Why are there still opponents of the theory of relativity?

When someone tells another person directions to their house, they don’t need to tell them, “My home is motionless”. And the people of the ancient world had invented math, and their greatest scholars studied the stars and concluded that the Earth is at the center of the cosmos because all the stars circle the Earth every day. They didn’t need to say the obvious, which is that stars circle the motionless Earth. That was an assumption so obvious it required no proof, not even a thought.

We all see our home the Earth is motionless. And thus, when proof showed that this is wrong, then that proof was censored, until well after the math and science advanced to explain it.

Newton’s laws of motion include equations that followed a century later, after Galileo’s principle of equivalence of rest and uniform motion, and the success of those laws, and improved telescopes, confirmed the heliocentric model beyond all reasonable doubt. But at one time, the doubt was reasonable and the best math and science had understandably supported the geocentric model.

Likewise, when someone asks you the time, you do not need to say that clocks measure the flow of time into the future before you tell them the time on your clock. That’s an assumption today about what clocks measure that seems so obvious as to require no thought, much less need proof.

Einstein had written in 1912 that the best equations of math and science (Lorentz transformations) showed that clocks tick slower in relative motion, stop ticking at the velocity of light (c), and then the rate of ticking advances into negative numbers if clocks move faster than c. No one has succeeded in exceeding c, but Einstein speculated that at superluminal velocity bodies go backwards in time. He realized that this would permit effects to precede their causes, and thus concluded that superluminal velocity is impossible. For example (as he suggested in a footnote), a superluminal signal would travel into the past, such that’s its effect could precede the cause of the effect. Likewise, accelerating into the future permits effects to precede their causes, as we’ll illustrate in our proof below.

Over the next few years, Einstein would complete his General Theory of Relativity that included that clocks tick faster at higher altitudes, and evidence of that beyond reasonable doubt emerged over the following years and decades, which led Einstein to conclude that time itself is an illusion because all times in the past and future happen simultaneously.

Of course, the meaning of simultaneously is the opposite of the meaning of times in the past and future, so we may reasonably wonder if we actually know what time really is.

Is it possible that being able to see clocks tick slower and faster does not signify that all times happen simultaneously, but instead signifies that the assumption that clocks measure the passage of time into the future is wrong? How can that be possible? Is there any proof?

What’s the proof?

One of the proofs is right in front of you on your computer if your computer uses the GPS system to keep your clocks synchronized with other clocks on the surface. The GPS satellites are in orbit, and clocks in orbit tick faster because of lesser gravity at higher altitudes. Those clocks also tick slower because of the relative motion of orbit. And those two opposing time transformations are added together, and they add to clocks ticking a tiny bit faster. Consequently, over the years, the times on those clocks have advanced continuously farther and farther ahead of clocks on Earth, so now when satellite computers send signals to our computers, those signals arrive here on the surface at a time on our clocks before the time on clocks on the satellites when they were sent. Effects can not precede their causes, just as Einstein noted in 1912, and thus clocks do not measure the rate of flow of time into the future. QED.

But, like the need to understand how the Earth can seem motionless and yet be in motion, we need to understand what clocks measure if they don’t measure the rate of flow of time into the future, so we can accept this new “speed of time” model.

Clocks measure the rates of local processes, which is the rate that both a clock and the observer with the clock age. Put another way, clocks measure the conservation of energy. Newton’s first law of motion is the law of conservation of inertia, which holds that bodies remain at rest or in uniform motion in a straight line, unless acted upon by an outside force. This describes bodies conserving their energy in spatial relationships. But it turns out that bodies conserve their energy in their relationship with that aspect of the speed of time that clocks actually measure, which is speed of local processes, and thus different clocks can simultaneously tick at different rates, the paradoxes resolve, and thus we can update Newton’s first law:

Absent an external force, bodies remain at rest in time.

Rest in time is signified by constant rate of ticking of clocks: motionless clocks tick at a constant rate, and clocks observed in uniform relative motion tick at a constant, but slower rate.

And now, with this update of Newton’s first law, we can update his second law, because the relative duration of seconds corresponds to conservation of energy — rate of processes rather than speed of time into the future. Thus, we can see that cosmological red shift results from a universal acceleration of this aspect of the speed of time, rather than space stretching, such that our faster ticking clocks today measure fewer waves of light per second from distant galaxies. This universal acceleration of the speed of time that clocks tick corresponds to universal entropy, as signified by plugging this new understanding of seconds into Newton’s second law of motion (F=ma). We can’t do that if we assume clocks measure the speed of time into the future.

Every observer always sees their own clock tick at one second per second, because we “tick” at the same rate, the rate we age. Thus an observer in orbit and an observer on the surface of the Earth will disagree about how many seconds pass while the Earth orbits the Sun, but they can make their measurements simultaneously with neither ever in the past nor future of the other.

And thus you see, our science bumbles along with false assumptions, same as it ever was, and people who question assumptions are dismissed, exiled, disgraced, even executed. But sometimes the people who question accepted science are also correct. That’s how science moves forward, if and when it does, when people question and falsify assumptions and live long enough to share their answers.

This new understanding of time solves the paradoxes and riddles of cosmological Redshift and expanding space, of gravity and the gravitational constant, and much more, including falsifying Einstein’s conclusion that c is the limit to velocity, and accounting for why we have just seen fully formed galaxies existed more than 13 billions years ago. This doesn’t have to remain future science.