🚀 go-pugleaf

On Dec 22, 9:14 am, "gharn...@comcast.net" <gharn...@comcast.net>
wrote in sci.physics.relativity:
> Not being a physicist, but having a srong interest in traditional
> logic, I have several questions about Einstein's theory of special
> relativity (henceforth "SR") which perhaps some subcriber might be
> willing and able to answer. Here they are:
>
> First, are the physicists who consider SR to be true generally aware
> that it may be refuted by a simple reductio ad absurdum from many of
> its consequences, such as, notoriously, the twins paradox?

The cleverest Einsteinian thinks there is no absurdity in "many of its
consequences, such as, notoriously, the twins paradox" and is going to
teach this in 2008:

http://www.pitt.edu/~hpsdept/courses/08/08-2_undergrad.html
0410 Einstein
John Norton
M & W 11-11:50
Do astronauts age more slowly?  Can a finite universe have no edge?
Is time travel possible?  Can time have a beginning?  Does the moon
change because a mouse looks at it?  Surprisingly, modern science
answers yes to all these questions.  This course provides simple-to-
understand explanations of these and other related questions, their
broader philosophical significance and their histories.  The course is
suitable for students with no science background but with an interest
in the world of modern science.

You could attend John Norton's lectures and ask him why there is no
absurdity in the fact that Einsteinians can trap a long train inside a
short tunnel:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSRIyDfo_mY&mode=related&search=

and also a 80m long pole inside a 40m long barn:

http://www.math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/SR/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....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."

Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com

> Second, put another way, are such physicists generally aware that it
> is not only time, but truth itself, that SR (by implication)_ has
> deemed to be relative? In other words, if the time of things is
> relative to speed of motion, then so is the being of these things, and
> in fact it further follows from SR that every object is in as many
> states as there are different frames of reference. Note further that,
> since according to SR every frame of reference carries its own time
> independent of the time of others, all things that are would be
> subjected to all these incommensurate clocks, and therefore would be
> in multiple states at once. Being in multiple states would result in
> countless contradictions: a star being old and red but also young and
> yellow, for example.
>
> Put another way, if time is multiple and disparate, then so is logic,
> and therefore so is truth.
>
> But therein is the rub: For if one attempts to evade these problems by
> replying that "oh well, then, maybe it's our logic that is inadequate,
> too," he upsets his own argument, thereby refuting himself. How? By
> violating the principle of non-contradiction, the bedrock of all
> reasoning, including the very reasoning that physicists use to make
> the arguments and calcucations by which they propose to confirm SR.
>
> So there it is: He who affirms SR by implication refutes SR.
>
> If the physicists have resolved these problems, I am not aware of
> their having done so.