Einstein's Starting Point

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Jim</i>
<br />Does it make any difference except for bragging rights?<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
Yes. It determines whether faster-than-light travel is possible. Tom Van Flandern, the sponsor of this board, says that gravity and the electrostatic force travel FTL. The scientific establishment believes in SR, according to which FTL is impossible. In order to overcome that, a new relativity is necessary. So it's very central to the point at hand.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">That makes following a light wave analogous to following a water wave, say, the way a surfer might. The wave does look "static" from that perspective. -|Tom<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
Now the 64 zillion dollar question: From that perspective, is this not a dipole hanging in space, in violation of Maxwell's laws?

FTL or not FTL. That is the question? I think not. The question of merit is all about redshift and gravity-not FTL.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Jim</i>
<br />FTL or not FTL. That is the question? I think not. The question of merit is all about redshift and gravity-not FTL.
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

From our frame of reference the Universe appears isotropic, and the propagation of light waves appears to travel at the same speed from every direction. However, as viewed from our frame of reference the light waves traveling from deep space appears to be red shifted and blue shifted and currently subject to SR relativities and this supports the Big Bang scenario (which never happened because you cannot create something from nothing, and because the universe at micro and macro levels shows at all times balance between matter and antimatter time domains). However, the universe may not be expanding at all and the perceived appearance of expansion and or contracted space may be caused from FTL and STL (slower then light) wave propagations from greater or lesser electromagnetic activities due to FTL graviton and antigraviton time domain interactions.

“So, FTL or not FTL?” The actual question should state, do we really understand the nature of Light wave propagation? In my opinion, I don't think so, but LR comes closest to an unbridled description of relativity whereby the speed of light can change and is subject to local relativities. However, until we can come to terms with how time domains are represented and interact within atomic nuclei we are far from having a whole complete picture of the entire process.

John

FTL or not FTL is the question that I posed when I started this thread.

Specifically, FTL or not FTL for the "propagation of gravitational force". Tom van Flandern asserts that gravitational force propagates FTL. This is controversial and so I want to explore it.

According to SR, FTL is equivalent to traveling backward in time. Since Tom van Flandern says that CHANGES in the gravitational potential travel at c, in other words SIGNALS travel at c, it occurs to me that this view is compatible with SR after all. Is there anything forbidden about that idea that this gravitation force, excluding the possibility of signaling, travels backwards in time?

Or, is it even meaningful to say that a force travels at a speed, with zero possibility of using that force to send a signal at that same speed? Tom van Flandern is saying that there are two different speeds associated with gravity--one speed for the force and a different speed for changes in the potential. (He is saying the same about the electric force.) What then would be the speed of changes in the force?

My 64 zillion dollar question remains unanswered: Under LR, if you could follow a lightwave, it would look like a dipole hanging motionless in space--is this not a violation of Maxwell's laws?

Under SR, photons cannot experience time, so motionlessness is OK.

rodschmidt:
"If you could follow a lightwave, it would look like a dipole hanging motionless in space..."

The question is: How would space itself look from that "frame". If you try to apply Lorentz transformations to the way a photon views the universe you could argue that there is no time and no distance. The universe folds in on itself so the photon can tunnel from source to target, without actually moving. But viewed from outside there may be a huge distance between source and target .. and time. Personally I find tunneling energy into the future unsatisfactory.

An easy way out could be: Lorentz' transformations do not apply to photons.
Or :Light doesn't travel at the speed of light. (That's ,apart from the vocabulary problem, another can of worms)