The Frisch-Smith Time-Dilation Experiment

To start with the main contention of the argument: The experiment that suggested, "perhaps there are some systematics at play" should have redone the entire experiment from the ground up. Instead, they neglected to even fully describe the source of the error, being content to say "it need not be characterized". While one could conclude from this that there is some massive flaw with the experiment as a result of "not characterizing the error"; it may be wortwhile to read on to see if there is some explanation of why this error was not characterised. It turns out, again, one does not have to read very far, as immediately the quote my opponent cited, the writer explained just that: " If the original effect was a lengthening of the average time interval, by switching the START and STOP nodes on the TAC, we will now measure an interval shortened by the same amount, their average representative of a more accurate value free of this particular systematic error. [1] This a topic dear to my heart, as characterization and calibration is a large part of what I do for a living. If there is an error in the system, it is either fixed or variable. A variable error is one where the value of error changes depending on things you are changing in the system. In telecoms for example, a cable used to transfer a radio signal without an antenna has a variable loss depending on the frequency of he signal; if you are measuring the power at various frequencies, you have to characterise the loss of the cable against the frequencies you are measuring so the error can be systematically removed. However, if you are measuring at a single frequency; you do not need to characterize the error in the cable, as the change in error vs other frequencies is irrelevant. The only error that needs to be considered is the absolute error of that cable. However, it gets better; in that sometimes you do not even have to do that, when you can make measurements in such a way that you can get the error to cancel itself out. This is what the experiment did, as it states. They found that there was an error which was the always the same, but one that was difficult to measure exactly. Rather than attempting to measure it, they ran a second set of measurements where the error was negative. Thus leading to measurements of speed with an error of +x, and speed with an error of -x. Averaging the two ((speed+x) + (speed-x) )/ 2 = (2* speed / 2) = speed. Now, my opponent seems to delight at the fact that the scientists found results not consistent with theory, and as such would overturn Einsteinian physics; and instead of rushing to publish decided that it may be prudent to check whether they had made some form of error before assuming that they had overturned several decades years of validated experimentation. My opponent may well think this is somehow a bad thing as he implies that the scientists some how "fudged the numbers" because they found an error and corrected for it. In cases where there is an established theory, results that contradict it must always be assumed to be wrong and then re-checked and validated until no error can be found. This is for two reasons: 1.) Errors are made by scientists more often than well established theories are overturned. 2.) If you don't look for an the error, and publish; someone else will, if there is an error the result can be damanging to the person making a claim for not being meticulous enough to detect the error. This skepticism when facing results that do not agree with theory is healthy. It means the popular press isn't riddled with examples equivalent to cold fusion [2], or faster than light neutrino's most days. More appropriately however, not immediately jumping to conclusions about what you have seen when it does not match established theory; and assuming first that you made have made an error rather than the theory is wrong, can easily be demonstrated to be beneficial: Had such a philosophy been employed by my opponent, he would have easily caught the three major errors in interpretation in his three argument rounds thus far before I had. Finally, my opponent argues: "Voters, Frisch & Smith detected muons traveling a distance they could not possibly have if they were traveling less than c, giving their rapid rate of decay. Anyone with common sense would infer this is simply because the muons are moving faster than the experimenters thought. Or maybe, muons from the sky have a different rate of decay than the muons at rest in the laboratory." As pointed out in the previous posts (to which my opponent has not contested) ; the speed of light as an ultimate speed barrier has been seperately validated and confirmed. The speed of the muons measured in a seperate experiment my opponent has cited twice, ALSO validated that the muons in the sky do not move faster than light. Even more critically, even if the muons in the atmosphere in the same conditions; even if the measurement error was included, where still travelling too slowly to have moved the distance without mostly decaying In this regard anyone with common sense would infer muons may travel faster than the speed of light. However, anyone drawing this conclusion on the grounds of common sense is drawing it against the observed and measured facts. My opponent implies common sense is better than evidence and measurement. That if a measurement is somehow at odds with common sense it should be discarded. This is a trivially refuted position; at it's basic level the asssertion that the way the universe works at every possible level and circumstance should adhere to how a collection of apes who wear clothes think it should work, itself defies common sense. One has no legitimate reason to expect the universe to comform to a way of operating that either you or I believe is reasonable. Secondly, a significant proportion of facts about how the universe works, determined by experimental data defies common sense. Wave particle duality, for example utterly defies common sense as we all "know" that it's not possible to be two completely different things at once[3]; speed of light measurements showing the speed of light never changes regardless of how fast you are going relative to the source [4] or quantumn superposition[5] defies common sense too, yet they are all repeatedly confirmed by experiment. While it is highly uncomfortable to appreciate that the world doesn't work in a way that appears reasonable to us; it must be accepted that when an overwhelming amount experimental data in many different branches of science and physics shows that the world does not work the way we think it should or want it to; we should reasses the validity of our own common sense, rather than that of the facts that have been consistently demonstrated. Because of this, one must accept that Time dilation, Relativistic Momentum, Lorentz contraction and the invariance of the speed of light which have all been repeatedly tested and confirmed in a number of different ways, including the handful I cited previously, must be true. In this regard, special relativity is the best description of the universe, including time dilation of which the Frisch-Smith Time dilation experiment forms part. While it may not be "true", as further scientific discoveries are yet to be made (indeed I sincerely hope it is not "true" in many respects); challenging special relativity, and this experiments must be done on the grounds of what can be shown to be true or false with experiments and facts. Thus far, I have established that the assumptions of the experiment are all supported by evidence, and that working under the principles that the muons are not travelling faster than the speed of light is corroberated by a number of different experiments. I have also explained why the experiment demonstrates time dilation in that context as the experiment has no failure in assumption or method. My opponent has tried to contest this by assuming that a major scientific work that has been repeatedly validated in experiment is wrong. While I am perfectly willing to accept it could be, the arguments he uses range from accusations of impropiety on account of science, and his own applications of common sense and incredulity. These are arguments opinion based speculation that are not just unsupported by detailed evidence and experiment, but contradicted by them. As a result, it is clear that burden of proof has been met in regards to the Frisch-Smith experiment demonstrating time dilation. [1]http://web.mit.edu... [2]http://en.wikipedia.org... [3]http://en.wikipedia.org... [4]http://www.physicsoftheuniverse.com... [5]http://en.wikipedia.org...