[SteelyBob]

@Clyde Frog - @Longitube beat me to it. You would add roughly 1 x c every year, which is impossible.

@Longitube - maths looks correct to me.

To be frank, there are far bigger issues with the acceleration hypothesis than just the speed of light issue. To accelerate in a straight line requires energy - enormous amounts of ever-increasing energy, in fact. Where is this energy coming from?

[Clyde Frog]

The speed of light is 300,000,000ms^-1 so at an acceleration of 9.8ms^-2 it takes 300,000,000/9.8 = 30,612,244.9 seconds to reach light speed, c.

Divide this by 60 to get 510,204.082 minutes.

Divide again by 60 to get 8503.4 hours

Finally, divide for a last time by 24 to get 354.3 days to reach light speed from a standing start at an acceleration of 9.8ms^-2 which is less than a year.

This is why UA is nonsense: according to it the Earth reached light speed millenia ago and has continued accelerating at 9.8ms^-2 ever since, even though the speed of light cannot be reached by anything with mass.

Please check the arithmetic in case I made a blunder.

You made a blunder, in that you fundamentally are misunderstanding how relativity works. Let's take the shape of the Earth out of the equation, and just talk about a rocket accelerating through space at 1G. By your math, after about 8500 years, the people on board that rocket would measure their instantaneous velocity to be 99.99% (with probably a fair few more 9's added on, I'm not going to bother working it out because it's meaningless) of c. Yet, what relativity tells us is that the people on board that ship will measure their velocity to still be 0% of c. Because there is no such thing as a preferred frame of reference, you can always pick a frame where that rocket has an instantaneous velocity of 0m/s while still accelerating at 1G for a completely arbitrary amount of time, and the people in that ship would be feeling that steady 1G acceleration the whole time. The people in the rocket ship from this example would be much like people standing on a UA version of the FE, in that they are moving with the accelerating object. An observer on that FE would never exceed c, nor would the FE, because it can never itself move any faster than 0% of c as measured by an observer standing on that FE (since, you know, it's invariant).

And all of that is still glossing over a misapplication of how relativistic velocities are added up, since that's irrelevant to the conversation at hand.

[Pete Svarrior]

You made a blunder, in that you fundamentally are misunderstanding how relativity works.

They didn't really get that far. They just applied classical mechanics to the problem, because apparently that's how poor public education is these days.

[WTF_Seriously]

The speed of light is 300,000,000ms^-1 so at an acceleration of 9.8ms^-2 it takes 300,000,000/9.8 = 30,612,244.9 seconds to reach light speed, c.

Divide this by 60 to get 510,204.082 minutes.

Divide again by 60 to get 8503.4 hours

Finally, divide for a last time by 24 to get 354.3 days to reach light speed from a standing start at an acceleration of 9.8ms^-2 which is less than a year.

This is why UA is nonsense: according to it the Earth reached light speed millenia ago and has continued accelerating at 9.8ms^-2 ever since, even though the speed of light cannot be reached by anything with mass.

Please check the arithmetic in case I made a blunder.

You made a blunder, in that you fundamentally are misunderstanding how relativity works. Let's take the shape of the Earth out of the equation, and just talk about a rocket accelerating through space at 1G. By your math, after about 8500 years, the people on board that rocket would measure their instantaneous velocity to be 99.99% (with probably a fair few more 9's added on, I'm not going to bother working it out because it's meaningless) of c. Yet, what relativity tells us is that the people on board that ship will measure their velocity to still be 0% of c. Because there is no such thing as a preferred frame of reference, you can always pick a frame where that rocket has an instantaneous velocity of 0m/s while still accelerating at 1G for a completely arbitrary amount of time, and the people in that ship would be feeling that steady 1G acceleration the whole time. The people in the rocket ship from this example would be much like people standing on a UA version of the FE, in that they are moving with the accelerating object. An observer on that FE would never exceed c, nor would the FE, because it can never itself move any faster than 0% of c as measured by an observer standing on that FE (since, you know, it's invariant).

And all of that is still glossing over a misapplication of how relativistic velocities are added up, since that's irrelevant to the conversation at hand.

By the same argument wouldn't there always be at least one frame of reference where the object does in fact have a measured velocity and in the case of UA that velocity would increase by a factor of C every year?

[SteelyBob]

They didn't really get that far. They just applied classical mechanics to the problem, because apparently that's how poor public education is these days.

You still haven't explained where the energy for this acceleration is coming from.

[Longtitube]

The speed of light is 300,000,000ms^-1 so at an acceleration of 9.8ms^-2 it takes 300,000,000/9.8 = 30,612,244.9 seconds to reach light speed, c.

Divide this by 60 to get 510,204.082 minutes.

Divide again by 60 to get 8503.4 hours

Finally, divide for a last time by 24 to get 354.3 days to reach light speed from a standing start at an acceleration of 9.8ms^-2 which is less than a year.

This is why UA is nonsense: according to it the Earth reached light speed millenia ago and has continued accelerating at 9.8ms^-2 ever since, even though the speed of light cannot be reached by anything with mass.

Please check the arithmetic in case I made a blunder.

You made a blunder, in that you fundamentally are misunderstanding how relativity works. Let's take the shape of the Earth out of the equation, and just talk about a rocket accelerating through space at 1G. By your math, after about 8500 years, the people on board that rocket would measure their instantaneous velocity to be 99.99% (with probably a fair few more 9's added on, I'm not going to bother working it out because it's meaningless) of c. Yet, what relativity tells us is that the people on board that ship will measure their velocity to still be 0% of c. Because there is no such thing as a preferred frame of reference, you can always pick a frame where that rocket has an instantaneous velocity of 0m/s while still accelerating at 1G for a completely arbitrary amount of time, and the people in that ship would be feeling that steady 1G acceleration the whole time. The people in the rocket ship from this example would be much like people standing on a UA version of the FE, in that they are moving with the accelerating object. An observer on that FE would never exceed c, nor would the FE, because it can never itself move any faster than 0% of c as measured by an observer standing on that FE (since, you know, it's invariant).

And all of that is still glossing over a misapplication of how relativistic velocities are added up, since that's irrelevant to the conversation at hand.

Then indulge an poor sap who'd like to know more and explain just a little of that. Where, first, does the 8500 year figure come from? Secondly, since there is no preferred frame of reference, please explain how the people in your rocket ship can be said to have an instantaneous velocity of zero while continuing to accelerate at 1G. I really would like to know this, so gnomic pronouncements or sneering from others just won't cut it: I'll take your own words or you can supply links or reading material.

Since the UA concept, or the energy powering UA, makes no sense to me currently, I'd genuinely appreciate a little light. Go for it.

[Clyde Frog]

Then indulge an poor sap who'd like to know more and explain just a little of that. Where, first, does the 8500 year figure come from?

Well, from you, it was your math. Although I have to admit my mistake when I misread "hours" for "years" so apologies. 8503.4 hours, you said.

Secondly, since there is no preferred frame of reference, please explain how the people in your rocket ship can be said to have an instantaneous velocity of zero while continuing to accelerate at 1G. I really would like to know this, so gnomic pronouncements or sneering from others just won't cut it: I'll take your own words or you can supply links or reading material.

Let's do this by way of analogy first. Imagine you are in a boat (I'd have gone with a car, but shifting gears makes for a separate issue so a boat it is), moving in reverse, and fairly quickly at that. The driver decides to suddenly change direction and try to move forward instead. You feel the boat decelerating, let's just say that's at a constant 1G for fun. It continues to decelerate with respect to the land underneath the boat, and for an instant, it's at rest with respect to the land underneath the boat, and then it begins accelerating forward with respect to the land underneath the boat. At all times, it was applying a steady 1G acceleration as felt by the passenger on the boat, but that boat's velocity changed from negative to zero to positive with respect to the ground below the boat. For a moment, it was accelerating at 1G, and its instantaneous velocity was 0 with respect to the sand and rocks underneath it.

You can define a FoR just like that. In fact, if we're talking about a FE undergoing UA, you absolutely have to define a FoR like that if you want to have a meaningful idea of what an observer (like, for example, all people) on that FE would experience. To even begin discussing the velocity of the FE disc, you have to pick a separate FoR and then try and work out how fast the disc would be moving relative to that frame, but that doesn't really make much sense to do, because you can pick any frame you want and say the disc is moving at any velocity you like up to c and all you've accomplished is doing math. It makes absolutely no impact for anyone on said disc. You can do it with a globe, too. There are objects in space moving insanely rapidly away from the Earth. An observer in one of those frames would see the Earth moving insanely rapidly away from it, and it would infer that it has gained a certain amount of relativistic mass, and it has red shifted by however much, and rulers on Earth have undergone a length contraction such that they look much much shorter, but that doesn't affect me or you or anyone at all because we're here on the surface of the Earth, our colors are perfectly normal and our rulers are the right length.

[Longtitube]

I have to admit my mistake when I misread "hours" for "years" so apologies. 8503.4 hours, you said.

I suspected as much, don’t worry about it.

I understand the boat changing direction at 1g as experienced by its passenger, also length dilation and redshift for an outside observer not being seen by those on a fast-moving Earth. So please go on, what’s next?

[SteelyBob]

@Longtitube

As I understand it, this one all comes down to energy, and this is the fundamental issue at the heart of the UA problem. Apologies - my previous answer was probably misleading. It is impossible to accelerate something at 1g forever as far as an external observer is concerned. But from the perspective of the 'something', it can feel 1g forever...the issue is where is the force coming from?

My understanding:
If you got in a spacecraft and had some magic propulsion source that was capable of accelerating you at 1g for as long as you wanted then, just like in our example here, it would take around a year to accelerate up to c. If you were travelling to some distant solar system and your propulsion system could keep providing the thrust, you could indeed keep on accelerating, and it would feel like 1g.

But speed, or more accurately velocity, is always relative. So if you were taking earth as your reference point, then your apparent velocity would never reach c. As far as the crew on the spacecraft are concerned, they would feel the 1g acceleration, and would actually make the journey in a time that felt, to them, as if they were exceeding the speed of light. However, to external observers, it would take far, far longer to reach the destination - a sub-c effective speed, with the difference caused by your ever-increasing mass - the constant thrust required to achieve the 1g would have less and less apparent effect to an external observer because the 'm' in f=ma is increasing all the time. Wikipedia tackles it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_travel_using_constant_acceleration, although there's plenty of examples if you google 'space travel at constant acceleration' - it's quite a well-known proposal, common in sci-fi, as the 1g aspect of it would provide a survivable living environment for the crew. The problem is that you aren't 'travelling' faster than c - it's taking hundreds of thousands of years to get anywhere, even though the crew don't age (as much).

This is why energy becomes so important here, and why I keep asking the question that is, unsurprisingly, not being answered. Where or what is the cause of the force that is propelling earth? The problem is that, unlike centripetal acceleration such as in orbits, linear acceleration is adding kinetic energy to an object, and that energy has to come from somewhere. So the question then is where? What is causing the earth (and the dome over it, and the sun, moon and stars, whatever they may be) to accelerate? It can't come from anything external - that's really important, because the apparent mass of the earth etc would be increasing, and you couldn't accelerate past c from the frame of reference of whatever the external source was. So it has to be endogenous to the earth's accelerating system, and essentially everlasting, and somehow capable of accelerating the moon, sun and stars with it, all of which are rotating as well, due to some other magical unexplained force.

Of course all of this required magic disappears if you just accept what is entirely obvious from hundreds of years of painstaking observation, measurement and calculation, which is that we are on a spherical(ish) globe with a single orbiting moon, part of a solar system of planets with associated moons orbiting the sun, which in turn is part of a much larger galaxy. There is nothing unexplained or mysterious about this system at all - all the calculations work out. We know the distances, speeds, and masses of the various planets and moons. We can calculate planetary positions, eclipses and tides with excellent precision, and they all match perfectly to our understanding of gravity and other physical calculations. Even if, for whatever bizarre reason, you choose to believe that every picture and video of earth taken from space is somehow faked, and that every space rocket, every satellite, every intercontinental ballistic missile even...all of that, by every country who has ever engaged in a space programme...even if you think all of that was just some elaborate theatre involving millions of people and trillions of pounds...the heliocentric globe earth model still provides faultless explanation for every observed motion and force that we can detect ourselves.

[Pete Svarrior]

By the same argument wouldn't there always be at least one frame of reference where the object does in fact have a measured velocity and in the case of UA that velocity would increase by a factor of C every year?

No. In any such hypothetical (good luck devising one in the real world) frame of reference, the acceleration of UA would appear to decrease in magnitude over time.

[Clyde Frog]

Answering "where the force comes from" is really moving the goal posts. There are unknowns in all things. The force could simply be a fundamental property of the universe in the UA model. Current cosmology claims there is a certain unknown fundamental property of the universe cause it to expand at an ever-increasing rate, and that's not considered controversial in the least.

[SteelyBob]

Current cosmology claims there is a certain unknown fundamental property of the universe cause it to expand at an ever-increasing rate, and that's not considered controversial in the least.

But given that this this expansion rate refers to non-existent galaxies that were detected using an orbiting telescope that doesn't exist in the minds of FET proponents, I don't suppose that's an issue! Presumably NASA have fabricated the whole thing to add depth to the massive hoax they are perpetrating? https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2019/mystery-of-the-universe-s-expansion-rate-widens-with-new-hubble-data

I think we're broadly in agreement here - you are unable to explain the source of the thrust.

[Iceman]

Answering "where the force comes from" is really moving the goal posts. There are unknowns in all things. The force could simply be a fundamental property of the universe in the UA model. Current cosmology claims there is a certain unknown fundamental property of the universe cause it to expand at an ever-increasing rate, and that's not considered controversial in the least.

Its shifting the goalposts a bit to be sure, but it gets to a fundamental flaw within FET. I will accept the unknown/unexplained source for the acceleration since you justifiably call to the same kinds of unknowns that are broadly accepted within RE cosmology.

But the whole basis of FET supposedly rests on empirical observations and testable experimentation. FET provides numerous alternate explanations for classic RE hypotheses, based on clever equivalencies that have been pointed out. But they comminly only work for one specific set of observations, rather than fitting with a holistic worldview. Where these deficiencies arise, in many cases, aspects of RE are brought in as a fail safe - like Einstein's Special Relativity to explain why we dont accelerate beyond the speed of light. Or dark energy to explain the origin of electromagnetic acceleration.

FET arose in large part because people wanted to trust their senses and rely on what can be observed and tested. But the 'pseudoscience' of cosmology and astronomy sure seem to come in handy when the limits of FET are questioned.

[Clyde Frog]

Don't misunderstand me, I'm not appealing to cosmology in what I said, I'm simply showing that there's an analog in terms of it being OK for there to be fundamental properties of the universe that are accepted as such. No matter what you want to try and accept as the nature of the universe, there will at some level be things that are axiomatic. Dark energy, like you mention, is one such thing in cosmology right now. It just... is... and there's no telling what it really is, it's just there making the universe expand faster and faster apparently. But the phrase itself is just a place holder for "some energetic force that no one really knows much about." Move into UA-land, and an accelerator could very well be pretty much the same thing conceptually, although at a different scale.

And to be even more clear, I'm not someone who is even a proponent of UA. But the same tired arguments of "but it would exceed LIGHTSPEED!!!1one!" and "nothing can accelerate FoReVeRrRr because it would need infinity energy" get paraded around a lot at both sites and those arguments just aren't very good.

[WTF_Seriously]

......the acceleration of UA would appear to decrease in magnitude over time.

I admit I'm no theoretical physicist, but I'm curious.  Do you say this based on the WIKI Lorentz integration nonsense or is their another part of relativity that describes this.

Did a little looking and think I understand the concept.

[Iceman]

Don't misunderstand me, I'm not appealing to cosmology in what I said, I'm simply showing that there's an analog in terms of it being OK for there to be fundamental properties of the universe that are accepted as such. No matter what you want to try and accept as the nature of the universe, there will at some level be things that are axiomatic. Dark energy, like you mention, is one such thing in cosmology right now. It just... is... and there's no telling what it really is, it's just there making the universe expand faster and faster apparently. But the phrase itself is just a place holder for "some energetic force that no one really knows much about." Move into UA-land, and an accelerator could very well be pretty much the same thing conceptually, although at a different scale.

And to be even more clear, I'm not someone who is even a proponent of UA. But the same tired arguments of "but it would exceed LIGHTSPEED!!!1one!" and "nothing can accelerate FoReVeRrRr because it would need infinity energy" get paraded around a lot at both sites and those arguments just aren't very good.

Yeah it's absolutely a fair analogy to raise because that's a major double standard that I've seen in what little time I've been here for.

What I was trying to bring up is that there's something of a reciprocation when it come to common FE proponents' responses to some of those belligerent arguments, where examples of experiments are demanded to back up the classical RE theory, or appeals are made to phenomena that lack observational and experimental support. Local variations in gravity vs. UA and EA vs setting sun would be examples where this occurs.

My personal issue with FET isnt the attempts to advocate for a different interpretation of our world, but the dismissal of such broad reaches of scientific advances and achievements. I would find it much easier to embrace if there was more (perceived) effort to integrate modern science into FET. For all the flaws I see in it, based on my background, EA is actually a great example of exactly the kind of efforts i would want to see: bring in understanding from recent advances, rather than dismissal as pseudoscience.

[WTF_Seriously]

For all the flaws I see in it, based on my background, EA is actually a great example of exactly the kind of efforts i would want to see: bring in understanding from recent advances, rather than dismissal as pseudoscience.

The problem here is that it's hard not to dismiss as pseudoscience what is obviously pseudoscience.

[Clyde Frog]

For all the flaws I see in it, based on my background, EA is actually a great example of exactly the kind of efforts i would want to see: bring in understanding from recent advances, rather than dismissal as pseudoscience.

The problem here is that it's hard not to dismiss as pseudoscience what is obviously pseudoscience.

I think you are misinterpreting his words. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure he's saying he wishes FE would embrace scientific advances and incorporate them more into their models, as opposed to saying they are part of a hoax or conspiracy.

[Iceman]

For all the flaws I see in it, based on my background, EA is actually a great example of exactly the kind of efforts i would want to see: bring in understanding from recent advances, rather than dismissal as pseudoscience.

The problem here is that it's hard not to dismiss as pseudoscience what is obviously pseudoscience.

I think you are misinterpreting his words. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure he's saying he wishes FE would embrace scientific advances and incorporate them more into their models, as opposed to saying they are part of a hoax or conspiracy.

Clyde is right again.

I find a lot of the wiki, for example, to be overly dismissive of a broad range of scientific methods/advances/hypotheses/achievements.

I dont like it, but I applaud the efforts being put forward to advance EA as an alternative explanation for observations. Rather than throwing out tested scientific knowledge, it builds on it, trying to evaluate whether there is indeed a new framework for us to view and understand natural phenomena.

But that probably stems from my geology background, where all our field's major breakthroughs have typically come from stealing and bastardizing techniques from medical and military innovations!