D'Oh, I posted two seconds too soon!! ( :>/

"Einstein's Time"

Based on "Einstein's Clocks, Poincare's Maps"

http://www.aip.org/history/einstein/essay-einsteins-time.htm

(Mightn't be exactly what you're after, Ludwig, but it's a good read:)

Ludwig,

Hope you don't mind if I quote a little more from Brian Greene's "The Fabric of the Cosmos" (cracking good read and all that:)

"The relativity of space and of time is a startling conclusion.....From the well-worn statement that the speed of light is a constant, we conclude that 'space and time are in the eye of the beholder'. Each of us carries our own clock, our own monitor of the passage of time. Each clock is equally precise, yet when we move relative to one another, these clocks do not agree. They fall out of synchronization, they measure different amounts of elapsed time between to chosen events. The same is true of distance. Each of us carries our own yardstick, our own monitor of distance in space.....Space and time adjust themselves in an exactly compensating manner so that observations of light's speed yield the same result, regardless of the observer's velocity....."

(my preferred layman's explanation below)

"Newton thought that motion through time was totally separate from motion through space....but Einstein found that they are intimately linked....When you look at something like a parked car, which from your point of view is stationary--not moving through space, that is--all of its motion is through time. The car, its driver, the street, you, your clothes are all moving through time in perfect synch: second followed by second, ticking away uniformly. But if the car speeds away, some of its motion through time is 'diverted' into motion through space...the speed of the car through time slows down when it diverts some of its motion through 'space'. this means that the car's progress through time slows down and 'therefore time elapses more slowly for the moving car and its driver than it elapses for you and everything else that remains stationary'."

"Moreover, the maximum speed through space is reached when all light-speed motion through time is fully diverted into light-speed motion through space-- one way of understanding why it is impossible to go through space at greater than light speed."

"Space and time are individually relative: spacetime is an absolute entity."

Thanks Poirot.

I take issue first with the notion that the speed of light is constant. As we have discussed, speed is a relative thing – we have got to say what something is moving or is stationary in respect to.

So, even if light is emitted at a constant speed, it is travelling at a different speed with respect to all objects that are travelling at a different speed to the object that emitted the light… or even at the same speed but in any direction other than exactly the same direction that the object emitting the light is travelling!!

And at any rate, given that no object seems capable of reaching more than a tiny fraction of the speed of light with respect to any other object, what’s the point of pondering it??

The only truth here is that that old Einstein dude really was a whacky as he looked!!: http://tinyurl.com/b4gsvkp

Wow!

So you're disputing that the speed of light is a constant?

Double Wow!

http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/einsteinlight/jw/module3_is_it_true.htm

..............

"...what's the point of pondering it??"

Triple Wow!

(As in why, if you question the point of pondering one entity, do you bother to ask questions and ponder others?)

Noooo! It can’t be true! It doesn’t make sense!

This universe is just plain weeeird!

Stop the world, I want to get off… and go live in a PROPER universe!!

Or maybe this IS a proper universe… and there are just some real nutters out there, Einsteinians if you like, who just want to confuse us and make it out to be what it is isn’t.

In these Michelson/Morley experiments, maybe they were making a false assumption to start with regarding the nature of light. Does it really have a simple wave pattern as with sound waves, whereby two similar beams interact and form peaks and troughs?

You would think that if light waves interacted like this, we’d see this effect all the time, given that there are light beams passing all around us which are of slightly different wavelengths.

We hear beats all the time whenever there are two very similarly pitched sounds. This is particularly common in vehicular traffic noise, in the city, for example.

Does light ever behave in this manner? If not… then what are these guys on about??

<< "...what's the point of pondering it??" >>

Well… just coz there doesn’t seem to be any point, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it! Not everything we do has to have a point to it…. does it? ( :>)