Immediate motion

I recently wrote about spatial rest and time here. This post is about the opposite: immediate motion, arriving at a destination instantly. Immediate motion means an infinite speed. An infinite speed results in an immediate change of place: something moves from one location to another in an instant. It’s here and there at the same […]

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Principles of centrism

Previous posts on political centrism are here, here, and here. This post further develops what centrism is. There are three principles of what centrism is: (1) Centrism seeks balance in all aspects of the state and its relationship with individuals, society, and other states. (2) Centrism is non-ideological because ideologies are imbalanced: what distinguishes one

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Science or stories

Science has no stories. Stories have characters, plots, and narratives. Science has data, hypotheses, postulates, and theories. Science and stories are different. They should be kept separate. Stories can refer to science or be about scientists, but that is not part of science. Science can refer to stories or collect data from stories, but that

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Three relativity transformations

Two transformations of inertial reference frames are well-known: the Galilean and the Lorentz transformations. There is a third transformation as well, which will be called the dual Galilean transformation. Below is a derivation of all three transformations, closely following the paper Getting the Lorentz transformations without requiring an invariant speed by Andrea Pelissetto and Massimo

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Simultaneity without clocks

Watches didn’t always exist. Neither did clocks that were transportable or manufactured in large quantities. I mention this because one way to determine the simultaneity of events is to have synchronized clocks transported to multiple locations – even an endless number of locations in theory. How can an observer determine the simultaneous events from their

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Space-time exchange postulate

Rates of motion are almost always expressed as a ratio with respect to time (duration space). For example, the average speed of a body is the travel distance of the body divided by the travel time. This makes the independent variable time and distance the dependent variable. However, there is no physical dependency of motion

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Rest for space and time

Rest means no motion, or at least no motion detected by an observer. We know what rest for space means: staying in the same place. That is, rest means no change of position, no travel distance, no length of motion. So at rest the numerator of the speed is zero. Yet clocks tick on. The

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Relativity alone

In a paper titled Nothing but Relativity (Eur. J. Phys. 24 (2003) 315-319) Palash B. Pal derived a formula for transformations between observers that is based on the relativity postulate but not a speed of light postulate. In a paper titled Nothing but Relativity, Redux (Eur. J. Phys. 28 (2007) 1145-1150) Joel W. Gannett presented

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Circular orbits

*** Revised from June 2017 *** With circular motion there is a radius and circumference that may be measured as distance or duration. Call the length space circumference S, and the duration space circumference T, which is known as the period. Distinguish the length and duration versions of the radius: R, for base, and Q,

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Change and stability

Evolution or alteration means change over time. Sameness over time is called permanence or stability. The study of change or the lack of change over time is called history or diachrony. Change happens. But sameness happens, too. One easily sees that sameness happens in the natural realm much more than change. That is not the

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