Tag Archives: relativity

Layman and a Scientist

March 9, 2012 – 3:30 am

Layman: In the light of the observations on cosmic ray muons, why don’t we believe that muons could travel at 8×109 meters/sec having observed them travel 16000meters in 2 microseconds?

Scientist: because that exceeds the speed of light

Layman: then what?

Scientist: Special relativity (SR) prohibits speeds faster than light which is 3×108meters/sec.

Layman: on what grounds?

Scientist: From the law of constant speed of light

Layman: What is that?

Scientist: Speed of light is constant to all observers i.e light always travels at velocity ‘c’ i.e. 3×108meters/sec with reference to all observers irrespective of their own motion. A ‘stationary’ observer, a fast moving electron or the cosmic ray muon, all ‘measure’ the same speed of light.

Layman: how weird!

Scientist: Yes, it is weird but proven by many experiments including the muon’s time dilation.

Layman: ???

Scientist: So if light travels at speed ‘c’ with reference to the cosmic ray muon, how can the latter travel faster than light? Obviously it can’t. If at all something (e.g. cosmic ray muon) appears to travel faster than light, it is just an illusion. What actually happens there is time dilation and space contraction in muon’s reference frame. Obviously we can’t appreciate this in our reference frame.

Layman: Why should we believe in time dilation which we can’t appreciate, and ignore what we actually appreciate?

Scientist: Because that’s what is exactly predicted by the theory of special relativity.

Layman: Pardon me sir; but muon’s time dilation is a prediction or a proof of special relativity?

Scientist: The problem is you neither understand the mathematics nor the reference frames. Though the muon appears to travel 16000 meters in 2 microseconds, it is impossible according to special relativity and the law of constant speed of light. What actually happens is time dilation and space contraction in muon’s reference frame. So this muon’s time dilation proves special relativity.

Layman: I am feeling dizzy; it appears to me that we are going round and round. That could be my ignorance. May be muon’s time dilation is in fact true and possibly proves special relativity!

Scientist: Of course, numerous experiments have proven special relativity beyond doubt.

Layman: Now I am getting the gist of relativity. Everything in relativity is counterintuitive, isn’t it?

Scientist: Well, you are right but there is a lot more to go through before you can even dream of understanding relativity. Even I didn’t believe in it initially, but having seen the vast support and evidence, I had no choice but to accept it. And over the course of time, as I thoroughly understood the theory and the maths, I got converted and became a believer of relativity.

Layman: So, cosmic ray muons prove time dilation because nothing can travel faster than light. Is there an equally strong proof for the idea of constant speed of light?

Scientist: Well, plenty. Neutral pion decay and Michelson-Morley experiments are among the top. The former proves that the photon’s velocity is unaffected by that of the source. The latter proves many aspects of SR, but as a layman it will be too much for you to grasp.

Layman: I accept my ignorance. May be you can tell me about the pion’s story.

Scientist: You know, the velocity of a stone thrown out of a moving train depends upon the train’s velocity. That is, the velocity of any projectile/ emitted body depends upon the velocity of the source/ emitter.

Layman: Of course!

Scientist: But that’s not the case with light photons. We know velocity of light is ‘c’. Neutral pions are fundamental particles with a high velocity and emit photons as they decay.  If the neutral pion’s velocity is ‘x’, we would expect the emitted photons to move at speed ‘c+x’. But the photons were noted to travel at just ‘c’ in an experiment studying the decay of neutral pions. This proved beyond doubt that velocity of light is indeed constant and unaffected by that of the source.

Layman: Well, the speed of an engine (photon) obviously doesn’t depend upon the vehicle (pion) it was driving.

Scientist: What do you mean?

Layman: If the lone speed of a rail engine is 100kmph, this remains the same even when the engine gets detached from the moving train it was driving.

Imagine a horse which runs at 50kmph when free of load. Also imagine that this horse is pulling a cart at 40kmph. If the horse gets ‘released’ from this moving cart, it will only run at its original speed of 50kmph and not at 50+40kmph.

So like SOL, the speed of a horse and the speed of a rail engine are also constant!

Scientist: Neutral pion decay was a real observation which proved that the speed of light is constant. You are equating a real experiment and published evidence with your imaginary and silly experiments on bullock carts and rail engines.

Layman: I am only…

Scientist: You can’t make wild propositions without published evidence from peer reviewed journals and strong mathematics.

Layman: Sorry sir, I didn’t mean to dishonour science. I am just thinking that photons may be behaving just like horses and rail engines for the particles in the quantum world. If so, then we don’t need the weird law of constant speed of light to explain the observations on neutral pion decay!

Scientist: But that’s not what special relativity (SR) predicts.

Layman: I am again feeling giddy. I am not able to appreciate whether something is a logical conclusion, a proof or a prediction.

Scientist: Well, don’t forget that relativity is counterintuitive, so commonsense obviously fails. The problem is you don’t understand the maths. We the scientists are not fools to believe in relativity if this was wrong.

Layman: I realise that we the lay people shouldn’t try to understand Relativity but religiously believe in what the great scientists like you preach. Thank you sir.

(So we must not believe in what we have observed because that is simply prohibited by some weird theory. And we should believe in the weird phenomenon of time dilation, though we haven’t observed – because that is what is proposed by SR. Note the awkward logic here- Special relativity proposes time dilation. Time dilation then proves special relativity!!!

Dear ‘unscientific’ and ‘uneducated’ lay minds, read the full ‘stories’ of the cosmic ray muons and the neutral pions to realise how ‘intelligent’ are our great physicists)

By Dr Srinivasa Rao Gonuguntla | Posted in Relativity Fun Zone | Also tagged , , , , , | Comments (3)

Age paradox and Perihelion Shift

November 28, 2011 – 6:34 am

Despite their triumph with relativity and quantum theories, one paradox remained hard to solve for the scientists of the Era of ridiculous science. Why people as they grow and accrue more years become weak and perish while the younger with less age survive better? How come growth is a bad thing?

Of course there was an old saying- to grow is to perish. But explanations based upon reasoning, commonsense, experience and old sayings etc were not accepted by the religious scientists of the ridiculous science who believe only in the God of Maths. So everyone was eagerly waiting for a theory backed up by strong maths.

Finally a scientist proposed the long awaited theory to explain this paradox- “we will have to abandon our traditional thinking/ understanding of numbers. The value we attach to the numbers must be reversed. That is, smaller numbers must be assumed to have greater value than the bigger numbers. So the value of the numbers will go down as we count 1, 2, 3…. 1000 and so on”.

According to this great weird model, older people aged 80, 90, 100 etc have less value than the younger people aged 1, 10 and so on. Now it is no more a paradox that the less valued older people perish easily.

The rational scientific minds cried- ‘this is irrational and not science’.

The scientist replied “our world is an illusion and hence what we perceive, think and experience may not actually be correct. So we can’t simply rely upon our commonsense. My theory though appears irrational and against our intuition, it has good maths and accurately explained the long plagued ‘age paradox’. More over this model also explains another observation – 5mm (greater value) grass weeds better withstand winds than 10000mm (lesser value) long trees. We know relativity theory is weird but it correctly explained the Mercury perihelion shift and has strong maths”.

The irrational scientific world readily embraced this theory of relativity of numbers and the scientist was hailed as another Einstein.

“A 10kg cereal forms a much bigger heap than 1kg of the same. And 60 seconds is 60 times longer than 1 second- so more is not less” the rational minds continued to argue.

“Well, people have also been questioning the theory of relativity with similar arguments.  The problem is that these rational people don’t have a sense of maths and hence can’t grasp ideas like time dilation and space contraction. They don’t realize that 1 sec can actually be much longer than 60 sec and 1kg rice can form a bigger heap than 10kg rice, depending upon the reference frame one uses. For one to understand this cutting edge science, one should just believe in maths and not cling to rationality” the religious preaching went on.

“A person can travel into his past, kill his grandfather and comeback into the present and still be alive despite his grandfather was killed before his father was born! Nobody with commonsense can explain this paradox but Relativity does. We are proud of our religion of irrational science”.

By Dr Srinivasa Rao Gonuguntla | Posted in Faculty of Ridiculous Science, Relativity Fun Zone | Also tagged , , , , | Comments (0)