiently so that they’re well able to accommodate these apparently impossible scenarios in a conceptual framework which, from a highly academic perspective, makes a great deal of sense.

So, rather than dismiss SR on the grounds of ‘obvious’ contradictions, it behoves us to look more closely into that highly academic perspective. As Richard Bach says in his Messiah’s Handbook, “When you know what the magician knows, it isn’t magic any more”. When you see what the physicist sees, it ain’t mumbo-jumbo any more.

Let’s wind the clock back to the beginning of the last century. In the early 1900s scientists were puzzling over aspects of the strange behaviour of light - notably its apparent constant speed relative to any observer, whatever their own state of motion. Various physicists tried to envisage a mechanism that might appear to make this seem so, but none could be made to fit. Then Albert Einstein cut through all the confusion with a truly radical proposal, one that presented a total rethink on the interrelationship between space, time and motion.

The Einsteinian Perspective

On the face of it, Einstein’s proposal was disarmingly simple: the ‘direction’ we refer to as ‘the passage of time’ (or ‘the onward march of time’, another linear metaphor) combines with the three spatial dimensions to form a 4-dimensional continuum (now known as spacetime). Different velocities - different speeds and/or directions of motion - are different orientations of the axes of this 4-dimensional continuum as they relate to any specific object or system of objects. A change in velocity corresponds to a rotation of those axes. The fundamental laws of physics, including the speed of light (which is regarded as a fundamental absolute), are identical in every orientation of these axes - every state of constant-velocity motion.

The maths of this setup are made particularly ‘interesting’ by the fact that the time dimension is imaginary, in the mathematical sense of including the factor i, the square root of minus one. For this reason those different velocities are defined mathematically as hyperbolic rotations in spacetime - rotations through an imaginary angle. Such rotations are symmetric: the effects of a shift from velocity A to velocity B are equivalent (but opposite) to those of a shift from B to A.

So we talk about frames of reference rather than ‘states of motion’. Each frame of reference consists of four mutually perpendicular axes, including the time axis. Time axes for different reference frames are at different ‘time-directions’ to each other, manifesting as different velocities in 3-D space.

So not only space and spatial motion, but also time, are seen differently by observers (and experienced differently by objects) ‘at rest’ in different reference frames (i.e. moving at different spatial velocities). So in this take on space-time reality it’s perfectly possible for an observer ‘at rest’ in one frame to see events happening in a different order from someone in another frame. In the same way it’s quite possible for an observer at rest in frame A to see a clock which is at rest in frame B going slower than his/her own clock, whilst the reverse is true for an observer in frame B. This difference in space-time experience also extends to spatial measurements: observers at rest in frames A and B respectively will experience the length of, say, a train quite differently (whatever frame that train is ‘at rest’ in, i.e. whatever its state of motion).

And, just to underline this crucial point: in the Einsteinian view, every one of these perspectives is equally valid, equally correct; they’re just different ‘slants’ (literally) on the same greater spacetime reality.

To put that another way: in the SR take on space and time this isn’t just a difference in perception due to different states of motion; it is in fact the true cosmic reality as it relates to different reference frames - and it’s solidly backed up by the maths of Special Relativity, which is totally self-consistent and watertight.

From this perspective it makes complete sense that, whilst observer 1 at rest in reference frame A sees their own clock as progressing faster than that of observer 2 in reference frame B, observer 2 will see their clock notching up time at a faster rate than that of observer 1 - simply because each of them is experiencing space and time with reference to a different set of axes from the other. Likewise their different perceptions/experiences of the same train - or any other object. Once we accept the notion of different orientations of space & time in different states of motion, these apparent contradictions fall into place as perfectly reasonable.

Of course, the same reasoning applies to differing perspectives on the order of a particular pair of events - but here we hit a serious precautionary note. Because if one of these two events is the cause of the other - such as, for instance, a gun being fired and someone being injured by that gunshot - it wouldn’t make sense for anyone to experience those two events the other way around.
Cause always precedes effect.
This constraint is covered indirectly in SR by the twin provisos that:
(a) Nothing can travel faster than the speed of light;
(b) Perception of reversal of cause-event and effect-event would require motion or transfer of information faster than the speed of light.

Conservation of causality is regarded as paramount in SR, to the extent that any situation that appears to involve exceeding the speed of light is now evaluated first and foremost on the basis of whether it could lead to a breach in causality. Such a breach, if it were possible, could lead to cosmically catastrophic consequences.

The Bottom Line

It’s not difficult to spot apparent inconsistencies in effects of Special Relativity, from an ‘obvious commonsense’ perspective. But before presenting those ‘inconsistencies’ as proof that SR must be wrong, it’s important to be sure that you’re not actually taking issue with the fundamental premise on which SR is based: different states of motion in the space-time universe are in fact different orientations of the space-time axes - and all of those orientations are equally valid.

From this perspective it’s not at all inconsistent for relative rates of two clocks, length of a train, even ordering of two events, to be quite different in respect of two different spacetime orientations. You may not like this take on space-time reality, but many thousands of the world’s brightest brains have found it a very compelling and intellectually satisfying explanation for various phenomena in the physical realm. There’s nothing at all inconsistent about it, once you accept the basic premise of alternative equally-valid space time reference frames all coexisting side-by-side - though the maths can get a bit hairy!

So what is the issue with Special Relativity?

In simple terms, there’s absolutely no evidence that conclusively supports this over- complicated description of physical reality and no need for such a description. No causal explanation is offered for this remarkable adaptability of the space-time continuum, nor is there any observable phenomenon that can’t be explained by far more straightforward effects.

It’s truly said that “Big claims demand big evidence”, and there’s probably no bigger claim than that experience of space-time can be swivelled about on its axes to produce totally different, but equally true, versions of material reality. As for that ‘big evidence’, all of that collapses completely under close scrutiny. There is no phenomenon classified as an effect of SR which can’t be resolved as a consequence of far less esoteric effects.

That’s what this Substack channel is all about: not seeking to demolish SR on the grounds of apparent ridiculous anomalies which are only ridiculous to those who don’t understand the basic tenets of the theory - but rather dismissing it on the grounds of Occam’s Razor: “Don’t multiply entities unnecessarily”. Basically this equates to: ‘The explanation that requires the fewest assumptions is generally the more preferable’.

Also - and perhaps even more obviously - it doesn’t make sense to have two competing explanations for the same phenomenon: if one explanation is clearly correct (and they’re not simply two different descriptions of the same thing) then the other is not only unnecessary - it’s clearly wrong.
Take, for example, the explanation given by Ryan Chester, winner of the 2015 Junior Breakthrough Challenge Prize, for motion-related time dilation. Endorsed by an impressive line-up of top international scientists (including Professor Stephen Hawking at that time), this award recognises significant contributions by young people to scientific understanding. Almost 40% of Ryan’s video was taken up with his explanation of how time dilation works * – and NONE of that explanation requires any reference to special properties of space and time. (* Starting at 4 mins 18 secs into the video.)
That very lucid explanation, fully endorsed by all those top experts, renders redundant any need for or relevance of a proposed special quality of spacetime to explain the phenomenon of time dilation - a key aspect of SR.
More than this, that explanation - which considers only slowing of time effects between objects - immediately begs the question: what’s the corresponding effect giving time dilation within indivisible objects, such as that well-documented effect in ultra-fast-moving muons? We can’t have two different effects going on, between objects and within objects, to explain the same phenomenon: the only plausible explanation is that time-carrying effects within particles are delayed in a similar way - which immediately and unequivocally confirms the cyclic-photon explanation of SR effects as detailed in posts in this thread, rendering conventional SR obsolete.

Very similar observations apply to another element of ‘evidence for SR’, one that clinched it for Einstein as confirming his new theory; he said of this and one other phenomenon: “They were enough” (to convince him).
This piece of ‘evidence’ is again blown out of the water, quite literally, by a video - this time from no less an authority than Fermilab, the US national particle accelerator laboratory. The phenomenon in question is the speed of light through moving water, which matches up very well with Einstein’s addition-of-velocities formula. As it turns out, though, it’s not so much an addition as a subtraction of velocities: it’s now known that the full speed of light is impeded by its interaction with the atoms of the water itself. Simply assessing that reduced speed based on an impedance that varies directly with rate of encounters with those atoms, orthogonally since the latter derives from a cyclic internal effect, gives a result identical to Einstein’s to ten significant figures or more - without any reference to any SR-based effects.
[The first article in this Substack channel goes into this issue in rather more detail, with full supporting maths in the follow-up premium post The Facts Behind Fizeau's Experiment.]
Again, not only does this render the SR interpretation redundant, but attempting to superimpose SR effects on top of this wholly explainable process actually makes it wrong. As the saying goes: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. Nothing about light speed through a translucent medium needs fixing with SR add-ons, it’s better off without them.

To sum up

We already have compelling evidence, on various fronts, that material particles are formed from electromagnetic energy looping on the spot - cyclic photons. We also have the maths showing conclusively that such particle structure leads to all the phenomena classified as effects of Special Relativity. None of this requires any add-ons in the form of unverifiable and unexplainable special properties of space and time.

Special Relativity also fails the fundamental test of falsifiability: any robust scientific theory must include a test whereby it could be disproved if it were false; Special Relativity includes no such possible test, even given that there is a clearly viable alternative.

Perhaps most importantly, SR makes assertions - again unprovable - about the nature of space and time which seriously limit our potential for scientific investigation. False beliefs about the structure and behaviour of space, time, energy and matter lead to false assumptions about what may or may not be possible, what might or might not be worth investigating. One obvious example is the claimed absolute limit of light speed as a potential speed of motion or information transfer; this is compounded by the belief that FTL (faster-than-light) motion or communication could lead to catastrophic disruption of causality, the cause-precedes-effect principle which is fundamental to the smooth running of the universe. Together these (arguably) spurious assumptions seriously limit any effort to overcome that light-speed hurdle and so open our pathway to the stars.

For over a century we’ve limited various aspects of scientific endeavour with the self-imposed glass ceiling of Special Relativity. Over-simplistic rejection of SR, based on misunderstanding of its fundamental premise, only perpetuates this situation by encouraging its proponents to dismiss all alternative views as misunderstandings without even troubling to examine the evidence.
The mathematical constructs of SR form an excellent description of apparent effects and measured outcomes. The problem arises when those appearances, those measurements, are taken to be aspects of objective cosmic reality rather than just subjective observer effects and/or consequences of a state of motion.

Time now to recognise Special Relativity for what it is - an outdated false paradigm - and move on. Keep that vital mathematical toolkit which precisely describes the experienced effects of events involving interactions at different speeds - but recognise, and work with, the true objective reality underlying those subjective experiences. This is the way to the future.

Next up

Next up is Who Put The Colours In The Rainbow?: On the evolution of colour perception.
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Be with you again soon!