Re: Oh my God!

On Wed, 25 Sep 2024 10:28:12 +0000, Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote:

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On 2024-09-25 00:27:09 +0000, Richard Hachel said:

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I stumbled upon this on Wikipedia...
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I don't know whether to laugh or cry...
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Did you see where Minkowski places his simultaneity plans?
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But that's not it!!!
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That's not it AT ALL!!!
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<http://nemoweb.net/jntp?Ev7wMrtKlxguxDn1RDUke8-o3Zo@jntp/Data.Media:1>
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That's clearly not Minkowski's diagram (did he have suitable drawing
software in the 19th century?), but someone's interpretation of it. I
hope you're not adopting Thomas Heger's habit of lying about who wrote
what.
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With a huge dust under the carpet right in the middle (the stupid
time-gap of physicists).
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It's depressing.
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--
athel -- biochemist, not a physicist, but detector of crackpots

Actually, it might be correct.  Contrary to what Hachel wrote, there
is no "gap."  The presumption in the figure is that the velocities
going and returning are constant with an infinite deceleration at
the turning point.  Realistically, the deceleration would be finite.
Consequently, the simultaneous line would move smoothly from the
point intersecting the vertical line and the upper blue line to a
horizontal line between the turning point and the vertical line
(representing "home").  As the ship began its return journey, the
simultaneous line would move up to the lower red line as depicted.
The movement through the gap can be as swift as desired (a particle
in an accelerator encountering a target would have a very fast
deceleration, but still not infinite).