Over the last 100 years science has taken great leaps forward in their understanding of the great outside – Space. Much of this science has been developed from the greats Einstein, Newton, Lorentz, Michelson & Morley to name just a few.
Their work led to the understanding of light, light speed, time, Gravity and much more. Their work is still in use today and is fundamental in the understanding of light beyond our world.
However, many physicists have taken their work and pushed the boundaries of what we know. And their is a lot of people in split camps in deciding what is correct.
Theory of Relativity, Special Relativity and General Relativity are at the corner stone of this science. But, Right at the centre of these theories is light speed and gravity and how they alter time and space time.
Einsteins theory of Special Relativity came about after wondering what light does and linking up with some amazing scientist began his life long journey.
His theories included notions that as you approach light speed time and distance alters. This became more solidified when observing Michelson and Morley’s experiment. Their experiment designed to point out how the earth moved and how the static Ether in the universe would drag light. However their experiment did not have the error level they were expecting. Being about only 1/6th of the error the result was deemed a failure. But Einstein needed this experiment. It still had a small error and his theory of special relativity was reliant on a totally null result.
Einstein took Lorentz transformation equation and applied it to the Michelson and Morley’s work and hey presto the error vanished. Einstein was able to explain the error. He deducted that in the direction of travel matter must shrink. This small amount of shrinkage was able to explain away the 1/6th Error. However their was still another issue. With the length shortening of the equipment time must also slow down. It was the only way it could work.
This was the true beginning of Time Dilation and Length Contraction.
Since then his theory gained strength and became widely accepted by main stream physicists. Over the last 100 years there was many experiments done to either disprove or prove the length contraction theory. However all this work came up short with just about all of them having a null result. Lucky for Einstein he had a solution and a work around for this issue. I person in the frame of reference of the movement will not notice this movement and a null result would be the expected result.
This is a very convenient work around, because his theory can not be challenged through these experiments.
Michelson and Morley were trying to prove that space was an ether, and that the light would be dragged by Earths movement. However, it did not show what they expected. And since that time all the people doing the repeating the same experiment, despite increases in accuracy all came out with the same error level. White the Lorentz formula was able to counter.
https://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=23928.0
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aether_drag_hypothesis
However, I have not been able to find out an answer to a question that arose in my thinking. The Earth Rotates but light moves quicker. Speed of light is 299792 km/s and the Earth rotates at only on average 1600km/hr or only 0.44km/s. The test length was only about 37 feet or 105m being only 0.105 Km.
My thinking is that they all proved that light is not affected by momentum or movement of the planet or other movement. So the very tiny error may have been caused by the fact light moves straight and the earth did move meaning it would be off set.
Looking at the numbers light travelled 105m in a fraction of a second. The Earth would have moved a fraction of a metre in that same time. Is this enough movement to create a noticeable error?
I will look at this at a latter stage.
Gravity and General Relativity.
However the reason for this page is actually to focus on gravity and general relativity. The way spacetime is penned it certainly appears to give the reasons for what we are observing. And the experiments with travelling atomic clocks certainly appears to demonstrate that the maths and theory holds some merits.
So if time is altered by gravity, then Everything from the earth to the sun to space, to black holes shows how gravity causes warping in space time.
The curvature of spacetime around the mass and density of planets and thus gravity gives a graphical representation of what is testable and observable. So how could such a fundamental theory be wrong?
First is that the proof was all done through the use of Atomic clocks. Limiting 99% of experiments to one apparatus leads to obvious scrutiny.
In my blogs I have given may reasons why Atomic Clocks are in discrepancy this is because of the main characteristics of the clocks..
http://www.alternativephysics.org/book/TimeDilationExperiments.htm
- Atomic clocks work on the vibrations of the caesium atom.
- The clocks vibrations increase when subject to reduced gravity.
- The clock shows faster time with decreased gravity
- The clock shows slower time with movement
But are these not what whey use to prove general relativity.
Yes.
I used an example of a bouncing ball. if I throw a ball down at earth it will bounce a certain distance. If I bounce the same ball with he same force on the moon the ball will bounce higher.
Ask yourself, did the ball bounce higher on the moon because time changed, or due to reduced gravity.
Quantum Mechanics shows that all atoms vibrate and that as you change gravity the vibrations also change.
So if we look again at the core of the Atomic Clock it is reliant on the vibrations of the caesium atoms. Thus changing gravity levels should and predictably so change when you change the gravity levels.
Just like the ball on the moon the atoms are freer to move in lower gravity.
You should be asking yourself the same question, just because a type of clock has its mechanism slow down by change in gravity does that mean time changed or the clocks mechanisms changed?
I have been told that if gravity has the power to slow down atom vibrations does this not show that it has an effect in slowing time.
Atomic clocks work on the exact vibrations of the caesium atom. These atoms are cooled to a set temperature to ensure the vibrations are predictable.
The accuracy of an atomic clock depends on two factors. The first factor is temperature of the sample atoms—colder atoms move much more slowly, allowing longer probe times. The second factor is the frequency and intrinsic width of the electronic transition. Higher frequencies and narrow lines increase the precision. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_clock
So what does this tell us about temperature.
temperature has a similar effect on the vibrations of the caesium atoms as gravity does.
This them makes me ask this simple question.
If gravity changes time, does temperature change time. Or are both just have the ability to effect the vibration levels of the caesium atoms let alone the other working components of the clock?
It is possible that the spacetime gravity graphs actually only show a graphical representation of gravitational fields and in fact do not effect time at all.
https://www.nde-ed.org/EducationResources/HighSchool/Sound/tempandspeed.htm
https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.01319
https://www.livescience.com/29111-speed-of-light-not-constant.html
Temperature also has a distinct indirect effect on the speed of light.
You might have noticed that the speed of light, c, is defined only for a perfect vacuum. If light travels through something that has mass, such as air or glass, the velocity is reduced. The velocity of light in these materials is given as c/n, where n is called the refractive index of the material.
A perfect vacuum has an index of refraction equal to unity, but almost all other materials have an index greater than one. Window glass has a refractive index of approximately n=1.5, so light travels with a velocity of about 2/3 c in glass. Air has an index of 1.0003, so the speed of light in air is nearly the same as in vacuum, but just a little slower. As a rule of thumb, materials which have higher density have larger refractive indices.
If the density of a material changes with temperature, the speed of light in that material will also change. Have you ever seen “heat waves” coming off an object that is hot? This is due to hot air rising and bending the light rays that travel past the object.
Hot air has a lower density than cold air, so light travels faster in hot air than in cold air. As the hot air mixes with the surrounding cold air, the light goes slightly faster in the hot regions, and this causes the distortion. So, the speed of light can be indirectly affected by temperature, but only if the medium the light is travelling through changes density.
So light at Earths poles moves slower than light at the equator.
SO What is the significance of this?
Well we now have two main observations.
- If gravity can slow down vibrations through a physical restriction,
- Temperature slows down vibrations on a quantum level.
If we drop the temperature of the bouncing ball, it will not bounce as high, as the elasticity within the ball is reduced. If we increase the gravity around the ball the ball will not bounce as high due to physical restriction on the ball.
Both have the same net effect on the ball but for slightly different reasons.
However, if we throw in some other forces, magnetism for example. Magnetism can also effect the Atomic clock on a physical level. Making the gears grind against the force (assuming the are metal gears).
I can also apply physical tightening of parts, you can add non lubricated components leading to frictional losses all of which will slow down a clocks movements.
So using the Atomic clock to show how time changes due to gravity, is no different in saying time slows due to any other external force on the clock mechanisms.
So if we are to use the Atomic Clock as proof for Gravity and time, then we must also accept that it would be just as easy to prove that time changed with changes in temperature.
Just a quick note on atomic clocks and movement.
It was Einstein himself that realised that acceleration and gravity have a similar effect on the accelerating body. All experiments with relation to moving atomic clocks are within the gravitational reach of Earth.
So an atomic clock in a moving plane circulating around the Earth would be subject to circular acceleration as well as gravitational pull.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hafele%E2%80%93Keating_experiment
You will notice even with the Hafele and Keating experiment that going with the earths rotation as against the rotation shows a difference in result.
They appear to have concluded that the gravity effect would be different with and against the spin of the earth. But, if the planes were travelling at the same speeds in each direction then all results for relative movement would come out the same.
So movement itself would not appear to create the predictable result I would have expected to see. This observation was also pointed out by others. https://sciencevstruth.com/twin-flight-experiment/
Summary
Most people will not accept theoretical observation without experimental evidence. However, with the relation to Atomic Clocks, the experiments have been done, and the results were written in favour of time dilation.
However, if we took the same experiments, it could be possible to use their data or rerun the same experiments with the ideas of acceleration gravity effect and gravity effect in the slowing of the clock and see if the numbers match.
If however, the numbers differ, then their may be scope for further experimentation. Also very similar experiments could be done, for temperature and just by changing the caesium temperature range will indeed alter the clocks timing rate. But what temperature and what speed, would have to be determined through smart maths and logged data.
Not having access to such equipment, I will leave the maths and experiments to budding physicists, who can see what I can see.
In conclusion, Time dilation due to gravity is in my opinion not proven through the use of Atomic clocks.
A proposed alternative study.
I have come up with a concept and one I am not sure how it would work. maybe someone out there can assist.
- We take a chemical or similar recreation that can be done in a sealed system, an done that the time for the reaction to start and stop is predictable within a very small level of error.
- The containers are sealed as atmosphere and temperature need to be removed form the test.
- We then have two computers, and two sets of experiments.
- These computers are linked and their time synchronised.
- We take one set of reactants and one computer up a mountain,
- We take the other set of reactions and one computer down to water level.
- We do several (as many as is possible) to get a reaction norms for the see level experiment.
- On setting the experiment as a go, both computers should be triggered to start and stop automatically with the experiment so not to allow for human error.
- Next we repeat for the one on the mountain.
The observations should happen.
- Both Computers should show the same start stop times for the sea level experiment
- Deferring times if relativity is correct the mountain time should be higher for the experiments as their time goes quicker.
- Both Computers should show the same start stop times for the mountain level experiment
- Deferring times if relativity is correct the mountain time should be higher for the experiments as their time goes quicker.
- The reactions should take the same average length of time to occur.
- If there is an obvious difference between the two, then the one on the mountain should be quicker to happen.
Supporting the Gravity Time Dilation or a thorn in the side..
If all three (both computers and average reaction times) show variations indication the mountain top experiment was quicker then this gives great support to gravity and time.
If however there is any discrepancy in the opposite direction, or no variations at all. then this will be a thorn in the General relativity side.
Key notes
The importance of this experiment is to make sure both sets of tests are identical, and free of any ambient pressure changes, temperature changes or other variants other than gravity.
An idea
- I thought of a reaction that has no reaction till electricity is applied, and maybe a thin wire is used. Once the wire dissolves the wire breaks breaking the electricity. Something like this would give a very clear start and finish time.
Open to ideas here.
Cosmic Chatter 