p.s. Sorry I didn't respond to this earlier. I didn't have much time this afternoon to be on the computer and had missed it!
No prob, I understand completely.
I just realized that Taoist might have referenced me being a physicist. I'm not really a physicist (don't have my PhD in it). I don't even work in physics. I'm actually a medical student, little to do with physics
I have my BS in physics and my minor in biophysics. Physics has always been a huge interest of mine, but I didn't want to pursue it as a career.
If the days were different lengths and both guys started and ended there expereiment together then one of them experienced more days than the other.
Again, you're assuming time isn't relative. That is, 4 hours for me is 4 hours for you. That's the only ways days fall out of sync. If time is relative (i.e. I can experience four hours while you experience six
over the same interval), then we can still disagree on the time that has passed and still agree on the number of sunsets.
This example doesn't work because according to Einstien, it isn't just the clock that is running slow, it is time itself which in turn causes the clock to run slow.
Exactly. Which is why I noted that his voice would be deeper and slower.
According to Einstien, the guy with the slow clock should be able to tell that anything is happening.
I assume you meant "shouldn't" be able to tell. And that's correct, he can't feel anything different. He only notices the difference when he looks at an outside frame of reference--the sun, or the man at the bottom of the mountain. So he won't report the sun as 24 hours. He'll report the sun as less than 24 hours. That must be where the misunderstanding lies. He won't report the sun as taking 24 hours. Think of the man in the slow movie. He perceives his watches as normal. This means that he
must see the outside frames as moving much faster.
But with the same number of sunsets. That's the whole problem in a nutshell.
That's relativity in a nutshell. Say you pick an interval occuring outside of both reference frames (outside of the man at the top of the mountain and the man at the base of the mountain). The sun is outside both inertial frames (it is unaffected by the local gravity). The whole concept of relativity is that one person can measure the sun's interval as 24 hours and another can measure it as 12 hours. The guy who measured it as 12 hours has a slower ticking clock, even though he doens't really notice it. The only way he can tell that something is different is that the sun is only taking 12 hours to cross his sky.
[----------------------------] < interval sun takes to cross the sky (note that it's not an absolute interval, only an interval)
[ - - - - - - - - - - - - - ] < Man on mountain measures it as 12 hours.
[----------------------------] < Man at base measures it as 24 hours.
They measured the same interval and came up with different times. This is because one man is experiencing time slower. Think of the guy who measured it as 12 hours experiencing time in slow motion. If you looked at his watch from outside his inertial frame, it would be ticking slow. His hair would be growing slower, his cells would be dying slower, and he would be aging slower. His meals would cook slower, his maximum running velocity would be slower, and his calculator would calculate slower. But, he experiences the flow of time as completely normal. His clock is ticking fine. This demands that outside clocks tick faster and the sun would be streaking across the sky faster than usual.
"Time itself does not exist and is therefore not effected by Relativity. What's effected by Relativity is clocks, not time."
Time is the measurement of intervals. Intervals are relative. Thus time is relative.
I'm not exactly sure where you're going with "clocks are affected by relativity and not time". As I've stated, there is no emperical difference as time is simply a measurement that clocks make. How does claiming that only clocks are affected by relativity make any sense when time has no meaning outside of an interval? What does making that statement say about the nature of absolute time, as Bob is talking about?
Time doesn't exist and so cannot itself be measured.
So would you say the same thing about length, width, and height? What about velocity or momentum? Do those not exist as well? They only exist in measurement.
So we have three clocks only one of which reads the same for both people in the experiment and that one happens to be the sun.
Yes. The sun reads the same for both people but
it doesn't describe the same interval for both people. This is what renders the sun useless as a time piece. How can the sun be used as a time piece when neither person will agree on how fast it is moving? It's like everyone using a watch in which 'seconds' aren't standardized. Sure, we're all using 'seconds'. But it doesn't make any sense for me to say "it'll take about 5 seconds" because your watch may actually measure seconds twice as fast as mine does. That doesn't make any sense does it? I can't tell you how long to cook anything or when to meet me because you don't measure seconds the same way I do. In the same sense, I don't measure the sun the way you do.
Here it is again in a nutshell:
sun:----------[rise------------------set]
my clock:--[tick------tock-----tick] < I count 3 seconds
your clock-[ticktockticktocktick] < you count 5 seconds
Both of us feel our experience is completely normal. If you look at my clock you say "dang it's ticking slow. The sun really took 5 seconds". If I look over at yours I say "dang it's ticking fast. The sun really took 3 seconds". So how can we both use the sun as a time piece when neither of us agree on what interval it took to cross the sky? In order for time to have meaning for us we must have a standardized interval. Do you understand what I'm saying?
