Summations Only

There is no point discussing anything until we get past this extremely basic point.General Relativity predicts that clocks are altered via the distortion of time.
It makes no sense to quote a source saying that General Relativity predicts something and then say there is no mention of the distortion of time, as the mentioning of temporal distortion is implicit in "General Relativity". General Relativity is about, the whole theory is centred around the idea that spacetime is curved.This would be like quoting a reference saying:
"Maxwell's theory predicts light will warm a surface"
and then saying there is no mention of an electric field, when Maxwell's theory is about electric fields.Or:
"The Alvarez hypothesis predicts a layer of Iridium deposits in the KT-layer"
and then saying there is no mention of a meteorite, when Alvarex hypothesis is about the impact of a meteorite.Do you understand what I'm saying? There's no point saying "X" is mentioned when "X" is part and parcel of the theory being mentioned.Edited by Son Goku, : Formatting.

I am not going to make further attempts to explain GR to you until you make some attempt to understand. I'm all out of spoons. All the information you need has been made available to you.

You remind me of the schoolboy joke: Which is heavier, a pound of feathers or a pound of gold? The knee-jerk answer is that they weigh the same but the trick is the fact that a pound of feathers has sixteen ounces while a pound of gold only has twelve.So, is a pound of feathers heavier than a pound of gold?Well, that depends on which is different, the ounce or the pound. Is a pound a pound and gold has bigger ounces? Or is an ounce an ounce and feathers have more of them? Or are both different?My answer to your question would be that the number of oscillations is the same. It's the size of the seconds that differs.

Hi Son, I agree that we are at an impass.I believe the following.1. The second is defined as 9,192,631,770 oscillations of the caesium-133 atom?2. The atomic clock at Bolder Colorado is set to operate at 9,192,631,770 oscillations per second?3. The atomic clock in a GPS satellite does not have 9,192,631,770 ocsillations in the same amount of duration that the clock in Bolder Colorado does? It runs faster than the earthbound clock by 38,700 ns/per day.4. What has to be done to insure that the duration experienced by the earthbound clock is represented by the clock in the satellite?The clock in the satellite has to have an offset to be able to measure the same duration as the earthbound clock.5. The signal between the clock on the satellite and the receiver on the ground may be curved due to the velocity the satellite is traveling and the velocity of the receiver on and with the Earth..Which of these do I have wrong?God Bless,

It doesn't matter what you believe, the point here is what have you learned from Son - who is a theoretical physicist - that you continue to quenstion and try to contradict!You need to accept and acknowledge what he, an expert in the field, is telling you, and as he said, get past the extremely basic point about time.- Oni

It's not even a matter of accepting what Son says as being reality. It is instead a matter of accepting that Son is right about what the theory General Relativity says, regardless of whether ICANT ends up believeing that General Relativity is actually correct.But ICANT refuses to even get to that point. As a result when he reads a paper saying that GR causes result X, he substitutes his nonsense in place for "GR" and then claims that the paper says something completely different from what the author intended.ICANT did the same thing in our past discussion of Special Relativity. He came up with his own goofy interpretation of what Einstein's postulates were, and attempted to use that interpretation to demonstrate that Special Relativity was inconsistent with Einstein's postulates.There is simply no fix for that kind of bull headedness. The best that can be done is to bring it to light and to them move on. I don't think ICANT appreciates how his behavior on this issue under cuts his credibility on other subjects, but others do.

Nor does he appreciate the scope of the opportunity he has here; to discuss GR directly with people who understand it and are willing to go baby-steps through it with him.Thank god all the rest of us benefit from reading their posts and they're not just a waste of time the measure of the duration it took.

Is GR/SR beginner level physics, though? Shouldn't one understand physics (and the high level maths that go along with it) before jumping into GR and SR?

I think the fundamental concept behind relatively (spacetime has pliable dimensions) can be grasped at a fairly low level of education and without much understanding of physics nor knowledge of math... if you're willing.But anything can be failed to be understood on purpose.

No, they are not beginner level physics.The concpets associated with at least an introduction to special relativity is easily within the grasp of high school students. No math higher than algebra is required. It is certainly possible to grasp the basic concepts with an even smaller level of science background.Understanding general relativity is a bit more of an undertaking. Understanding some of the basic predictions of the theory is certainly within the grasp of a high school student.But no one should be surprised to find that you cannot understand the universe with only sixth grade math.

Time itself moves at different speeds at different positions in the gravitational field.

Yes, in a non-accelerating frame from reference. This doesn't apply to the satellite since there is a difference in acceleration due to gravitational equivalence. If you are in the same frame of reference as the clock then the second is defined as you describe. If two clocks are in different frames of reference then they will have different amounts of oscillations per unit of time as observed from each frame of reference. The other way around. The second is defined as those many oscillations. Cesium can not oscillate at any other rate in a given frame of reference. Scientists are not adjusting the rate at which the cesium atom oscillates. The basic laws of physics are what governs the rate of oscillations. That ensures that the clocks are the same both on the ground and in orbit. I think you are starting to catch on.Edited by Taq, : No reason given.

Roughly speaking here is what occurs. The frequency of the radiation emitted by the cesium atom (let's stop saying that cesium atoms vibrate) gets divided down to something like five or ten megahertz using a frequency divider circuit. This lower frequency is what is actually used as timing.The frequency divider circuit includes a counter. By changing the starting value (offset) for the counter, we can adjust the 5-10Mhz frequency generated by the atomic clock and its circuitry.In order produce a time signal that is at the same rate as the ground signal as measured in the ground reference frame, we can change the offset supplied to the satellite clock circuitry so that relativistic effects are countered. But as you have indicated, we don't have a crank to adjust the cesium frequency unless we resort to changing the satellite's orbit.The overall result is pretty funky, and we probably have not actually discussed it completely in this thread:Just as you stated, an observer on the satellite would measure the cesium frequency in the satellite clock to be the same value that the ground observer would measure for the ground clock. Each would measure the same 9+ gigaherts value. However, if the ground observer measured the satellite frequency, he would conclude that the cesium frequency on the satellite was higher than for his clock. That seeming conflict is the result of time proceeding at different rates in the two different locations.However, that 9 billion hz signal is not the actual clock signal. The clock signal is the 5-10Mhz lower frequency. Let's assume 5Mhz. After the clocks are synchronized, the satellite observer would measure his own clock rate to be something less than 5Mhz. However if the ground observer measured the satellite's clock signal, he would find that the signal measured exactly 5Mhz, the same as he masures for his ground clock. Again, the seeming contradiction is resolved by noting that time itself proceeds at different rates in the different locals.Of course the above neglects some other relativistic effects. We have ignored the rotation of the earth, and the fact that the satellite orbit is an elipse which creates time varying gravitational and velocity effects. In a real GPS system, the receivers can be moving too.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Okay, let's make this really simple.Do you agree that General Relativity says that spacetime is curved?I'm not asking if you think spacetime is curved, just if you think General Relativity says it is.

Absolutely, I explained General Relativity to my uncles once, all of whom wouldn't have finished what you lads call high school, using a kitchen table cloth as spacetime.However ICANT doesn't even refuse to understand the theories themselves. Instead, like with a lot of the creationists, we don't really ever get into arguments about the actual science, but instead get drawn into stupid discussions about what a webpage actually says or having him reference a site or a book stating exactly what we say as if it supports his argument.Silly things like somebody linking to an article discussing a dinosaur fossil found in Europe, let's say, only to have the creationist poster say that there was no reference to Europe at all, only to France. Which starts the chain of posts:
"France is in Europe, AAARRRGGHHH!!!!"I'm always reminded of a discussion here years ago with IamJoseph, where this had reached the point where people were posting things like
"You can stand on the surface of the Earth right? You agree with that, right?"In short, we don't discuss the experimental support for a theory and whether it's actually strong enough, but instead spend three hundred posts trying to get somebody to agree to the possible validity of the concept of experimental evidence.