I believe that I have discovered some significant insights into the Special Theory of Relativity that I documented in my book Riding on a Light Beam. I want discuss these insights in this blog, one at time.

The first point to make is how we assign a measurement in time and space to a moving object. Let’s consider how we mark off a two inch line on wooden board, using a ruler and a pencil, How do we know when to stop drawing the line? Seems obvious: when you see the pencil reach the two inch mark, it’s time to stop. Think about it. Light must be transmitted from the event, the pencil reaching the correct point of the ruler, to your eye, determine it is at the correct spatial coordinate. If the time of the event were important, you would check your watch. It doesn’t matter that the pencil is moving and the ruler is stationary. But it does matter if the object being located is moving at a significant fraction of the speed of light, because light from the moving body is Doppler-shifted, from its time of emission to the time of observation, and it is from our time of observation that we will determine from where and when, in our coordinate system, we will locate the event. And since one means of locating a body in space is to compare it with some fixed point on our ruler, the time of observation of that fixed point is just the time of transmission, plus the time light took to cover that distance. Just like the pencil on the ruler, we must observe light from both simultaneously, but times of emission are and must be different, as they have different Doppler shifts. And the faster the body being measured is moving, the greater the difference between the two times of transmission, the measured time and the proper time, must be. Not because the event’s clock is slowing down as it approaches the speed of light, but because our time of measurement is Doppler-shifted to a later and later time with increasing velocity.

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