🚀 go-pugleaf

Wolfgang G. Gasser wrote:

> Two distant observers with each a (transversal) LIGHT CLOCK orbit at a
> constant distance around their common center (assumed at rest).
>
> Special relativity postulates that the light beams in both light clocks
> propagate at c relative to both (almost inertially moving) observers.

This needs to be reworded, I think.

> This requires that for each observer the clock rate of the opposite clock
> CAN be lower than the clock rate of his own clock.
>
> Because of symmetry and unchanging distance, clock rate CANNOT differ.
>
> The impossibility of mutual time dilation in this situation entails the
> impossibility of a constant speed of light as a general law.

Of course you haven't "disproven special relativity", but I think it's
a good conundrum.  I'm not really happy with "non-inertial observers"
as the full rebuttal.  That's the answer at the old transatlantic cable
rates -- words are now cheaper.

Obviously the situation is fully symmetric, but then, so is the
situation of inertial observers passing each other at constant
velocity: why bother with the rotation, when we could already argue
that "each clock is running slower with respect to the other, which is
obviously impossible".  That's already a fairly piquant paradox, which
I have no ready glib answer to, and one of the special charms of SR!

Roughly, the dependence of t and t' on x' and x, respectively, is what
enables the math to weasel out of this seeming contradiction; also,
"running slower with respect to the other" may not be operationally
well characterized.  Ask any concrete empirical question, and we get a
single answer -- if we accept the implied operational characterization
of "running slower with respect to the other", then we have extended
the sense of the phrase in a new situation to exclude one of its
expected properties (non-reflexivity).

Standard concept-splitting.

The "non-inertial observer" thing seems cheap to me, and possibly off
the mark.  Rotating rings force SR to show its cards by allowing
movement in a closed path, but acceleration is not necessarily crucial:
it can be made as small as we like for fixed speed of the circumferance
by choosing a large enough ring.  Both clocks are running slow as
according to an inertial observer at the hub.  How do they describe
each others behavior?  They had better be careful to make some
empirical predictions!  Then they will agree.  Distrust glib language.