The favourite philosopher of DarwinX is "Stephen Hurrell"? Stephen Hurrell of
http://www.dinox.org/ who has the alternate theory of "
Reduced Gravity" that, according to the whackier fringes of pseudoscience, competes with General Relativity?
What more needs to be said?
I do want to address one particular post by DarwinX, because it's the only one that seems to have any meat on it:
DarwinX wrote:If time is a dimension as relativity suggests, then, why isn't time included in any of his equations? Einstein keeps talking about time like it is a mathematical component of relativity, but fails to use it in any equations.If time has a geometric component, then it must also have a mathematical component. On closer examination, the time element is only an imaginary element and doesn't exist in reality. Therefore, the whole concept of relativity is just a puff of imaginary magic nonsense.
The only reason Einstein got the credit for coming up with relativity is because he rejected the existence of the aether. The true originators of relativity, Lorentz and Poincare, didn't reject the existence of an aether. Thus, the establishment had a hidden agenda in pushing Einstein to the foreground, while pushing Lorentz and Poincare back into the shadows of obscurity. Thus, religious pressures from the church was the real reason that relativity was accepted and the aether theory was rejected. Note - The biblical version of God couldn't exist in a steady state universe, so the aether theory had to go.
Last things first:
Albert Einstein wrote:Recapitulating, we may say that according to the general theory of relativity space is endowed with physical qualities; in this sense, therefore, there exists an ether. According to the general theory of relativity space without ether is unthinkable; for in such space there not only would be no propagation of light, but also no possibility of existence for standards of space and time (measuring-rods and clocks), nor therefore any space-time intervals in the physical sense. But this ether may not be thought of as endowed with the quality characteristic of ponderable inedia, as consisting of parts which may be tracked through time. The idea of motion may not be applied to it.
Address delivered on May 5th, 1920, in the University of Leyden
And now ... time. It's true that Einstein didn't provide equations for "time dilation" in his 1905 paper "
On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies". It is, however, simply incorrect to say that Einstein didn't include time in any of his equations. His very first equation, for example is:
t
B-t
A=t'
A-t
B
Later he presents what is now known as the Lorentz Transformation for time (in terms of tau, rather than t') and from that leaps to an odd equation that is a blend of the equations for spatial contraction and time dilation. Now, I think there might be an issue involved with this leap - and have discussed it at great length elsewhere (on physicsforums) but in short because the priming notation used with t' associated with time dilation does not have the same meaning as the priming notation used x' associated with spatial contraction. They are in fact opposites, which you might see if you consider that x=v.t (and hence v=x/t). Using this one can easily convert the spatial Lorentz Transformation (where x' does not have the same meaning as the x' in spatial contraction) into the temporal Lorentz Transformation (where the meaning of t' is the same as for the t' in time dilation).
If one tries to convert the equation for spatial contraction in the equation for time dilation, it doesn't work.
Equally, one can use the temporal Lorentz Transformation to produce the time dilation equation by setting t=0 (meaning that you are measuring the distance between two locations at the same time in your frame). If you try the same thing with the spatial Lorentz Transformation, but setting x=0 (the time difference between two moments at the same location in your frame), it doesn't work - you end up with a "spatial dilation equation".
So, there is a minor issue here and it's not particular well explained (and is hotly debated by physicists when it is pointed out), but I think the problem is more about psychology and philosophy than it is about physics. We could be talking about "spatial dilation" or "temporal contraction" but neither concept sits well with us. I think it is because we view time and space differently, we find it difficult to visualise the separation between two points in time without involving a clock to tick off the seconds between them while we can visualise the separation between two points in space quite easily without using a metre rule.
But think about it for a moment ... if a space traveller moves from the Earth to the surface of the sun at 0.8c, relative to the Earth and does so in 16 minutes in our time, then less time will have elapsed for that traveller (0.6*16=9.6 minutes). How far can the traveller move in 9.6 minutes, noting that we already have a speed of 0.8c? It'll only be 0.6 of the way to the sun. Somehow, the traveller manages to turn 0.6AU (the astronomical unit is based on the average distance between the Earth and the sun) into 1AU - this is because their units of measurement have dilated: 1.00 metres to them is 1.67 metres to us. Alternatively, the space between the Earth and the sun has contracted but if this is the case, so has the time.
In short, it's a bit confusing and I would not be surprised that since Einstein was addressing these sorts of issues before anyone had properly got their head around them, this may have led him to wording things a little confusingly. It's just a little sad that we haven't properly resolved them since and the ongoing confusion gives purchase to people like DarwinX.
Reply to xris #17. Your references are inaccurate. E= MCx2 can be derived from F=MA (multiply by sides by distance). Poincare's formulae is related to the Pythagorean theorem which can also be used to calculate the slowing of time.