[Physics] Physics Digest, Vol 20, Issue 2

[Ilja Schmelzer]

Hi Doug,

The best way to understand relativity remains the classical Lorentz ether.

Moving clocks go slower, and moving bodies, including rulers used to
measure distances,
are compressed in the direction of motion. That's all.  Space and time
are the same as in Newtonian theory.

The same can be extended to gravity.  All that changes is that the
Lorentz ether is no longer homogeneous, and is no longer at rest, but
moves, and has a pressure tensor. Density, velocity and the pressure
tensor define the gravitational field.  This leads to additional
effects, in particular clocks go also slower where the ether density
is higher, and the pressure additionally deforms the rulers.

That the Lorentz ether can be easily extended to gravity is not
well-known, see http://ilja-schmelzer.de/ether for the details.

Within the Lorentz ether, it is easy to see that there do not appear
any contradictions. The Newtonian background remains unchanged, and
that distorted clocks and rulers define a non-Euclidean geometry is a
trivitiality.  Try to measure pi with a usual metallic ruler if the
center is hotter than the circumference so that the ruler becomes
longer if you measure the diameter.

All the conceptual problems with SR and GR follow from the postivistic
idea that once we cannot measure something it does not exist.  So,
once our clocks and rulers are distorted, absolute space and time do
not exist.

2018-11-23 12:00 GMT+01:00, physics-request at tuks.nl <physics-request at tuks.nl>:
> The first is Einstein's redefinition of time as "that which a clock
> measures" which differs in a dramatic way from the more classical
> definition of time as being "the duration between events" or "the duration
> of an event".

> Further, the idea that the number of ticks on the
> clock defines how far you have progressed into the future would also be
> wrong according to Einstein, since all the clocks would have different
> ticks even though the share the same present at the start and finish. Why
> are these contradictions not fatal to Einstein's theory?