The powerful simplicty of the truth
The thing is: don’t stop observing, while you are moving
Olomouc, 20-04-2018. Willem van den Hagemot discusses his book and reveals a new element of his book in a conversation with a Theoretical Physicist.
The discussion is about the earlier news reports that the Theory on Relativity would apply for sound waves as well. Asked about reaction, Van den Hagemot starts with an example: it’s all about relativity. If you want to measure relative effects, you will find that two points that are relative in rest with each other, are most likely to proof the fact that we entered in the first place: there is rest, and the rest is indeed what is to be measured. Now, take the experiment of Michelson & Morley and perform this experiment on a moving train. But now with sound waves and within the air. What will the experiment tell us? What differences can we foresee?
The physicist being familiar with the topic is not quite impressed, and has his answer ready: whereas we measure with light speed no phase differences, the sound experiment will give for sure phase differences. But there, right at the start, Van den Hagemot prevents that the discussion becomes complicated: Rather than unraveling afterwords, we’d get to the core of it; this is as far as we need to go. You will not be able to proof phase differences for sound waves in air. And he explains why: take a steam locomotive. The whistle is being heard by you, while you are sitting on top of a wagon of the train. You will hear the whistle in its original tone or frequency. That proofs your relative rest with the whistle. Naturally. That is one.
Then, as you well know, there is the second fact that relative to the air, there is of course some kind of relative difference, in which the whistle is sounding higher before the whistle than behind the whistle. And that is just because during whistling, the train changes its position in the air.
Whereas we know and understand that there must be a frequency change relative to the air, that is being turned back in the original frequency by for the moving observer, why would we want to measure and search for a phase difference?
It’s all about simplicity – Phase differences of a moving painted sinus line
After the physicist has left, Van den Hagemot elaborates a bit on this phase difference. Look; when you start to see how nature works in this respect, it is getting really easy. It is all about seeing how relativity is influencing everything that is being moved. It is always about an observation while you are moving. And for that we have a very nice and simple train thought example. But one that we can see for real when such a juvenile with a graffiti urge misbehaves himself and paints a wave on the side of a train. I mean the sinus-like wave, drawn clearly fixed relative to the train, on the side of a train. Now, how big do you think, will be the phase difference when the train starts driving? You will get jammed immediately, and your train of thoughts will crash. Undeniably, because any phase difference is from its very own nature relative to a wave with a given frequency. Or differently put: the phase identity changes with the change of the wave. Therefore you cannot speak form a phase difference, but you will be confronted with something else instead: the wave length will change from the very moment that the train starts moving. Please bare in mind that we are not yet discussing any pressure wave or medium yet, but just and only with a drawn line on the side of a train. This is no rocket science, but instead the very utmost simplicity that relativity shows us in plain pictures and proofs. Then, of course we can bring up very highly difficult examples of a reality that goes beyond our comprehension, but why would we bother? Relativity proofs itself to be of equal relevance for all moving things in the universe bring consequently very precise measures and weights for anything that moves. Of course with pressure and force implications, the results are not as easy to determine. But the concept of relativity itself, forces us to expect and to count with a result within a framework of natural laws. Nature dictates a lawful finding. And no one will be able to escape from it.
Does this imply that indeed there is a relativity theory for air and sound waves? Van den Hagemot: those messages are from April 1. But meanwhile it is important to acknowledge that indeed there is this consequence of importing the experiment of Michelson and Morley into a train experiment setting. But it has to come with substantively understanding the reality: the constancy of the speed of light does not need any theory or question mark; because nature itself does indeed clarify it completely, without any need for the theory on relativity of Albert Einstein.