TRAVEL TO THE FUTURE IN THE ERA OF POSTSCIENTISM

http://www.bourbaphy.fr/damourtemps.pdf
Thibault Damour: "The paradigm of the special relativistic upheaval of
the usual concept of time is the twin paradox. Let us emphasize that
this striking example of time dilation proves that time travel
(towards the future) is possible. As a gedanken experiment (if we
neglect practicalities such as the technology needed for reaching
velocities comparable to the velocity of light, the cost of the fuel
and the capacity of the traveller to sustain high accelerations), it
shows that a sentient being can jump, "within a minute" (of his
experienced time) arbitrarily far in the future, say sixty million
years ahead, and see, and be part of, what (will) happen then on
Earth. This is a clear way of realizing that the future "already
exists" (as we can experience it "in a minute"). No wonder that many
people, attached to the usual idea of an external flow of time,
refused to believe that the travelling twin will come back younger
than his sedentary brother."

Paradigms of the special relativistic upheaval of the usual concept of
length: (if Einstein's 1905 constant-speed-of-light postulate is
true, then) an 80m long pole can be trapped inside a 40m long barn
(generally, an infinitely long object can be trapped inside an
infinitely short container) and a bug can be both dead and alive:

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physic...barn_pole.html
"These are the props. You own a barn, 40m long, with automatic doors
at either end, that can be opened and closed simultaneously by a
switch. You also have a pole, 80m long, which of course won't fit in
the barn. Now someone takes the pole and tries to run (at nearly the
speed of light) through the barn with the pole horizontal. Special
Relativity (SR) says that a moving object is contracted in the
direction of motion: this is called the Lorentz Contraction. So, if
the pole is set in motion lengthwise, then it will contract in the
reference frame of a stationary observer.....So, as the pole passes
through the barn, there is an instant when it is completely within the
barn. At that instant, you close both doors simultaneously, with your
switch. Of course, you open them again pretty quickly, but at least
momentarily you had the contracted pole shut up in your barn. The
runner emerges from the far door unscathed.....If the doors are kept
shut the rod will obviously smash into the barn door at one end. If
the door withstands this the leading end of the rod will come to rest
in the frame of reference of the stationary observer. There can be no
such thing as a rigid rod in relativity so the trailing end will not
stop immediately and the rod will be compressed beyond the amount it
was Lorentz contracted. If it does not explode under the strain and it
is sufficiently elastic it will come to rest and start to spring back
to its natural shape but since it is too big for the barn the other
end is now going to crash into the back door and the rod will be
trapped IN A COMPRESSED STATE inside the barn."

http://www.quebecscience.qc.ca/Revolutions
"Cependant, si une fusée de 100 m passait devant nous à une vitesse
proche de celle de la lumière, elle pourrait sembler ne mesurer que 50
m, ou même moins. Bien sûr, la question qui vient tout de suite à
l'esprit est: «Cette contraction n'est-elle qu'une illusion?» Il
semble tout à fait incroyable que le simple mouvement puisse comprimer
un objet aussi rigide qu'une fusée. Et pourtant, la contraction est
réelle... mais SANS COMPRESSION physique de l'objet! Ainsi, une fusée
de 100 m passant à toute vitesse dans un tunnel de 60 m pourrait être
entièrement contenue dans ce tunnel pendant une fraction de seconde,
durant laquelle il serait possible de fermer des portes aux deux
bouts! La fusée est donc réellement plus courte. Pourtant, il n'y a
PAS DE COMPRESSION matérielle ou physique de l'engin. Comment est-ce
possible?"

http://alcor.concordia.ca/~scol/semi...ts/Durand.html
"La contraction une longueur est un phénomène à la fois réel mais sans
déformation structurelle. C'est un phénomène réel (et non pas une
illusion) car, par exemple, une perche dont la longueur au repos est
plus grande que la longueur au repos d'une grange peut réellement être
contenue dans cette dernière si elle se déplace assez rapidement. Par
contre, il ne peut y avoir de contraction structurelle de la perche,
i.e de déformation matérielle de l'objet, car la contraction de sa
longueur aurait aussi lieu si c'était plutôt l'observateur qui se
mettait en mouvement sans changer l'état de mouvement de la perche.
Autrement dit, sans changer l'état de la perche, en se mettant soi-
même en mouvement, on change sa longueur: ce n'est donc clairement pas
une contraction matérielle (l'état de la perche est le même dans les
deux cas)."

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu.../bugrivet.html
"The bug-rivet paradox is a variation on the twin paradox and is
similar to the pole-barn paradox.....The end of the rivet hits the
bottom of the hole before the head of the rivet hits the wall. So it
looks like the bug is squashed.....All this is nonsense from the bug's
point of view. The rivet head hits the wall when the rivet end is just
0.35 cm down in the hole! The rivet doesn't get close to the
bug....The paradox is not resolved."

The following scenario will show that, in accordance with Einstein's
special relativity, the travelling twin will find himself OLDER than
his brother who remained behind. A long rocket passes the twin at
rest, and the rocket is so long that the twin at rest will see it
passing by all along. According to Einstein's special relativity,
observers in the rocket see their clocks running faster than the twin
at rest's clock, that is, observers in the rocket age faster than the
twin at rest. At some initial moment the travelling twin, standing so
far next to his brother, jumps into the rocket, joins the observers
there and starts, just like them, aging faster than the twin at rest.

Later the rocket stops and immediately starts moving in the opposite
direction. Again, according to Einstein's special relativity,
observers in the rocket, including the travelling twin, age faster
than the twin at rest.

Finally the travelling twin jumps out of the rocket and rejoins his
brother at rest. Who is older? REDUCTIO AD ABSURDUM par excellence.

Pentcho Valev

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/academ/...elativity.html
What is wrong with relativity?
G. BURNISTON BROWN
Bulletin of the Institute of Physics and Physical Society, Vol. 18
(March, 1967) pp.71—77
"A more intriguing instance of this so-called 'time dilation' is the
well-known 'twin paradox', where one of two twins goes for a journey
and returns to find himself younger than his brother who remained
behind. This case allows more scope for muddled thinking because
acceleration can be brought into the discussion. Einstein maintained
the greater youthfulness of the travelling twin, and admitted that it
contradicts the principle of relativity, saying that acceleration must
be the cause (Einstein 1918). In this he has been followed by
relativists in a long controversy in many journals, much of which ably
sustains the character of earlier speculations which Born describes as
"monstrous" (Born 1956). Surely there are three conclusive reasons why
acceleration can have nothing to do with the time dilation
calculated:
(i) By taking a sufficiently long journey the effects of acceleration
at the start, turn-round and end could be made negligible compared
with the uniform velocity time dilation which is proportional to the
duration of the journey.
(ii) If there is no uniform time dilation, and the effect, if any, is
due to acceleration, then the use of a formula depending only on the
steady velocity and its duration cannot be justified.
(iii) There is, in principle, no need for acceleration. Twin A can get
his velocity V before synchronizing his clock with that of twin B as
he passes. He need not turn round: he could be passed by C who has a
velocity V in the opposite direction, and who adjusts his clock to
that of A as he passes. When C later passes B they can compare clock
readings. As far as the theoretical experiment is concerned, C's clock
can be considered to be A's clock returning without acceleration
since, by hypothesis, all the clocks have the same rate when at rest
together and change with motion in the same way independently of
direction. [fn. I am indebted to Lord Halsbury for pointing this out
to me.] (...) The three examples which have been dealt with above show
clearly that the difficulties are not paradoxes) but genuine
contradictions which follow inevitably from the principle of
relativity and the physical interpretations of the Lorentz
transformations. The special theory of relativity is therefore
untenable as a physical theory."

http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/con...ent=a909857880
Peter Hayes "The Ideology of Relativity: The Case of the Clock
Paradox" : Social Epistemology, Volume 23, Issue 1 January 2009, pages
57-78
"The prediction that clocks will move at different rates is
particularly well known, and the problem of explaining how this can be
so without violating the principle of relativity is particularly
obvious. The clock paradox, however, is only one of a number of simple
objections that have been raised to different aspects of Einstein's
theory of relativity. (Much of this criticism is quite apart from and
often predates the apparent contradiction between relativity theory
and quantum mechanics.) It is rare to find any attempt at a detailed
rebuttal of these criticisms by professional physicists. However,
physicists do sometimes give a general response to criticisms that
relativity theory is syncretic by asserting that Einstein is logically
consistent, but that to explain why is so difficult that critics lack
the capacity to understand the argument. In this way, the handy claim
that there are unspecified, highly complex resolutions of simple
apparent inconsistencies in the theory can be linked to the charge
that antirelativists have only a shallow understanding of the matter,
probably gleaned from misleading popular accounts of the theory. The
claim that the theory of relativity is logically consistent for
reasons that are too complex for non-professionals to grasp is not
only convenient, but is rhetorically unassailable - as whenever a
critic disproves one argument, the professional physicist can allude
to another more abstruse one. Einstein's transformation of the clock
paradox from a purported expression of the special theory to a
purported expression of the much more complicated general theory is
one example of such a defence. A more recent example is found in Alan
Sokal and Jean Bricmont's scornful account of Henri Bergson's attempt
to investigate the clock/twin paradox. Like "Kritikus", Bergson argued
that the asymmetric outcome of the paradox was incompatible with the
principle of relativity. Like Einstein, Sokal and Bricmont explain
that Bergson has failed to recognise the asymmetric forces of
acceleration at work. They go on to claim that the special theory
tells us what happens under these circumstances and that the general
theory only laboriously leads to the same conclusion. The suggestion
that to vindicate this claim would be laborious functions in the same
way as Einstein's elusive "calculations"; that is, it is not an
explanation but an explanation-stopper. Sokal and Bricmont do not
demonstrate how either the special theory or the general theory
explain time dilation. Nor do they explain how their claim can be
reconciled with Einstein explicitly limiting the special theory to
objects travelling at a uniform velocity, nor account for why the
circular journey of 1905 became the out and back journey of 1918.
(...) Einstein's theory of relativity fails to reconcile the
contradictory principles on which it is based. Rather than combining
incompatible assumptions into an integrated whole, the theory allows
the adept to step between incompatible assumptions in a way that hides
these inconsistencies. The clock paradox is symptomatic of Einstein's
failure, and its purported resolution is illustrative of the
techniques that can be used to mask this failure. To uncover to the
logical contradictions in the theory of relativity presents no very
difficult task. However, the theory is impervious to such attacks as
it is shielded by a professional constituency of supporters whose
interests and authority are bound up in maintaining its inflated
claims. Relativity theory, in short, is an ideology."

Pentcho Valev

http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/2123/1/annalen.pdf
Michel Janssen: "As late as November 1918 - more than half a year
after clarifying the foundations of general relativity - Einstein saw
fit to publish an account of the twin paradox along these lines. This
1918 paper not only offered a solution for a problem that had already
been solved, it also raised suspicion about the earlier solution by
suggesting that the problem called for general relativity. Einstein
thus bears some responsibility for the endless confusion over the twin
paradox..."

http://blog.hasslberger.com/Dingle_S...Crossroads.pdf
Herbert Dingle, SCIENCE AT THE CROSSROADS
"According to the special relativity theory, as expounded by Einstein
in his original paper, two similar, regularly-running clocks, A and B,
in uniform relative motion, must work at different rates.....How is
the slower-working clock distinguished? The supposition that the
theory merely requires each clock to APPEAR to work more slowly from
the point of view of the other is ruled out not only by its many
applications and by the fact that the theory would then be useless in
practice, but also by Einstein's own examples, of which it is
sufficient to cite the one best known and most often claimed to have
been indirectly established by experiment, viz. 'Thence' [i.e. from
the theory he had just expounded, which takes no account of possible
effects of accleration, gravitation, or any difference at all between
the clocks except their state of uniform motion] 'we conclude that a
balance-clock at the equator must go more slowly, by a very small
amount, than a precisely similar clock situated at one of the poles
under otherwise identical conditions.' Applied to this example, the
question is: what entitled Einstein to conclude FROM HIS THEORY that
the equatorial, and not the polar, clock worked more slowly?"

http://www.bartleby.com/173/23.html
Albert Einstein: "The observer performs experiments on his circular
disc with clocks and measuring-rods. In doing so, it is his intention
to arrive at exact definitions for the signification of time- and
space-data with reference to the circular disc K', these definitions
being based on his observations. What will be his experience in this
enterprise? To start with, he places one of two identically
constructed clocks at the centre of the circular disc, and the other
on the edge of the disc, so that they are at rest relative to it. We
now ask ourselves whether both clocks go at the same rate from the
standpoint of the non-rotating Galileian reference-body K. As judged
from this body, the clock at the centre of the disc has no velocity,
whereas the clock at the edge of the disc is in motion relative to K
in consequence of the rotation. According to a result obtained in
Section XII, it follows that the latter clock goes at a rate
permanently slower than that of the clock at the centre of the
circular disc, i.e. as observed from K."

Is it true that "according to a result obtained in Section XII, it
follows that the latter clock goes at a rate permanently slower than
that of the clock at the centre of the circular disc, i.e. as observed
from K."? That is, do the Lorentz tranformations predict that the non-
rotating clock (at the centre of the disc) runs FASTER than the
rotating clock (at the edge of the disc)? If the Lorentz
transformations do not predict anything like that, why does Einstein
lie? Why do believers believe?

Pentcho Valev