midsummer puzzle

From: scerir (scerir@libero.it)
Date: Fri Aug 23 2002 - 09:13:06 MDT


I remember that Herbert Dingle (Nature, vol 179, p. 866,
p. 1242, year 1957) wrote something like this ...

1. The postulate of relativity says that if 2 clocks separate,
    and then meet again, there is no physical phenomenon
    which can show you, in absolute terms, that one clock
    moved and the other did not, or viceversa.
2. Anyway if, after the 2 clocks meet again, you find that
    one clock is late, this means that the same clock moved
    away, and the other did not.
3. But, from both the statements above, we can say that
    both clocks are equally late, or both clocks are equally
    right, (or the postulate of relativity is wrong, or Lorentz
    transformations are wrong, or both!)

(From page 17 of prof. Herbert Dingle's book, " Science at the crossroads:")

" It would naturally be supposed that the point at issue, even if less esoteric
than it is generally supposed to be, must still be to subtle and profound for
the ordinary reader to be expected to understand it. On the contrary, it is one
of the most extreme simplicity. According to the theory, if you have two exactly
similar clocks, A and B, and one is moving with respect to the other, they must
work at different rates,i.e. one works more slowly than the other. But the
theory also requires that you cannot distinguish which clock is the 'moving'
one; it is equally true to say that A rests while B moves and that B rests while
A moves. The question therefore arises: how does one determine, consistently
with the theory, which clock works the more slowly? Unless the question is
answerable, the theory unavoidably requires that A works more slowly than B and
B more slowly than A - which it requires no super- intelligence to see is
impossible. Now, clearly, a theory that requires an impossibility cannot be
true, and scientific integrity requires, therefore, either that the question
just posed shall be answered, or else that the theory shall be acknowledged to
be false. But as I have said, more than 13 years of continuous effort has failed
to produce either response. The question is left by the experimenters to the
mathematical specialists, who either ignore it or shroud it in various
obscurities, while experiments involving enormous physical risk go on being
performed. "

http://www.dipmat.unipg.it/~bartocci/quest.htm
http://www.heretical.org/science/dingle1.html
http://www.heretical.org/science/dingle2.html
http://www.heretical.org/science/dingle3.html
http://sheol.org/throopw/dingle-paradox01.html
http://homepage.mac.com/ardeshir/RelativityDebunked.html



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