Serious Question on Clocks & Time

himnextdoor wrote: »

Thank you for your patience Morbet but can I point out that experimental data actually registers different values of time-dilation and in the case of the Hafele-Keating experiment, direction, east to west or west to east seems to determine whether clocks 'speed up' or 'slow down'? Doesn't this support an 'ether' conjecture'?

'Why do completely different mechanisms, like photon clocks, atomic oscillations, relativistic doppler shifts, and the varieties of particle decay observed in accelerators all register the same level of time dilation?'

Because, in the end they all utilise 'photonic' properties and electron transitions, and photon emmision and absorption, are affected in the same way by acceleration/gravity.

And in the case of muon decay, stopping a particle that is undergoing acceleration due to gravity should have an effect on the decay time; it becomes 'stressed' when collided with a block of iron. Acceleration inhibits the dissipation of energy and deceleration promotes it.

Suppose that there is a large box on a carriage that is attached to a train which is at rest. At the centre of the box is a machine which 'fires' tennis-balls in two directions, forward and backward with respect to the train. The balls are 'fired' simultaneously such that the balls bounce off the two opposite walls with the same energy and an optical device detects them as they bounce back toward their origin. When the detector detects a ball, it causes another to be fired.

In this idealised situation, the balls arrive and are detected after they bounce and the arrangement is such that the ball-pairs are synchronised when the train is at rest. So, in essence we have two clocks that use returning balls as a time-base,

Now, I know that photons are different from tennis-balls but lets just take it from the point of view of Newtonian physics.

How will the 'synchronisity' of the balls be affected by the train accelerating?

Well, the first thing to note is that the path to the wall will be lengthened in the forward direction while the path will be shortened in the backward direction but what is the effect on how the 'energy' of each ball is dissipated?

Of course, the balls bounciing off the front wall will lose energy to the wall whereas the balls bouncing off the back wall will gain energy from the wall; the 'forward clock' will slow down and the 'backward clock' will speed up.

What I'm trying to say is that in classical physics, energy transfer (ball to wall, wall to ball) is affected by acceleration. Momentum is still conserved but the behaviour of the ball is altered and the clocks run faster or slower.

If we consider photons instead of tennis-balls then the effect would be that 'forward travelling' photons are red-shifted whilst 'backward travelling' photons are blue-shifted.

Does this make sense?

If acceleration (or gravity) has an effect on energy distribution then how can the 'ether' concept be dismissed?

himnextdoor wrote: »

:cool:

From what I understand, experimental observations have produced data which has varied from 10% accuracy in the fifties, to 1% accuracy in the sixties and in 2005 the NPL performed the Hafele and Keating experiment which produced results within 4% accuracy of Einstein's predictions. If the theory came about through observation then the theory would be slightly different.

But this is nit-picking.

Let me be clear; I do not deny that gravity/acceleration have the effect that time-dilation attempts to address but I do question what it is that is actually being measured.

And I accept that the east-west thing is sufficiently understood in terms of the relative motion of the centre of gravity.

Could I ask your opinion of something: It seems well documented that the data released from the Hafele and Keating experiment were actually different to data obtained from the experiment, that the original results were adjusted. Some claim that the adjustments were made using dubious reasoning. Do you think that this is true?

The reason I ask is that, in my opinion, science that is based on politics is bad science. Would you agree?

Yes, thank you Enkido. I think you are both being a little unfair here, I was talking about 'clocks' and as far as I know there are no time-keeping devices based on muon decay. Caesium-clocks and light-clocks rely on photonic properties and it is these kinds of clocks that are used in the detection of time-dilation.

Furthermore, muon detection relies on the use of photo-multipliers and photo-multipliers do make use of photonic properties.

Anyway, what is a photon if not a packet of energy? Muon decay is an energetic process and so must be subject to photonic properties.

But to answer your question, I think that 'time-dilation' can be explained in terms of impedance; anything in a gravitational field or undergoing acceleration becomes 'stressed', 'under tension', so to speak. Why?... Because of resistance; resistance to change. Change requires energy expenditure; to stand up, sit down, lie down all require an exchange of energy and all because of gravity. It is gravity that stresses human joints. Every time we move we suffer wear and tear due to gravity, change occurs and energy is expended. I reckon you get the picture.:)

When systems interact, degradation happens; the universe is a process of decay. All matter has a 'life-span'.

Of course, I am talking about matter in terms of large scale systems of energy; atoms, molecules, microscopic-life, animals, planets, stars are all fated to destruction and all because gravity causes wear and tear. All systems of energy have a tendency to decay.

So why shouldn't the same thing apply at a sub-atomic scale? Sub-atomic particles can be thought of as systems whose components are comprised of energy that interact with each other creating structures defined as particles. In stable particles the components are balanced, relatively speaking, and in unstable particles there is a mismatch which results in the decay of that particle.

Let me offer another analogy by way of yet another idealised thought experiment. Imagine the fundamental particles as a set of toothed cogs that come in three distinct sizes; large, medium and small. Each size comes in two flavours; ten teeth per centimetre and fourteen teeth per centimetre, say. That is six types of cog so far. Each cog is fitted with a drive mechanism that gives it spin and there are two speeds available, one rpm and two rpm, let us say, which brings the number of different types of cog to twelve. Next, suppose that the cogs are magnetised in order to represent charge; the y-axis of the cog is a cylindrical bar-magnet and half the cogs have their north-pole up and the other half have their north-pole down. That is now twenty-four types of cog. Finally, all of these cogs are designed to have symmetry along their x-axis and to float on water such that the bottom surface of the cog is barely in contact with the water (so that we can disregard the forces generated in the water itself... for now). This means that they can be 'flipped' which will affect the spin direction and the 'charge'.

Let us say that we have two-thousand of each type and that they will each begin to operate upon contact with water. All we need now is a pool of water large enough to accommodate millions of such cogs and we can start ramdomly throwing our forty-eight thousand cogs into the water.

What would happen? The motors would start and roughly half will spin in a clockwise direction and the rest will spin in the opposite direction. They'd bob about randomly and eventually, they'll start making contact with each other. Think of the possible combinations; where charge is the same, north meets north of south meets south, repulsion occurs but if their spins are in opposite directions, the repulsion would be gentle whereas where the spins are the same, the repulsion would be violent. In the cases where charges are opposite and two cogs are attracted to each other equal spin would cause the two cogs to rotate about a common centre whereas opposite spin would cause 'soft merging' and the pair would simply move in a new direction according to their momentum.

Factor in the two different tooth-pitches, two different speeds and three different sizes (representing different masses), consider that three or four cogs could interact, and more, and the number of possible interactions becomes enormous.

However, some combinations will persist, be stable, for longer periods than others which can be considered unstable.

Can you imagine such a model and visualise how the cogs might 'arrange' themselves over time?

And back to muon decay. A muon might be represented as one large cog and three small ones that have been thrown together as a result of a collision between two stable systems. The instability comes about because one small cog is spinning at the slower rate and as soon as the system comes together it is doomed to break down shortly thereafter.

But what effect would acceleration have on the rate of 'decay'?

The reason that our mechanical muon is unstable is because there will come a point where like magnetic poles will be brought into contact and this will cause one cog to be ejected from the system at a rate determined by the magnetic field. If the muon is being accelerated in the direction in which the repulsive force is acting then the rate at which the muon decays is retarded. The cogs disengage which means that spin no longer plays a role in the decay but because one side of the rejected cog remains in close proximity to an opposite pole, it stays loosely connected to the system until either unstable oscillations inpart enough momentum to fire the particle out of the system or the system decelerates.

Naturally this would suggest that if a muon is accelerated in a direction opposite to the direction in which the repulsive force is acting then decay would be speeded up; acceleration would cause the system to move away from the rejected particle, assisting the force of repulsion.

I have a vivid picture in mind and I hope I am conveying it. Does this model work in a crude way at least?

If I make the cogs into corrugated spheres with the same properties outlined above, submerge trillions upon trillions of them in a vast tank of water and take into account the forces imparted into the water, don't I have, at the very least, a crude model of the quantum world?

Simple. Under acceleration, the orbital shells of atoms, all atoms, becomes distorted. They tend toward being a kind of 'comet' shape as the rate of acceleration increases. This causes the orbital path of the electron to become elongated and the distance travelled by the electron in each revolution is increased and the average velocity of the electron is decreased as is spends more time in the outer orbital.

In the case of caesium, this means that the probability that an electron makes a transition is increased and sure enough, the clock ticks slightly faster.

Oh, and the change of average velocity of an electron in any given shell is directly proportional to the spectral-shift. It can go down as well as up. At very high acceleration the orbital-shell can become so 'compressed' at the bow that electrons approach very close to the nucleus where escape velocity increases exponentially.

Also, could you give me an example of an 'optical-clock' that has shown the effects of time-dilation in the real world?

I think we have dealt with atomic clocks; acceleration has an effect on atoms and can consequently have an effect on photon emission/absorption. The rate of acceleration can be said to modify the probability curve of all events undergoing acceleration and a consequence of this must be that a device that counts events of a cyclic nature will be subject to alteration through acceleration regardless of its construction.

For instance, a digital wrist-watch which operates on the basis of crystal oscillations relies on the size and shape of the crystal. Under acceleration the part of the crystal that faces the direction of motion experiences compression which slightly changes the dimensions of the crystal whilst at the same time modifying the way the crystal bends and flexes. It seems logical and reasonable to think frequency of the crystal would increase in a manner proportional to the rate of acceleration. However, you would have to take into account what the effect of acceleration would have on capacitance. Capacitors are often used in conjunction with crystals and 'tune' the frequency to the counter. But capacitance is inversely proportional to the distance between the plates. And the lower the capacitance, the higher the frequency.

Under acceleration capacitive plates would increase their cross-sectional are in almost all orientations to a greater or lesser degree and cross-sectional-area is proportional to capacitance. There are only two possible, limited areas where capacitance can be reduced due to acceleration; the plates would have to be oriented one behind the other with respect the direction of acceleration. Only in this arrangement would the plates experiences a force that tends to increase the distance between them. So it is entirely possible that a digital-watch might speed up or slow down depending on its position during acceleration.

So maybe the construction of the time-keeping device is relevant when it comes to the question of time-dilation.

Particle decay evidences time-dilation. Or rather, the effect that acceleration has on atomic clocks startlingly correlates with the effect that acceleration has on particle decay. That's fair, isn't it?

A muon has a life-expectancy of about 2.2 microseconds but under acceleration the probability of a muon decaying after more time (or over a longer distance) increases. But also, the probability of faster decay rates are also increased.

As I outlined above, acceleration has equivalence with charge. I visualise a decaying particle a collection of fundamental particles that are temporarily 'entangled', in wildly chaotic orbits, bombarding each other with energy until one is emitted away from the system. Sometimes, absorbing energy can stabilise the system too.

Acceleration imparts energy. As the muon is pulled toward the centre of gravity it becomes deformed, comet-shaped. Now the decay has to occur at the front so that the resultant particles can conserve momentum and continue their downward journey.

The interior of the muon is filled with forces that are interacting with each other and a standing wave appears growing as it makes its way around the centre of mass and the muon begins to resonate. Then it shakes itself to pieces.

Under acceleration, if the motion of this standing-wave is away from gravity (through reasons of momentum) then it will experience 'retardation' as it make its way around the top of the muon (toward the tail of the comet) in an elongated path. The result: The muon takes longer to decay.

However, if the motion of the standing is toward gravity then the wave will experience 'advancement'; energy is gained from acceleration and the muon decays sooner.

I see a problem here though; could a muon be accelerated at a rate that would prevent it from decaying altogether.

Suppose a muon is created in the viscinity of a black-hole and was accelerating toward it at near light-speed. Could the accelerating force of a black-hole retard the muon's decay to infinity?

I reckon that it is possible that some muons never get to decay before they are spontaneously converted into pure photonic energy shining toward the centre of the black-hole where they encounter other photons in head-on collisions which yield energy with 100% efficiency.

The thing is though, perhaps the rate of particle decay can be speeded up or slowed down through acceleration. There is nothing to say that a muon cannot decay more quickly through the same mechanism that causes muons to decay more slowly.

So, muon decay yields data that has a similar structure to the data yielded by light-clocks and digital-watches; dependence on orientation and direction of motion with respect to the accelerating force.

And it is not time that is affected; it is how energy is conserved that is affected. Spectral-shifts have to occur because if a photon came back with the same 'colour' it left with the photon would have had to have either speeded up in one direction or, worse, slowed down in the other and there is no way that can happen without violating conservation laws. Spectral shifts indicate energy lost or gained through acceleration and again, that has nothing to do with time and more to do with how energy is distributed.

So, when it comes down to it, atomic-clocks are the only viable means we have for obtaining data concerning time-dilation. Or is it simply the case that acceleration causes a certain type of clock to tick faster?

In the same way that increasing the water-pressure in a garden sprinkler system results in a faster water output, couldn't it be that caesium clocks tick faster because acceleration provides extra energy to electrons at all tested orientations.

And what about this scenario: Suppose the caesium atom was oriented so that the orbital path of the electron remained roughly equidistant from the centre of gravity. Wouldn't this have the effect of pulling the electron into a higher orbital shell, tending to fix it into a particular orbital? Wouldn't this tend to reduce the number of transitions? Could it be possible that caesium clocks could be oriented with respect to gravity in such a way as to tick more slowly than a clock on the same journey oriented such that it ticked faster?

Yes, acceleration has an effect on clocks and Einstein predicts it but time-dilation is actually simply 'a change in the rate of change due to acceleration'. Time doesn't exist except as a scale we measure rate of change against. I think it is a mistake to assume that time is a vector-like quantity that must be subject to change in order to achieve universal constants such as the speed of light, i.e., light cannot rush so time must speed up; light cannot tarry so time must stand still. (I must use that in a song.)

Time-dilation seems like a misleading term to me. Especially if the effect can be explained in terms of energy distribution and changes in rates of change and still confirm relativity. Acceleration causes an increase in energy potential and events can occur more quickly and some can be retarded; position and motion with respect to gravity determine which,

I don't know, perhaps quantum physics has a problem with that?

I have a bit of a problem too; my universe requires the existence of an ether as a source of energy and in the end, so too does relativity.

Or do I? :cool:

himnextdoor wrote: »

Are you serious?

Firstly, all the information you provide shows that it is 'as if' time is variable.

That is like saying that acceleration and gravity are the same thing; they are not the same thing, except philosophically.

Falling under the influence of gravity is not the same thing as 'accelerating' through the application of energy; (which always comes from behind.) where is the force applied?

Being 'pushed' is not the same as being 'pulled' outside philosophy.

Gravitation acts from the front whereas acceleration , in the context of what we are talking about, acts from behind. There is a qualitive difference between the two; in the first case, the 'energy' is applied from the front and in the second it is applied from behind. Don't you understand the difference between 'front-wheel drive' and 'rear-wheel' drive?

I can't stress this enough; when acceleration occurs through gravity, there is stretching at the front, when acceleration is due to a rocket or a jet-engine, there is compression at the rear. Both result in an increase in velocity but the application (front to back, back to front) of the force affects probability in different ways.

This seems obvious.

Seriously, tell me... Where is the flaw in my reasoning? Without relying on faith, Morbet, where is the flaw?

You know, I think it is funny; in 1905 Eistein postulated things that noone could read about and you dismiss what seems to me to be reasonable on the basis tht you have not read about it.

Not very reassuring.

My model of a quantum-unverse, the one with those submerged spheres predicts that the poles will have a high 'gravitational' pull when compared to the equator; gravity, the speed of light, magnetism are all predicted in this model but you dismiss it!

What about the fact that this model offers an opportunity for 'self-organisation' - a characteristic of nature - and provides an explanation tjat assists in the understanding of quantum-fluctuations?

Why shouldn't this model be useful in understanding physics? What is wrong with it? It is a theory based on observation and I can't break it... can you?

The fact that experiments are done in order to investigate 'time-dilation' suggests that, at least to some extent, the 'jury is still out' on the 'how's and why's' these effects occur.

I said quite a lot in my previous post and I worked quite hard to produce it and for about twenty hours solid (I literally stayed up all night to talk to you), but you address nothing... I suggested that 'time-dilation' might be synonymous with 'change of rate of change' (which would be in the remit of climatology and 'chaos theory') but you ignore it... Why?

You have a picture of how the universe works, in your head... Are you correct? And Are you sure?

I bet you always come down to that thing that 'might be God'?

Well, I don't; and I thought this was the place to 'chat' about it...

himnextdoor wrote: »

If by 'when' you are referring to time of day then yes, an aeroplane flying toward the sun on the western side of the earth would experience less 'dilation' that a plane on the eastern side travelling away from the sun.

That would be an interesting experiment wouldn't it; two planes on opposite sides of the planet travelling at the same speed and in the same direction show register slightly different amounts of dilation because of the sun's gravity.

Is that what you meant?

roosh wrote: »

Given that the experimental evidence doesn't distinguish between Einsteinian and Lorentzian relativity, it would suggest that the explanation for how a clock measures time under Einsteinian relativity, is indeed just an assumption.

dadvocate wrote: »

I was wondering about something to do with 'time dilation'.

It's to do with E=mc^2.

I gather that E is made up of the mass of an object, 'm', plus its momentum which is frame dependent. As velocity increases then according to a stationary observer, mass effectively increases. And if the mass and the observer were travelling together then the observer would measure the mass as if it had no extra momentum.

Is that correct?

If this is correct then the stationary observer would measure one value for E while the travelling observer would measure a lower value for E.

Now I am thinking of 'm' as being the crystal that forms the timebase of a digital watch.

The resonant frequency of the crystal is related to its mass. Let's say that frequency is 10 KHz.

The travelling observer would measure the frequency of the crystal as being 10 KHz wouldn't he?

But if the watch was travelling at a high enough velocity, the stationary observer might measure the mass of the crystal as twice the mass that the travelling observer measures due to momentum.

And a crystal with twice the mass will oscillate at half the speed so the stationary observer should 'see' the watch run at half speed.

Could the apparent increase in mass be entirely responsible for time dilation?

Also, wouldn't the stationary observer calculate that the watch has travelled twice as far in ten seconds as registered by the travelling watch compared to the distance he measures in ten seconds as registered by his stationary clock?

dadvocate wrote: »

Thank you for that.

But suppose we think in terms of a mechanical clock that is driven by a spring and disregard the problems that would arise from accelerating such a clock to speeds that are a significant fraction of the speed of light.

Now in this case, the E of E=mc^2 would be equal to the rest mass of the parts of the clock plus the momentum of those parts plus the energy stored in the spring.

Is that right?

If we now accelerate that clock so as to double the quantity 'E' then since 'c' is constant, the 'm' quantity must also double, mustn't it?

What I'm wondering is, what effect will velocity have on the energy that is stored in the spring?

Suppose we were to construct another clock that is identical in every way to the first clock except that we use materials that have twice the density as those used in the first clock. Then we would have a clock that is twice as massive as the first one but takes up the same amount of space.

I would expect that second close to tick more slowly than the first but I would also realise the the more massive spring will store more energy.

But if we now accelerate the first clock to a velocity that apparently causes 'm' to be doubled, I don't think that the two clocks will register the same rate of time passing; I think the travelling clock will tick more slowly because the proportion of energy supplied by its spring will be (apparently)less than the proportion of the energy supplied by the spring in the second clock.

Does that make sense? Do you see what I am trying to get at?

And in the case of an atomic clock, if the electrons of the caesium atom effectively double their mass, then wouldn't the transition rate apparently slow down?

From this, is it reasonable to conclude that it is the momentum portion of the mass that is entirely responsible for the slowing down of moving clocks