Existence

Everything. The observer is the one who plots the point of emission with the point of detection within their frame of reference. The distance between those two points determines how much time it takes for the light to move from the point of emission to the point of detection within that frame of reference.

Golden One,Special relativity doubting has been always been in vogue. The physicists of Einstein's day had trouble accepting it, for various reasons, including some less than rigorous work on Einstein's part. But SR and GR have been subject to so much critical scrutiny that absolutely no credibility should be given to conspiracy theories.As a college freshman I once visited the seminary school where my dad was a faculty member and I was surprised to find that the school library had a science section with a several books on special relativity. But half of those few books were written by relativity doubters. I think that the major reason relativity is a target for creationists is because of GR and Big Bang cosmology. SR just happens to be an accessible attack point. Understanding GR well enough to attack it is generally not so easy.Anyway, the internet is replete with crackpots who deny special relativity, manned missions to the moon, and the link between smoking tobacco and lung cancer. Conservapedia has a fairly detailed SR/GR rebuttal page. If nothing else, ICANT has given us a small view into the goofy stuff that's out there.ICANT is also the only person I've ever encountered who actually tries to attack SR by refusing to accept/understand Newtonian/Galilean relativity. Truly unique among cranks.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

From Texas, Hi Taq,Just a quick question I will get to the post later.Why does the driver observe the tracks going past him/her at 0.5 c?God Bless,

ICANT,Have you ever ridden a train? Almost everyone who has, has had this experience: you're sitting there in your seat, waiting for the train to depart, and there's a train on the tracks right next to you. Slowly, you start to see the windows of the other train slowly slide past yours, and you think "oh, finally, we're on our way at last." You even feel the motion of the train under you and you sink into your seat a little deeper, it seems, as the train you're on accelerates towards the end of the platform - when suddenly, you pass the end of the other train and you see that you've not moved at all! It was the other train leaving and you've been stationary the whole time. Your sensation of movement was an illusion caused by your inaccurate interpretation of what you were seeing. You could only see that one train was in motion past another; you were not able to correctly determine which train was at rest relative to the station.That is why we say that driver observes the track moving past him; since motion is relative, that's identical to saying that the driver is moving past the tracks. The only difference in those statements is that they imply different reference frames. Taq's diagram and description of motion is accurate within the reference frame of the driver.

Cause from her reference frame the tracks are going past her at 0.5c.

Hi Dr, Bur what causes the tracks to go past her at 0.5 c?God Bless,

Did you forget the experiment that you proposed?

Because that's how fast they are moving.If you are going down the freeway at 65 mph how fast do you see the road signs going by your window? 65 mph.All frames of reference are equal. The driver reporting the speed of the track as 0.5c is as accurate as someone standing by the tracks reporting 0.5c for the speed of the car.

Let's have some fun with ICAN'T physics.ICAN'T believes that the photon will strike the detector in our now infamous "car on the tracks" experiment. Why? Because the laser pen is aimed at the detector when the photon is released. The photon then enters the inertial frame of the detector causing it to strike the detector. So let's follow this a little further just to see how whacky the universe would act if ICAN'T is right.Let's launch a spacecraft and send it out to a distance of one light year and take up a stationary position with respect to another spacecraft here in the solar system. Once the spacecraft is in position we send off a radio transmission telling the captain to speed off in a random direction in 10 minutes. We follow this message with a laser beam [3 months later] aimed right at the spacecraft. According to ICAN'T, the photon released by the pen laser should follow the spacecraft wherever it goes, like a heat seeking missile following a jet fighter. If our aim is just a little bit off then the photon takes a nice straight path.What a strange world it would be if ICAN'T was actually right.Edited by Taq, : bracketed portion added in edit

I want to play ICANT science, too.ICANT believes an enclosed space defines reference frame, so that you can aim light at an object at rest in the enclosed frame, and the light will hit the object. However, he seems to believe that the same will not happen when the reference frame is not enclosed.So in an ICANT universe, if you were in an enclosed rail car proceeding down the tracks at 0.5 c, then you can aim a laser pen at a chalkboard exactly as if you were in a conventional high school physics classroom. But apparently, if you start taking down the sides of the rail car, at some point, light from the laser pen will veer off at at 26.5+ degree angle, landing well behind the point at which the laser is pointed.Of course, the above should apply to physical object and not just photons. After all, all objects are subject to Newton's law of inertia and inertial is what ICANT believes causes this silly behavior. So we ought to see this same behavior with bowling balls, juggling pins, among other things even in slow moving vehicles.So in universe ICANT, when the girl with kaleidoscope eyes is juggling objects on a train car moving at 100 mph, if I open one too many windows in the car thus 'exposing the objects to the earth frame of reference' the objects might well shoot to the back of the train.ICANT might complain that I'm wrong, because bowling balls can adopt the motion of the train, while photons cannot. But that complaint would not explain why the light beam in the enclosed moving car apparently did adopt the motion of the enclosed car under ICANT's science. A science which is apparently highly unreliable.

Actually, we will need some clarification from ICAN'T on this one. You may only need to crack one of the windows to let in the Aether wind. Or perhaps the very existence of windows will allow the Salt Flats to see the experiment under way and adjust the results accordingly.

Maybe there is a need for clarification for the juggling experiment, but I was thinking we'd use a cutting torch to take down the sides of the enclosed rail car in that blackboard example. Also, as I recall, ICANT got real ornery when I called the flat car a rail car in an earlier mirror/laser thought experiment. I think I'm on pretty solid ground with the enclosed rail car bad science prediction.Of course there is also the fact that both the aether wind and existence of windows explanations would be pretty ridiculous.I found this in a previous ICANT thread regarding time and the origin of the universe.From Message 102 in the "ICANT'S position in the creation debate" topic.

This may have already come up seeing as how I'm reading from three months ago at the moment but a thought occurred to me while reading and exchange between ICANT and others.Rahvin and others repeatedly brought up the analogy comparing "before" time to north of the North Pole of a globe, I was wondering if maybe there is some way to get past that barrier like how we can "go past" the North Pole in a sense by traveling through space to go to an entirely different globe. By which I don't necessarily mean go to another universe, unless that is what would be the result.

I suppose you could if you take the analogy too literally and out of context.The globe represents the universe. The surface of the globe represents spacetime. Travel north you travel back through spacetime. At the pole, where you gonno go? Outside spacetime? What is that? It doesn't make sense.Keep the analogy in perspective and it makes sense that there is nothing north of the north pole. There is no such thing as before spacetime. There's not even a "before" to even consider.Edited by AZPaul3, : clarity

Well yeah, I was wondering if it were possible that there could be something beyond or on the other side of the "start" of time. I have no idea what makes sense in this area, so I figured I'd ask.I was thinking something along the lines of another universe/reverse universe?Edited by nlerd, : No reason given.