Tag Archives: simultaneity
A crushed flower.
This post has nothing to do with Amy Winehouse, sadly on the list of great talents who, poorly served by those in their lives, lost their way and died tragically and long before their time. (It’s bad enough when the ravages of life — disease and accident — steal away those with gifts. Losing people to human foibles is a more painful loss.)
The topic here is the Block Universe Hypothesis, which I’m revisiting, so the title kinda grabbed me (and I am a Winehouse fan). I’ve written about the BUH before, but a second debate with the same opponent turned up a few points worth exploring.
So it’s back to basic block (everyone looks good in block?)…
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31 Comments | tags: block universe, simultaneity, Special Relativity | posted in Physics
Back in 2015, to celebrate Albert Einstein’s birthday, I wrote a month-long series of posts about Special Relativity. I still regard it as one of my better efforts here. The series oriented on explaining to novices why faster-than-light travel (FTL) is not possible (short answer: it breaks reality).
So no warp drive. No wormholes or ansibles, either, because any FTL communication opens a path to the past. When I wrote the series, I speculated an ansible might work within an inertial frame. A smarter person set me straight; nope, it breaks reality. (See: Sorry, No FTL Radio)
Then Dr Sabine Hossenfelder seemed to suggest it was possible.
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12 Comments | tags: Albert Einstein, ansible, causality, causality violation, Einstein, faster than light, frame of reference, FTL, FTL radio, light, light speed, light year, Sabine Hossenfelder, simultaneity, spacetime, Special Relativity, speed of light | posted in Physics
Recently I had a debate with someone who was downright evangelical about the Block Universe (BU) being, absolutely, positively, the way things are. Because Special Relativity. In particular because of what SR says about simultaneity between inertial frames.
Up to that point I’d never given the BU a great deal of thought other than to file it under «Probably Not the Case» (for reasons I’ll get to). But during my morning walks I’ve turned it over in my mind, and after due consideration,… I still think it’s probably not the case.
I get why people feel SR seems to imply a BU, but I don’t see the necessity of that implication. In fact, it almost seems contrary to a basic tenant of SR, that “now” is strictly a local concept.
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14 Comments | tags: block universe, line of simultaneity, plane of simultaneity, simultaneity, simultaneous events, spacetime, Special Relativity, surface of simultaneity, time-space diagram | posted in Physics
I was gonna give us all the day off today, honestly, I was! My Minnesota Twins start their second game in about an hour, and I really planned to just kick back, watch the game, have a couple of beers, and enjoy the day. And since tomorrow’s March wrap-up post is done and queued, more of the same tomorrow.
But this is too relevant to the posts just posted, and it’s about Special Relativity, which is a March thing to me (because Einstein), so it kinda has to go here. Now or never, so to speak. And it’ll be brief, I think. Just one more reason I’m so taken with matrix math recently; it’s providing all kinds of answers for me.
Last night I realized how to use matrix transforms on spacetime diagrams!
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Leave a comment | tags: Albert Einstein, Einstein, faster than light, frame of reference, light, light speed, light year, matrix math, matrix transform, simultaneity, spacetime, Special Relativity, speed of light | posted in Math, Physics
Speaking of Special Relativity, back when I wrote the SR series, one topic I left along the wayside was the concept of the spacetime interval. It wasn’t necessary for the goals of the series, and there’s only so much one can fit in. (And back then, the diagrams I wanted to make would have been a challenge with the tool I was using.)
But now that we’re basking in the warm, friendly glow of March Mathness and reflecting on Special Relativity anyway, it seems like a good time to loop back and catch up on the spacetime interval, because it’s an important concept in SR.
It concerns what is invariant to all observers when both time and space measurements depend on relative motion.
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1 Comment | tags: Albert Einstein, Einstein, faster than light, frame of reference, light, light speed, light year, simultaneity, spacetime, Special Relativity, speed of light | posted in Physics
Earlier, in the March Mathness post, I mentioned Albert Einstein was born on March 14th. That’s also Pi Day, which deserved its own pi post (about pizza pi), so old Al had to wait for me to address a topic I’ve needed to address for several months.
To wit: Some guy was wrong on the internet.
That guy was me.
Back in 2015 (also celebrating Einstein’s birthday), I wrote a series of posts exploring Special Relativity. Near the end of the series, writing about FTL radio, I said (assuming an “ansible” existed) I wasn’t convinced it violated causality if the frames of reference were matched.
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10 Comments | tags: Albert Einstein, ansible, causality, causality violation, Einstein, Emmy Noether, faster than light, frame of reference, FTL, FTL radio, light, light speed, light year, simultaneity, spacetime, Special Relativity, speed of light | posted in Physics
Over the last five weeks I’ve tried to explain and explore Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity. We’ve seen that motion, velocity, simultaneity, length, and even time, are all relative to your frame of reference and that motion changes the perceptions of those things for observers outside your frame.
All along I’ve teased the idea that the things I’m showing you demonstrate how the dream of faster-than-light (FTL) travel is (almost certainly) impossible. Despite a lot of science fiction, there probably isn’t any warp drive in our futures.
Now it’s (finally) time to find out just exactly why that is.
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4 Comments | tags: ansible, causality, causality violation, Ender's Game, faster than light, frame of reference, FTL, light, light speed, light year, Orson Scott Card, science fiction, simultaneity, Special Relativity, speed of light, Ursula Le Guin | posted in Physics
Last time I focused on how it was possible for Al to see — even enclose in a tunnel — a train that appears shorter to him due to its motion. It turns out that the train Al sees is a stack of time slices of the train at different moments. As we’ve seen, lots of things look different in a moving frame.
Today I want to say a little about Em’s point of view, run some numbers, and take you through a little math (just one equation, I promise). Then, because it’s Friday (when I try to write about light), I’ll introduce you to light cones.
They’re not actually necessary, but they’re kinda cool.
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4 Comments | tags: 2D, 3D, gamma factor, gamma term, light, light cone, light speed, line of simultaneity, plane of simultaneity, simultaneity, simultaneous events, space-time, Special Relativity, surface of simultaneity, time-space diagram | posted in Physics
Last time’s Too Long Train illustration demonstrates that length is relative. Observers moving at different rates measure the length of an object differently. The faster something moves in your frame of reference, the more its length contracts along the direction of motion.
In previous weeks we saw that motion, speed, and simultaneity, are relative; now we see that length is also relative. Next week I’ll talk about the relativity of time. Today I want to dig a little deeper into the length contraction part of Special Relativity.
It’ll be a factor when we get to the spaceships!
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4 Comments | tags: length contraction, light speed, line of simultaneity, simultaneity, space-time, space-time event, Special Relativity, surface of simultaneity | posted in Physics
The last two train examples (Lightning Strikes and Treaty Train) focused on how simultaneity is relative to motion. Our final train example focuses on how length is relative to motion. The faster something goes relative to you, the more it appears foreshortened along its direction of travel.
This example involves a train that, if it stopped halfway through, is too long for a tunnel — it would stick out both ends. But motion contracts length, so if the train goes fast enough, it becomes short enough to fit entirely inside the tunnel.
And it’s not an illusion; the train really does fit inside!
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6 Comments | tags: foreshortening, length contraction, line of simultaneity, simultaneity, simultaneous events, Special Relativity, surface of simultaneity, trains, tunnels | posted in Physics
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