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{{Wikipedia_dispute|Time dilation}}
{{Wikipedia_dispute|Time dilation}}


==Background==
'''Time dilation''' is the claim, made by Einstein's theories of relativity, that the rate at which time passes is not the same for all observers: that a clock in motion relative to an observer accumulates less time than the observer's own clock, and that a clock deeper in a gravitational potential runs slow compared with one higher up. It is one of the most widely publicised results in modern physics and one of the most persistently disputed on this wiki.


In 1905, Einstein published a paper1 which laid the basis for special relativity. In that paper he derived special relativity’s time dilation equation, <math>T = \frac{T_o}{\sqrt{(1 - \frac{v^2}{c^2})}}</math>. It correlates time accumulating on a clock at rest in an inertial frame with another clock in a different inertial frame. In the above equation, v is the relative velocity between the two clocks.
The dispute documented here is rarely about the ''numbers''. Almost every researcher discussed below accepts that moving atomic clocks and fast-moving unstable particles behave differently from clocks and particles at rest, and most accept the Lorentz factor as the correct quantitative description of that difference. What they dispute is the ''interpretation'': whether time itself dilates, or whether physical clocks are simply retarded by their motion through a medium or their position in a field; whether the effect is symmetric between two observers, as the relativity principle demands, or asymmetric and absolute, as the experiments appear to show; and whether the experiments routinely cited as confirmation actually test what they are said to test. The archive collected on this wiki contains some fifty papers on the subject, running from 1959 to the present.


==Physics Meaning(s)==
Closely related articles on this wiki treat the paradox in detail &mdash; see [[Twin paradox]] &mdash; and the wider theoretical setting, see [[Special relativity]] and [[Relativity]].


Special relativity’s time dilation is a function of relative velocity which requires that the time dilation effect of Clock A relative to Clock B has to be identical to the time dilation effect of Clock B relative to Clock A since the relative velocity between A and B is equal to the relative velocity between B and A. Hence, the initial reaction, circa 1905 -1916, from physicists was that special relativity’s time dilation described a “just observed” effect much like in optics when twins start together and, as they separate and the distance between them increases, each observes the other as shrinking, but, of course, no physical shrinking is actually occurring. 
== The mainstream account ==


However, after deriving special relativity’s time dilation, Einstein, in that 1905 paper, made an assertion that caused great disagreement among physicists of that era. Einstein claimed that “From this …” <ref>Einstein, Ann. der Phys. 17, 891 (1905).</ref> (clearly referencing time dilation) it followed that if two clocks were at rest together in an inertial frame and then one clock made a round trip away from and back to the other clock, then the “traveling” clock would have accumulated less proper time than the “stationary” clock. This assertion implied that special relativity’s time dilation caused the traveling clock to slow as a function of the relative velocity between the “stay-at-home” clock and the “traveling” clock. At the time, many physicists objected as it seemed contradictory to contend that an inherently symmetric effect would cause an inherently asymmetric physical effect. The resulting controversy was labeled the Clock Paradox and then in 1911 when Langevin <ref>P. Langevin "The Evolution of Space and Time" ("L'évolution de l'espace et du temps"). Scientia 10: 31–54 (1911)</ref> discussed it in terms of the relative aging of twin humans, it became known as the Twin Paradox. For a much more detailed discussion on the Twin Paradox see the article in this Wiki on the Twin Paradox.
Einstein's 1905 paper "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies" derived, from the relativity principle and the postulated constancy of the speed of light, the relation


The net result of the debate showed that interpreting special relativity’s time dilation as causing a physical effect such as a slowing of proper time accumulation inherently led to contradictions. Hence, the logical conclusion was that special relativity’s time dilation needed to be seen as limited to describing “just observed” effects (i.e., both observers observe the other’s clock to be running slow without there being any necessary implication about relative proper time accumulation rates).
:<math>T = \frac{T_o}{\sqrt{1 - \frac{v^2}{c^2}}}</math>


==Logic Problem For Time Dilation Describing Proper Time==
connecting the time <math>T_o</math> elapsed on a clock at rest in one inertial frame with the time <math>T</math> assigned to it in a frame moving at relative velocity <math>v</math>. Because the expression depends only on the ''relative'' velocity, and because that relative velocity is the same for either observer, the effect as derived is reciprocal: each of two observers in uniform relative motion finds the other's clock to be running slow. The associated result, the relativity of simultaneity, means the two observers also disagree about which distant events happen at the same moment; see [[Simultaneity]].


Let us have clocks at rest in two inertial frames A and B which are moving at relative velocity v relative to each other. Using the interpretation of special relativity time dilation that says clocks run slow (i.e., accumulate proper time more slowly) as a function of their relative velocity with respect to each other, then, if we apply that interpretation consistently, special relativity says that clocks in A run slower than clocks in B AND clocks in B run slower than clocks in A. This is not merely “counterintuitive”, but rather it’s a logic contradiction.  
In the same 1905 paper Einstein went further and asserted that if two clocks initially together are separated, one making a round trip and returning, the travelled clock will have accumulated less time than the one that stayed behind. This introduces an ''asymmetry'' that the symmetric derivation does not obviously supply, and it produced the long controversy known as the clock paradox, renamed the twin paradox after Langevin's 1911 popular presentation. The mainstream resolution assigns the asymmetry to the travelling clock's change of inertial frame &mdash; its acceleration or turnaround &mdash; and treats the reciprocity of the uniform-motion phases as unproblematic. That argument is treated at length in [[Twin paradox]].


==Empirical Data==
General relativity adds a second, distinct effect: gravitational time dilation, in which a clock lower in a gravitational potential runs slow relative to one higher up. The two effects have opposite signs for an orbiting satellite, whose velocity slows it and whose altitude speeds it up.


Instead of the empirical data supporting special relativity’s construct of time dilation, it instead supports Lorentz Relativity’s clock retardation which says that clocks will slow as a function of absolute velocity with respect to a single, preferred frame.
The standard experimental case rests on four families of result. First, the extended lifetimes of fast unstable particles &mdash; muons produced by cosmic rays in the upper atmosphere reaching the ground in numbers far larger than their 2.2&nbsp;&micro;s rest lifetime would allow, and mesons circulated in accelerator storage rings. Second, the Mössbauer-effect experiments of Pound and Rebka and of Hay, Schiffer, Cranshaw and Egelstaff, which measured frequency shifts due to thermal motion and to rotation. Third, the 1971 Hafele&ndash;Keating experiment, in which caesium clocks were flown east and west around the world and compared with clocks left at the U.S. Naval Observatory. Fourth, the operation of the satellite navigation systems, whose clock corrections are computed from both the velocity and the gravitational terms; see [[GPS]].


Relativists erroneously claim that the empirical data supports the interpretation of special relativity’s time dilation that describes symmetrically changing proper time accumulation rates - however, since that interpretation leads to logic contradictions, it is not a viable interpretation – in addition, much of the empirical data is also at odds with this interpretation. A discussion of the various categories of empirical data supporting clock retardation as a function of absolute velocity and how that data has been erroneously interpreted by relativists is discussed below.
On the received account these results, taken together, establish that time dilation is a real physical effect and not merely a way of speaking. Everything that follows is the case made on this wiki that this conclusion is either unproven, incorrectly interpreted, or replaceable by a physical mechanism that requires no dilation of time at all.


===Particle Accelerators===
== Reciprocity: symmetric appearance or asymmetric fact? ==


In both linear and circular particle accelerators, the half-life of particles has been shown to increase as a function of their increasing velocity with respect to a single, preferred frame, thus confirming Lorentz’s asymmetric clock retardation.
The oldest and most frequently repeated objection here is that the two things special relativity is said to establish cannot both be true at once. If clock A runs slow relative to clock B ''and'' clock B runs slow relative to clock A, the effect cannot describe an accumulation of proper time; and if the effect does not describe an accumulation of proper time, it cannot by itself account for one clock returning younger than the other.


Relativists claim that the logically invalid interpretation of special relativity’s time dilation that describes symmetrically  changing proper time accumulation rates has been confirmed. However, the data is analyzed from the point of view of a single frame – at CERN and most other accelerators, that single frame is the Earth Centered Inertial frame.
[[Nick Percival]] states the objection directly in [[Data That Allegedly Proves Special Relativity Disproves It]] (2013), which analyses the GPS, Hafele&ndash;Keating and muon-decay data and argues that they do not support special relativity's time dilation and in places count against it. In [[Analyzing Special Relativity’s Time Dilation Within The Context of Lorentz Relativity|Analyzing Special Relativity's Time Dilation Within The Context of Lorentz Relativity]] (2016) he sets out the alternative he prefers: Lorentz relativity, in which clock retardation is a function of absolute velocity with respect to a single preferred frame, is a valid theory; special relativity, he argues, altered it by adding the constant-velocity-of-light principle and the claim that every inertial frame reproduces the properties of that one preferred frame.


===Muon Decay In The Atmosphere5===
[[Raymond H Gallucci]] argues in [[Time Dilation in Relativity]] (2013, also published as [[TIME DILATION IN RELATIVITY|"Time Dilation in Relativity"]]) that the effect is apparent only &mdash; that when one frame moves relative to another at constant speed, it merely ''appears'' that its clock runs slow. He makes the case with a worked box-and-flashes construction in which simultaneous flashes at the two ends of a box are used to fix the "true" length for comparison.
The earthbound observer sees muons created in the upper atmosphere as byproducts of high energy cosmic ray proton impacts with atomic nuclei. Due to the thickness of the atmosphere and the very short half-life of the muon, very few such muons would be expected to reach the earth's surface (only 1 in every 10138). However, a great quantity of muons do reach the earth and even penetrate 100s of meters into the earth. This experimental result is interpreted as proof of special relativity's (symmetric) time dilation, but this is not a logically consistent interpretation. It is also not mentioned by relativists that this empirical data directly supports the alternative, Lorentz Relativity’s clock retardation.  


It's claimed by relativists that it’s special relativity’s time dilation, that gives the muon's "clock" much more time for the "high speed" muon to decay and that gives the muon more time to traverse the depth of the earth's atmosphere. To be consistent with special relativity, it is claimed that from the high speed muon's frame, it would appear that muons that are moving slowly with respect to the earth would be observed to have a much longer decay rate than the high speed muons. The fact that, according to special relativity, both sets of clocks experience time dilation with respect to inertial frames that have speeds very near to the other set of muons can allegedly be explained in terms of relative simultaneity and the different views of what's simultaneous with the event of muon creation in the upper atmosphere and the event of that muon reaching the earth.  
[[Allen D Allen]] examined the same problem in "Time Dilation and the Spatial Interval for which dx/dt is Speed" (1988), starting from the requirement that the relativity principle makes the speed of A with respect to B identical to the speed of B with respect to A for every ordered pair, and asking over what spatial interval the derivative dx/dt is a speed at all.


However, since this phenomenon involves a threshold event, namely, the decay or non-decay of the muon, the phenomenon cannot be explained by relative simultaneity or in terms of special relativity - this is, in general, true of allegedly relative velocity dependent, physical effects that involves a threshold.
[[Wen-Xiu Li]], in [[Problems with the Special Theory of Relativity|Problems with the Special Theory of Relativity]] (2001), pursues a more foundational line: that the relativity principle as Einstein interpreted it conflicts with the uniqueness of the Universe; that the light principle contains a tacit assumption leading to self-contradiction; and that the Lorentz transformation rests not on the light principle but on a general time&ndash;space dependence, and has never been shown to be necessary or unique. [[Zbigniew Modrzejewski]] revisits the same postulate in [[A revision of the principle of relativity]] (2013) by way of thought experiments bearing on the time dilation effect.


In the current case, either the muons are traveling at greater than the speed of light in the earth frame, which is not consistent with special relativity, or their half-life has been physically and asymmetrically extended between the event of being created in the upper atmosphere and the event of reaching the earth. The asymmetry is established NOT by the earth observer determining the time between the two events of muon creation and the muon reaching the earth and then concluding the muon's clock is running slow. Instead, the asymmetric slowing is based on two absolute facts. We note that the atmosphere is approximately 20km thick and since the maximum speed for the muon is at most c (299,792,458 meters per second), that means it would take approximately 700μs for the fastest muon to traverse the entire thickness of the atmosphere. However, the mean lifetime of a muon at rest is just 2.2μs so the "high speed" muon clocks must be slowed by a factor of at least 300 to reach the surface of the earth. (While we discuss the logic in terms of a single muon, it also holds when viewed as a statistical argument about a large set of muons. If we look at the set of all cosmic ray created muons heading toward the earth, we find that their "clocks" have to be physically slowed in order to account for the number of muons that actually do reach the earth's surface.)
[[Cynthia Kolb Whitney]] takes up the tension between the two things the theory is asked to do in [[The Twins, the Mesons, and the Paradox]] (1997): the prediction appears well validated by the slow decay of rapidly moving unstable particles, and yet leads to a paradox that confounds ordinary logic.


Thus, the asymmetric physical slowing is established by using two absolute facts, namely, the upper limit speed of c (according to special relativity) and the fact that the muon successfully survived its trip from the upper atmosphere to the surface of the earth and perhaps beyond. This cannot be explained as a "just observed" phenomenon which is observer dependent. The survival of the muons and their reaching the surface of the earth is an absolute fact - an observer independent fact. The percentage of high atmosphere muons that reach the surface of the earth is an absolute fact - an observer independent fact. The velocity of cosmic ray produced muons relative to the earth's atmosphere must be less than c, according to special relativity. So the only way to avoid concluding that the high atmosphere muons' clocks don't physically, asymmetrically slow with respect to the muons that move slowly with respect to the earth is to claim that special relativity's length contraction means the atmosphere is physically, asymmetrically contracted - otherwise the muons won't physically survive the trip. In fact, Wikipedia and many relativists invoke this solution. Wikipedia says, "From the viewpoint (inertial frame) of the muon, on the other hand, it is the length contraction effect of special relativity which allows this penetration, since in the muon frame, its lifetime is unaffected, but the length contraction causes distances through the atmosphere and Earth to be far shorter than these distances in the Earth rest-frame."
[[Curtis E Renshaw]] attacks the assumption underneath the reciprocity in [[A Test of Relativistic Simultaneity]] (2016), proposing a concrete test of the relativistic claim that two relatively moving observers instantaneously collocated will see light from a distant event at the same place and time &mdash; the assumption embedded in Einstein's train-and-embankment argument, and the one that led to length contraction and time dilation for the moving observer.


Unfortunately, this frame dependent approach about what’s observed doesn’t begin to address the observer independent argument about absolute facts regarding the threshold event of surviving (or not surviving) the passage through the earth’s atmosphere and reaching the earth. [Another example of how threshold events show that special relativity cannot be describing physical effects, as opposed to just observations, is given at the "Two Step Argument #2" page at TwinParadox.net.]
== The clock paradox ==


Thus, we see that muons created by cosmic ray collisions in the upper atmosphere reach the earth's surface because there is an absolute, asymmetric, physical slowing of those muons' clocks when compared to the clocks of muons that are moving slowly with respect to the ECI frame. This asymmetric, physical slowing of clocks as a function of velocity with respect to the earth's frame cannot be explained by special relativity's constructs that are functions of (symmetric) relative velocity.
The clock or twin paradox is treated in full in [[Twin paradox]]; what follows is the part of the archive that bears specifically on time dilation.


===GPS===
[[Julio Palacios]] argued in [[The Clock Paradox and the Possibility of a New Theory of Relativity]] (1959, ''Revista de la Academia de Ciencias Exactas, Físicas y Naturales de Madrid'') that the paradox pointed beyond special relativity to the possibility of a new theory of relativity altogether. [[Franco Selleri]] reached a comparable conclusion from his own "inertial" transformations in [[Space and Time Physics with the Lorentz Ether: The Clock Paradox]] (2004): those transformations, he argued, describe the empirical data better than special relativity does and eliminate the paradox-generating features of the theory by restoring a privileged inertial frame in which the Lorentz ether is at rest.
GPS uses a physical model built on physical asymmetric clock retardation as a function of velocity with respect to a unique frame, namely, the ECI (Earth Centered Inertial) frame.1  GPS uses the velocity of its satellite clocks with respect to the ECI frame and the velocity of earthbound clocks with respect to the ECI frame to determine how much each clock has slowed relative to a clock at rest in the ECI frame and then computes the ratio of those rates to compare the expected satellite clocks’ rates to the earth clock rates.1 As discussed above, even though one is using an equation that looks like special relativity’s time dilation and one is using velocity "relative" to the ECI frame, one is NOT actually using special relativity time dilation.  


GPS uses the rotational velocity of the satellite clocks and the rotational velocity of the earthbound clocks relative to the (non-rotating) ECI frame and computes how much each set of clocks would slow relative to hypothetical clocks at rest in the ECI frame. Next, GPS uses those two ratios of the clocks relative to a 3rd party clock (the hypothetical clock at rest in the ECI frame) to compute the ratio of the satellite clock rate to the earthbound clock rate to determine the relative velocity effect.  
[[J W Rush]] examined the historical record in [[Einstein?s Unsuccessful 1918 Attempt to Resolve SRT?s Clock Paradox|Einstein's Unsuccessful 1918 Attempt to Resolve SRT's Clock Paradox]] (2006), noting that by 1918 Einstein had recognised major difficulties in the 1905 theory and published an obscure paper attempting to correct some of them &mdash; a paper which, on Rush's reading, does not do the job intended. Steve Brown's "A Note Regarding Relativity" (1991) takes the opposite tack, using what he identifies as a minor error in the 1905 paper to resolve the twin paradox while explicitly presuming the transformation formulae correct.


This procedure is used not just for a complete orbit but for every part of the (non-circular) orbit as the rotational velocity varies so the methodology must work for each very small segment of the orbit to get the very high precision GPS applications require – particularly the newer applications. If special relativity could be used with GPS that would require that the high precision results could be obtained for each very small segment using any arbitrarily chosen inertial frame and not just limited to using a single, preferred frame, namely, the ECI frame.  
[[Peter Hayes]] approached the controversy as a historian and political scientist. [[The Ideology of Relativity: The Case of the Clock Paradox]] (2009) revisits the interwar school of thought that repudiated relativity on grounds of elementary inconsistency. Because some of those critics held extreme right-wing and anti-Semitic views, Hayes argues, their technical objections have been dismissed as scientifically shallow; he investigates the alternative possibility that the critics were right on the technical point, and that relativity overcame them through its strengths as an ideology rather than as a science.


However, it’s easy to show that special relativity cannot, in general, do that. As a purely hypothetical example selected for clarity of exposition of the concept, consider two satellite  clocks A & B together at rest, but then A & B start moving in orbits of opposite direction at rotational velocity v with respect to the ECI frame. Let’s examine the situation of a very small segment centered at point X where clocks for A & B & ECI are arbitrarily close. ECI would see both A and B moving away from itself with (tangential) velocity v (albeit in opposite directions). So ECI would compute that both clocks slowed down with respect to the ECI clock by the same amount and, hence, would conclude that the two clocks, A & B, had the same rate. Let’s now use special relativity with another inertial frame D which has the same velocity as the A clock at point X when Clock A and B pass arbitrarily close to each other at point X. Then the time dilation calculations using the inertial D frame would be quite different than for the ECI frame as it would calculate that the B clock rate was much, much  slower than the A clock rate. [As an aside, let’s look at small enough segments of clock A’s & clock B’s orbits that we can say, as relativists often do, that clock A & clock B approximate being in an inertial frame near enough for special relativity and then for the two examples given above we have, using special relativity, inertial frame A and inertial frame B giving contradictory results about time dilation not only with each other but also with the ECI frame and with frame D.
Witold Nawrot offers a reconstruction rather than a refutation in [[Explanation of twin paradox according to the Euclidean Reality model]] (2013), in which the four-dimensional Euclidean Reality model is used to show why time dilation is symmetrical for both twins during uniform rectilinear motion, and under what circumstances a dilation is actually measured in one twin's system.


Hence, trying to use special relativity’s relative velocity conruct would not only, in general, give the wrong answer for GPS, but it would also give multiple, contradictory answers depending on which inertial frame one chose to use as the base for calculations. All of this is straightforward and readily understandable to anyone not wedded to special relativity, yet it goes unheeded. As is the case with many new ideas in science, it can take a very long time to accept. Despite well-meaning claims to the contrary, GPS does not use the special relativity physics model, but instead uses the construct of velocity with respect to a single, preferred frame – this has been confirmed by GPS designers and consultants who have focused on this issue(Ron Hatch & Van Flandern References).
Not every contribution here is critical. [[Chalmers W Sherwin]]'s [[Some Recent Experimental Tests of the "Clock Paradox"|Some Recent Experimental Tests of the "Clock Paradox"]] (1960) argued that the Pound&ndash;Rebka measurement of the temperature dependence of the Mössbauer effect in Fe<sup>57</sup>, and the rotating-drum experiment of Hay, Schiffer, Cranshaw and Egelstaff, supplied the first direct experimental verification of the time-keeping properties of accelerated clocks of the kind that occur in the classic clock paradox.


Observations from particle accelerators and atmospheric muons reaching the earth just give data gathered from one frame, the ECI frame, and do NOT give data from the “moving” particle perspective. As such, these sources do not directly address the issue of whether time dilation is symmetric (i.e., “just observed”) or asymmetric (i.e., physical). GPS data shows that time dilation (or rather clock retardation) is unquestionably asymmetric and physical – absolute velocity does affect clock rate.
== Clock retardation in a preferred frame ==


In addition to the above, the GPS data shows that both the asymmetric physical proper time accumulation rate of atomic clocks and the observed rate are NOT, in general, dependent on relative velocity, but instead are dependent on their individual absolute velocities with respect to a single, preferred frame.
The most widely held alternative on this wiki is not that the experiments are wrong but that they measure something else: a physically produced retardation of clock ''mechanisms'' moving through a medium or with respect to a preferred frame, leaving time itself untouched. On this view the Lorentz factor is retained and the metaphysics is discarded. See [[Aether]] for the medium itself.


===Hafele-Keating Experiment===
[[Joseph Levy]] gives the position its clearest statement in [[Aether-Theory Clock Retardation vs Special Relativity Time Dilation]] (2008). Assuming an aether not entrained by the motion of celestial bodies, he argues that the readings of moving clocks result from two separate facts: the clocks tick more slowly than in the aether frame because they move through the aether, and the usual synchronisation procedures generate a synchronism discrepancy. Contrary to special relativity, he insists, time itself is not affected by motion.


The Hafele-Keating experiment, which was conducted prior to the GPS system being implemented, compares the proper time accumulation rates of atomic clocks at rest on the surface of the earth with the rates of airborne atomic clocks that were flown around the earth - some in an easterly direction and some in a westerly direction. As such, it mimics the time dilation physics of GPS and is subject to all the comments above regarding GPS.
[[Thomas G Barnes]] and Francisco S. Ramirez make the same substitution in [[Velocity Effects on Atomic Clocks and the Time Question]] (1982), presenting the experimental and theoretical work of [[Herbert E Ives]] as the logical alternative to special relativity. Rotational experiments, they argue, indicate a light-bearing medium and thereby refute the foundations of the theory; relativity's time dilation is replaced by a physically produced clock-rate reduction when clocks move through the reference medium, and the common-sense concept of time is upheld as a fundamental quantity of science.


==What’s the Official Academic Position on Special Relativity’s Time Dilation?==
[[Chong-Wu Guo]] reaches the same conclusion by a different route in [[Research on the Crossed Doppler Effect in Classical Physics]] (2007), reconstructing the Doppler effect of light in an ether space from momentum conservation and the Planck relation, obtaining a crossed Doppler effect within Newtonian space and time, and concluding that the Larmor&ndash;Lorentz hypothesis that clocks moving relative to the ether run slow needs reconsideration.


First, as stated above, the de facto, non-official position, obtained by reading physics textbooks and physics journals and by seeing what’s taught in physics classrooms of leading colleges and universities, is that both, mutually exclusive interpretations of special relativity’s time dilation described above are held to be valid.
[[John-Erik Persson]] dispenses with the effect entirely. In [[Dilatory Dilation]] (2011) he abandons the sound-wave analogy for light in favour of a strict wave model and concludes that time dilation is simply not needed. In two later papers, "Fundamental Error behind Time Dilation" (2019) and "Fundamental Error behind Paradoxes in Physics" (2019), he traces the invention of time dilation to a false interpretation of the Michelson&ndash;Morley result and argues that the denial of the ether, together with confusion between wave and particle descriptions of light, is what produced the twin paradox and the other paradoxes of modern physics.


To resolve that dilemma, a number of German scientists have put in multiple requests to get the official interpretation of special relativity’s time dilation from the Albert Einstein Institute (AEI) in Germany. The AEI has been designated by the German government as the official spokes-organization on relativity and, by law, is supposed to answer such questions. The AEI has continually refused to give an official interpretation of special relativity’s time dilation – presumably because they are aware that any of three possible answers supporting special relativity will prove to be problematic.
Cameron Rebigsol argues in [[Relativity Is Self-Defeated(3 of 3) —Lorentz Factor, Aberration, and Ether|Relativity Is Self-Defeated (3 of 3): Lorentz Factor, Aberration, and Ether]] (2016) that the Lorentz factor is an inseparable mathematical consequence of aberration &mdash; which he regards as an illusion appearing whenever an observer moves relative to the light source examined &mdash; and that a proper analysis of aberration returns one to the ether.


==Summary==
[[John R Warfield]], in [[The Speed of Light, the ?Tic Rate? of Atomic Clocks, and the Earth Centered Inertial Frame|The Speed of Light, the "Tic Rate" of Atomic Clocks, and the Earth Centered Inertial Frame]] (2007), postulates that the Earth-centred non-rotating inertial frame is the preferred frame for both the speed of light and the tick rate of atomic clocks, and that these are two separate processes related only indirectly, through that common frame. See also [[Speed of Light]].
In recent decades, high precision GPS data has shown that neither relativist interpretation of special relativity’s time dilation is correct. Instead, both the observed and actual clock rate is a function of absolute velocity relative to a single, preferred frame which, in the vicinity of the earth is, at least approximately, the Earth Centered Inertial (ECI) frame. Such findings are consistent with all prior empirical data.  


However, since physics academia remains convinced that special relativity is correct, most relativists explicitly or implicitly espouse both the “just observed” AND the asymmetric, physical effect interpretations of special relativity’s time dilation even though they are mutually exclusive and both have been disproved by the empirical data and the physical interpretation has been shown to have fatal logic flaws. 
== What the atomic-clock experiments actually measure ==


It is hoped that some of today’s physics students will avail themselves of the thousands of publications based on critical thinking on special relativity’s time dilation and on special relativity itself <ref>G.O Mueller, 95 Years of Criticism of the Special Theory of Relativity (1908-2003)</ref> so that progress can be made in the future in the areas of spacetime physics and its use in associated disciplines such as astronomy and cosmology
=== Hafele&ndash;Keating ===


==References==
[[Louis Essen]] &mdash; whose own field was caesium time standards &mdash; published a short, sharp criticism in [[Atomic Clocks Coming and Going]] (1977), objecting that in their theoretical discussion the authors of the flying-clock experiment ignore detailed and fully documented criticisms of Einstein's relativity which had been made and had not been refuted.


[[Category:Time]]
[[Dennis J McCarthy]] pressed a technical objection in [[The Hafele-Keating Contradiction]] (1997). Hafele and Keating, in interpreting their own result, preferred a reference frame having the same angular velocity as the Earth in its orbit; but, as Swift and Pellegrini pointed out in the ''American Journal of Physics'' in August 1995, "it is not true that special relativity can be applied if the angular velocity is small enough or the radius is large enough." A more defensible choice of frame, McCarthy argued, produces a contradiction with the theory the experiment is said to confirm.
 
McCarthy developed the argument into a positive case for the Lorentzian reading in [[The Orbiting Clock Paradox: Should the Lorentzian View Be Preferred?]] (1999). Experiments confirm that a circling observer sees a stationary inertial clock at the centre of the circle run ''fast''. For a large enough circle one can always posit a co-moving inertial "lab partner", co-located with and essentially stationary relative to the circling observer for a finite period; the circling observer, using the relativistic Doppler equation, must nevertheless conclude that the central clock runs fast with respect to his own stationary clocks.
 
=== GPS and satellite clocks ===
 
Satellite navigation is the centrepiece of the case made here, because it is the one application in which clock rates are compared continuously and to very high precision. The argument, made by Percival among others, is that the corrections are computed from each clock's velocity with respect to a single frame &mdash; the Earth-Centred Inertial frame &mdash; and not from the relative velocity of one clock with respect to another, which is what special relativity's time dilation is a function of. The equation used resembles Einstein's, but the quantity fed into it is an absolute velocity, and choosing a different inertial frame for the calculation would give different and mutually contradictory answers for the same pair of satellites. On this reading the navigation systems are evidence for asymmetric, physical clock retardation with respect to a preferred frame, not for reciprocal time dilation. See [[GPS]].
 
[[Viraj Fernando]] proposes a mechanism for the satellite clock rates in [[Internal Momentum Changes Manifesting as Clock Rate Changes in GPS Clocks]] (2009). His complaint is that physical theories have treated bodies as mass points without internal structure, and are therefore unable to consider how the internal energy (''mc''<sup>2</sup>) and internal momentum (''mc'') of a body interact with applied momentum, or how internal momentum functions in gravitational processes. Once those internal changes are made visible, he argues, the clock-rate changes cease to look bizarre.
 
[[Ruyong Wang]] approached the question experimentally. In [[From the triangle Sagnac experiment to a practical, crucial experiment of the constancy of the speed of light using atomic clocks on moving objects]] (''Europhysics Letters'' 43, 1998) he takes as his starting point the triangle Sagnac experiment, in which the light travel times between two points A and B in circular motion differ by &Delta;''t''&nbsp;=&nbsp;2''V''<sub>D</sub>''L''/''c''<sup>2</sup>, and proposes to use atomic clocks on moving objects as a crucial test of the constancy of the speed of light. See [[Sagnac Effect]].
 
[[Howard C Hayden]] examined the rotating-Mössbauer family in [[Rotating Mossbauer Experiments and the Speed of Light]] (1992). Champeney's 1963 experiment was performed as a first-order test of ether velocity despite an earlier proof that the ether-velocity effect and the Lorentz time-dilation effect cancel exactly at first order. But, Hayden notes, the experiments show that clock rates are determined by velocity with respect to non-rotating geocentric coordinates, so the first-order time-dilation term reappears and must be balanced by something else if agreement with the measurement is to be recovered.
 
[[Carroll O Alley]]'s [[Investigations with Lasers, Atomic Clocks and Computer Calculations of Curved Spacetime and of the Differences Between the Gravitation Theories of Yilmaz and of Einstein]] (1994) uses laser ranging and atomic clocks to look for observable differences between Einstein's field equations and Yilmaz's alternative theory of gravitation, noting that the form of Einstein's field equations &mdash; in particular the exclusion of the gravitational field's own stress-energy from the source term &mdash; is an assumption rather than a derivation.
 
== Mesons, muons and particle lifetimes ==
 
The extended lifetime of fast particles is the experimental result most often presented as decisive. Several researchers here accept the measurement and reject the interpretation.
 
[[Donald T MacRoberts]] put the case bluntly in [[The "Time Dilation" of Mesons Re-Examined]] (1992): the high-velocity meson experiments at CERN and elsewhere are definite evidence that meson lifetime is a function of velocity ''with respect to the Earth'', and have nothing whatever to do with the time dilation of special relativity. He read them additionally as ether-drift investigations, returning the usual answer &mdash; that the Earth's velocity with respect to a fundamental frame is zero.
 
[[Thierry De Mees]] supplies a mechanism in [[On the Origin of the Lifetime Dilation of High Velocity Mesons]] (2010). Applying gravitomagnetism (his "gyrotation", the Heaviside&ndash;Maxwell analogy for gravity) to fast particles, he finds a physical cause of the lifetime extension in a self-induction effect rather than a delay of time. He notes two further points: that the observed lifetime dilation has been found not to correspond exactly to the predictions of special relativity, and that neither special nor general relativity has ever supplied a physical mechanism at all.
 
[[Al F Kracklauer]] reaches a similar destination from relativistic electrodynamics. In [[Action-at-a-Distance on the Light Cone]] (2006) he presents a modified Wheeler&ndash;Feynman action-at-a-distance formulation stripped of advanced interaction and of asymmetric ageing, and reports initial results of an analysis of muon-decay time-dilation experiments showing the effect to be a space-time perspective effect that does not contribute to asymmetric ageing &mdash; that is, one that does not produce a twin paradox.
 
[[Harry Hamlin Ricker]] surveys the evidence generally in [[Empirical Verification of Time Dilation in Special Relativity]] (2011), reassessing the usual reading of the constancy postulate as implying a change in the structure of space and time, and concluding that with respect to the experimental evidence the interpretations offered within special relativity are neither logically consistent nor supported by the facts of experiment.
 
== Deriving the physics without time dilation ==
 
A distinct group of contributors does not attack the experiments at all. Their claim is that the working content of relativistic physics can be derived without the kinematic effects, which makes those effects dispensable.
 
[[Nizar Hamdan]] has pursued this programme most systematically. In [[Abandoning the Ideas of Length Contraction and Time Dilation]] (2003) he shows that bringing the three-vector Lorentz force law inside special relativity allows the fundamental relativistic equations for a charged particle to be derived without the Lorentz transformation, and hence without its kinematic consequences &mdash; length contraction and time dilation. The invariance of the speed of light, he argues, can then be interpreted in a way that does not depend on the properties of space-time. He extends the method in [[On the Interpretation of the Doppler Effect in Special Relativity Theory]] (2006), calculating the relativistic Doppler effect from the Lorentz force law and the relativity principle alone, and recovering an intrinsic particle energy that restores compatibility with de Broglie's wave theory.
 
[[Kjell Prytz]] takes a related approach in [[Force Between Electric Charges: a New Approach to Relativity Theory]] (2007), introducing relativity from the electric and magnetic forces and deriving time dilation without using the concept of light at all.
 
[[Declan Traill]] models the effect physically rather than eliminating it. [[On the Quantum-Wave Nature of Relativistic Time Dilation and Length Contraction]] (2010) explains the kinematic effects of both the special and general theories in terms of the wave nature of matter and light and the way those waves propagate through space, which he offers as a possible route to integrating relativity with quantum mechanics.
 
[[Vivian Pope]] and [[Anthony D Osborne]] derive the effect from a different foundation in [[Orbital Time Dilation]] (2008). Their Pope&ndash;Osborne Angular Momentum Synthesis postulates that all motion is naturally orbital and that orbital angular momentum is holistically conserved; from this they obtain the standard special-relativistic time dilation formula more economically and predict orbital time dilation effects identical to those of general relativity, but without any reference to the Einstein field equations.
 
[[Oleg D Jefimenko]], author of a well-regarded textbook on electricity and magnetism, treated invariance, length contraction and time dilation as consequences of the electrodynamics of moving charge rather than as postulates about space and time; his approach is discussed in [[Jefimenko Paper Reviews]] (2000).
 
== Gravitational time dilation ==
 
The gravitational effect attracts a smaller but more pointed literature.
 
[[Vyacheslav N Streltsov]] argues in [[The Crash of General Relativity: General-Relativistic Time Dilation Contradicts Gravitational Time Slowing Experiments]] (2001) that general-relativistic time, like special-relativistic time, comes out ''larger'' than proper time &mdash; and that this conclusion is contradicted by the experiments on gravitational time slowing that are supposed to confirm it.
 
[[John Philip Claybourne]] offers a substitution rather than a refutation in [[A New Analysis of Time Dilation]] (1990). He observes that in every experiment in which the moving-clock prediction has been verified, the clocks were subjected to significant accelerations; clocks run slow when accelerated, by the equivalence principle of general relativity, and this predicts results consistent both with special relativity and with the observations. The attraction of the alternative, he argues, is that it is independent of those conclusions of special relativity that have only ever been postulated.
 
[[Don Savage]] pursued an unorthodox experimental line in [[Measuring Local Time Dilation Using Sandglass Egg Timers]] (1987), proposing that the effects of time dilation extend some distance out from the system experiencing them, communicated through potential fields such as gravity. He presents data which he reads as showing that certain devices can alter inertial time, as suggesting the existence of "time waves", and as indicating that the phenomenon is at least partly reversible.
 
== Cosmological time dilation ==
 
A separate front concerns the claim that the light curves of distant type Ia supernovae are stretched by cosmological time dilation, which is treated as direct evidence for the expansion of the universe.
 
[[Ari Brynjolfsson]] argues that the effect is absent. In [[Plasma Redshift, Time Dilation, and Supernovas Ia]] (2004) he shows that conventional physics including plasma redshift fully explains the observed magnitude&ndash;redshift relation of the supernovae, with the Hubble constant as the only parameter &mdash; against the several adjustable parameters (an initial explosion, a dark-matter parameter, a time-adjustable dark-energy parameter) that the expanding-universe account requires. In [[Magnitude-Redshift Relation for SNe Ia, Time Dilation, and Plasma Redshift]] (2006) he extends the analysis to the SNLS data, obtaining a standard deviation of about 0.14 magnitudes from the plasma-redshift curve, and concludes that the data indicate there is no cosmic time dilation and that big-bang cosmology therefore appears false. See [[Redshift]], [[Dark Matter]] and [[Big Bang]].
 
[[Lyndon E Ashmore]] reaches the same conclusion from the low-redshift end. [[Supernovae Ia Light Curves Show a Static Universe]] (2012) points out that high-redshift light-curve broadening is the only direct evidence for expansion and is routinely used to dismiss [[Tired Light]] theories, but that the papers making the argument confine themselves to high redshifts. Reviewing the supernova ageing data at smaller redshifts, and allowing for Malmquist bias and for the fact that intrinsically brighter type Ia supernovae have intrinsically broader light curves, he argues that the mainstream evidence itself points to a static universe.
 
== Experiments claimed to contradict time dilation ==
 
[[Peter Ripota]] reports a direct experimental challenge in [[Einstein's Time Dilation Experimentally Refuted]] (2009). He describes an experiment performed at CERN in 1996 by Antoine Suarez and Valerio Scarani, in which a laser beam was sent into a potassium niobate crystal to produce two entangled beams; one was sent to Bernex and the other to Bellevue, about ten kilometres apart, and the detector at Bellevue was rotated rapidly so that its peripheral velocity approached that of light. A time dilation should have followed; Ripota's account is that the expected effect did not appear.
 
[[Michele Barone]]'s [[Ritardo Degli Orologi in Moto (Italian, Time Dilation for Moving Clocks)|"Ritardo degli orologi in moto"]] (2002) treats the retardation of moving clocks in the volume ''La Natura del Tempo: propagazioni super-luminali, paradosso dei gemelli, teletrasporto'', edited by Franco Selleri.
 
== Researchers on this wiki ==
 
* [[Nick Percival]] &mdash; American; foundations of physics; the most sustained analysis here of what the time-dilation data actually show, and of Lorentz relativity as the alternative reading.
* [[Dennis J McCarthy]] &mdash; American researcher; the Hafele&ndash;Keating frame-choice objection and the orbiting-clock argument for the Lorentzian view.
* [[Joseph Levy]] &mdash; French theorist; aether-theory clock retardation plus synchronism discrepancy in place of time dilation.
* [[Louis Essen]] &mdash; English physicist and time-standards specialist; early and unyielding critic of the relativistic interpretation of the flying-clock experiment.
* [[Franco Selleri]] &mdash; Italian physicist; inertial transformations and a privileged frame with the Lorentz ether at rest.
* [[Nizar Hamdan]] &mdash; Syrian physicist; derivation of relativistic dynamics from the Lorentz force law, dispensing with length contraction and time dilation.
* [[Ari Brynjolfsson]] &mdash; Icelandic-American physicist; plasma redshift, and the argument that the supernova data show no cosmic time dilation.
* [[Howard C Hayden]] &mdash; American physicist, editor of ''[[Galilean Electrodynamics]]''; analysis of the rotating-Mössbauer experiments.
* [[Harry Hamlin Ricker]] &mdash; American electrical engineer; assessment of the empirical case for time dilation.
* [[John-Erik Persson]] &mdash; Swedish electrical engineer; strict wave model of light in an ether, in which time dilation is unnecessary.
* [[Thierry De Mees]] &mdash; Belgian engineer; gyro-gravitation as the physical mechanism of meson lifetime extension.
* [[Cynthia Kolb Whitney]] &mdash; American physicist, editor of ''[[Galilean Electrodynamics]]''; the twins, the mesons and the paradox.
* [[Raymond H Gallucci]] &mdash; American nuclear engineer; time dilation as an apparent effect.
* [[Peter Hayes]] &mdash; British academic; the clock paradox as a case study in the ideology of relativity.
* [[Ruyong Wang]] &mdash; Chinese-American physicist; Sagnac-based crucial experiments with atomic clocks on moving objects.
* [[Julio Palacios]] &mdash; Spanish physicist; the clock paradox as grounds for a new theory of relativity.
* [[Chalmers W Sherwin]] &mdash; American physicist; the Mössbauer experiments as verification of the time-keeping of accelerated clocks.
* [[Kjell Prytz]] &mdash; Swedish physicist; time dilation derived from the forces between charges, without the concept of light.
* [[Declan Traill]] &mdash; Australian researcher; quantum-wave model of the kinematic effects.
* [[Vivian Pope]] and [[Anthony D Osborne]] &mdash; British; orbital time dilation from the Pope&ndash;Osborne Angular Momentum Synthesis.
* [[Lyndon E Ashmore]] &mdash; British physics teacher; supernova light curves and the static universe.
* [[Vyacheslav N Streltsov]] &mdash; Russian physicist; general-relativistic time dilation against the gravitational time-slowing experiments.
* [[Al F Kracklauer]] &mdash; German researcher; muon time dilation as a perspective effect without asymmetric ageing.
* [[Viraj Fernando]] &mdash; Sri Lankan-Canadian independent researcher; internal momentum as the source of GPS clock-rate changes.
* [[Curtis E Renshaw]] &mdash; American electrical engineer; a proposed test of relativistic simultaneity.
* [[Donald T MacRoberts]] &mdash; American researcher; meson lifetimes as a function of velocity relative to the Earth.
* [[John R Warfield]] &mdash; American physician; the Earth-centred inertial frame as preferred frame for light speed and clock rate.
* [[Carroll O Alley]] &mdash; American professor; laser and atomic-clock tests distinguishing the Yilmaz and Einstein gravitation theories.
* [[Wen-Xiu Li]] &mdash; Chinese researcher; foundational problems with the relativity and light principles.
* [[Chong-Wu Guo]] &mdash; Chinese researcher; the crossed Doppler effect in an ether space.
* [[Oleg D Jefimenko]] &mdash; Ukrainian-American physicist; electrodynamic treatment of invariance, contraction and dilation.
* [[Michele Barone]] &mdash; Greek experimental physicist; the retardation of moving clocks.
* [[John Philip Claybourne]] &mdash; American researcher; acceleration and the equivalence principle as the alternative explanation.
* [[Don Savage]] &mdash; American researcher; local time dilation experiments and "time waves".
* [[Peter Ripota]] &mdash; Austrian physicist and author; report of the Suarez&ndash;Scarani entangled-photon experiment.
* [[Zbigniew Modrzejewski]] &mdash; Polish-Canadian philosopher; revision of the principle of relativity.
* [[J W Rush]] &mdash; American researcher; Einstein's 1918 attempt on the clock paradox.
* [[Allen D Allen]] &mdash; reciprocity of speed and the spatial interval over which dx/dt is a speed.
* [[Thomas G Barnes]] &mdash; American professor of physics; clock-rate reduction in a reference medium, following [[Herbert E Ives]].
* [[Witold Nawrot]] &mdash; Polish researcher; the Euclidean Reality model of the twin paradox.
* [[Cameron Rebigsol]] &mdash; Chinese-American researcher; the Lorentz factor as a consequence of aberration.
 
== See also ==
 
* [[Twin paradox]] &mdash; the clock paradox in detail
* [[Special relativity]] and [[Relativity]] &mdash; the theoretical setting
* [[Simultaneity]] &mdash; the companion kinematic claim
* [[GPS]] &mdash; the clock corrections and what frame they are computed in
* [[Sagnac Effect]] &mdash; the rotating-frame light-travel-time asymmetry
* [[Speed of Light]]
* [[Aether]] &mdash; the medium in which most alternative accounts locate clock retardation
* [[Michelson-Morley Experiment]]
* [[Muon]]
* [[Tired Light]], [[Redshift]] and [[Big Bang]] &mdash; the cosmological time-dilation dispute
* [[:Category:Time|Category:Time]] &mdash; the wider literature on the nature of time
 
[[Category:Theory & Models|Time Dilation]]
[[Category:Relativity|Time Dilation]]
[[Category:Time|Time Dilation]]

Revision as of 16:54, 21 July 2026

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Wikipedia Dispute: wikipedia:Time dilation

This Natural Philosophy wiki page disputes content found on Wikipedia page wikipedia:Time dilation


Time dilation is the claim, made by Einstein's theories of relativity, that the rate at which time passes is not the same for all observers: that a clock in motion relative to an observer accumulates less time than the observer's own clock, and that a clock deeper in a gravitational potential runs slow compared with one higher up. It is one of the most widely publicised results in modern physics and one of the most persistently disputed on this wiki.

The dispute documented here is rarely about the numbers. Almost every researcher discussed below accepts that moving atomic clocks and fast-moving unstable particles behave differently from clocks and particles at rest, and most accept the Lorentz factor as the correct quantitative description of that difference. What they dispute is the interpretation: whether time itself dilates, or whether physical clocks are simply retarded by their motion through a medium or their position in a field; whether the effect is symmetric between two observers, as the relativity principle demands, or asymmetric and absolute, as the experiments appear to show; and whether the experiments routinely cited as confirmation actually test what they are said to test. The archive collected on this wiki contains some fifty papers on the subject, running from 1959 to the present.

Closely related articles on this wiki treat the paradox in detail — see Twin paradox — and the wider theoretical setting, see Special relativity and Relativity.

The mainstream account

Einstein's 1905 paper "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies" derived, from the relativity principle and the postulated constancy of the speed of light, the relation

<math>T = \frac{T_o}{\sqrt{1 - \frac{v^2}{c^2}}}</math>

connecting the time <math>T_o</math> elapsed on a clock at rest in one inertial frame with the time <math>T</math> assigned to it in a frame moving at relative velocity <math>v</math>. Because the expression depends only on the relative velocity, and because that relative velocity is the same for either observer, the effect as derived is reciprocal: each of two observers in uniform relative motion finds the other's clock to be running slow. The associated result, the relativity of simultaneity, means the two observers also disagree about which distant events happen at the same moment; see Simultaneity.

In the same 1905 paper Einstein went further and asserted that if two clocks initially together are separated, one making a round trip and returning, the travelled clock will have accumulated less time than the one that stayed behind. This introduces an asymmetry that the symmetric derivation does not obviously supply, and it produced the long controversy known as the clock paradox, renamed the twin paradox after Langevin's 1911 popular presentation. The mainstream resolution assigns the asymmetry to the travelling clock's change of inertial frame — its acceleration or turnaround — and treats the reciprocity of the uniform-motion phases as unproblematic. That argument is treated at length in Twin paradox.

General relativity adds a second, distinct effect: gravitational time dilation, in which a clock lower in a gravitational potential runs slow relative to one higher up. The two effects have opposite signs for an orbiting satellite, whose velocity slows it and whose altitude speeds it up.

The standard experimental case rests on four families of result. First, the extended lifetimes of fast unstable particles — muons produced by cosmic rays in the upper atmosphere reaching the ground in numbers far larger than their 2.2 µs rest lifetime would allow, and mesons circulated in accelerator storage rings. Second, the Mössbauer-effect experiments of Pound and Rebka and of Hay, Schiffer, Cranshaw and Egelstaff, which measured frequency shifts due to thermal motion and to rotation. Third, the 1971 Hafele–Keating experiment, in which caesium clocks were flown east and west around the world and compared with clocks left at the U.S. Naval Observatory. Fourth, the operation of the satellite navigation systems, whose clock corrections are computed from both the velocity and the gravitational terms; see GPS.

On the received account these results, taken together, establish that time dilation is a real physical effect and not merely a way of speaking. Everything that follows is the case made on this wiki that this conclusion is either unproven, incorrectly interpreted, or replaceable by a physical mechanism that requires no dilation of time at all.

Reciprocity: symmetric appearance or asymmetric fact?

The oldest and most frequently repeated objection here is that the two things special relativity is said to establish cannot both be true at once. If clock A runs slow relative to clock B and clock B runs slow relative to clock A, the effect cannot describe an accumulation of proper time; and if the effect does not describe an accumulation of proper time, it cannot by itself account for one clock returning younger than the other.

Nick Percival states the objection directly in Data That Allegedly Proves Special Relativity Disproves It (2013), which analyses the GPS, Hafele–Keating and muon-decay data and argues that they do not support special relativity's time dilation and in places count against it. In Analyzing Special Relativity's Time Dilation Within The Context of Lorentz Relativity (2016) he sets out the alternative he prefers: Lorentz relativity, in which clock retardation is a function of absolute velocity with respect to a single preferred frame, is a valid theory; special relativity, he argues, altered it by adding the constant-velocity-of-light principle and the claim that every inertial frame reproduces the properties of that one preferred frame.

Raymond H Gallucci argues in Time Dilation in Relativity (2013, also published as "Time Dilation in Relativity") that the effect is apparent only — that when one frame moves relative to another at constant speed, it merely appears that its clock runs slow. He makes the case with a worked box-and-flashes construction in which simultaneous flashes at the two ends of a box are used to fix the "true" length for comparison.

Allen D Allen examined the same problem in "Time Dilation and the Spatial Interval for which dx/dt is Speed" (1988), starting from the requirement that the relativity principle makes the speed of A with respect to B identical to the speed of B with respect to A for every ordered pair, and asking over what spatial interval the derivative dx/dt is a speed at all.

Wen-Xiu Li, in Problems with the Special Theory of Relativity (2001), pursues a more foundational line: that the relativity principle as Einstein interpreted it conflicts with the uniqueness of the Universe; that the light principle contains a tacit assumption leading to self-contradiction; and that the Lorentz transformation rests not on the light principle but on a general time–space dependence, and has never been shown to be necessary or unique. Zbigniew Modrzejewski revisits the same postulate in A revision of the principle of relativity (2013) by way of thought experiments bearing on the time dilation effect.

Cynthia Kolb Whitney takes up the tension between the two things the theory is asked to do in The Twins, the Mesons, and the Paradox (1997): the prediction appears well validated by the slow decay of rapidly moving unstable particles, and yet leads to a paradox that confounds ordinary logic.

Curtis E Renshaw attacks the assumption underneath the reciprocity in A Test of Relativistic Simultaneity (2016), proposing a concrete test of the relativistic claim that two relatively moving observers instantaneously collocated will see light from a distant event at the same place and time — the assumption embedded in Einstein's train-and-embankment argument, and the one that led to length contraction and time dilation for the moving observer.

The clock paradox

The clock or twin paradox is treated in full in Twin paradox; what follows is the part of the archive that bears specifically on time dilation.

Julio Palacios argued in The Clock Paradox and the Possibility of a New Theory of Relativity (1959, Revista de la Academia de Ciencias Exactas, Físicas y Naturales de Madrid) that the paradox pointed beyond special relativity to the possibility of a new theory of relativity altogether. Franco Selleri reached a comparable conclusion from his own "inertial" transformations in Space and Time Physics with the Lorentz Ether: The Clock Paradox (2004): those transformations, he argued, describe the empirical data better than special relativity does and eliminate the paradox-generating features of the theory by restoring a privileged inertial frame in which the Lorentz ether is at rest.

J W Rush examined the historical record in Einstein's Unsuccessful 1918 Attempt to Resolve SRT's Clock Paradox (2006), noting that by 1918 Einstein had recognised major difficulties in the 1905 theory and published an obscure paper attempting to correct some of them — a paper which, on Rush's reading, does not do the job intended. Steve Brown's "A Note Regarding Relativity" (1991) takes the opposite tack, using what he identifies as a minor error in the 1905 paper to resolve the twin paradox while explicitly presuming the transformation formulae correct.

Peter Hayes approached the controversy as a historian and political scientist. The Ideology of Relativity: The Case of the Clock Paradox (2009) revisits the interwar school of thought that repudiated relativity on grounds of elementary inconsistency. Because some of those critics held extreme right-wing and anti-Semitic views, Hayes argues, their technical objections have been dismissed as scientifically shallow; he investigates the alternative possibility that the critics were right on the technical point, and that relativity overcame them through its strengths as an ideology rather than as a science.

Witold Nawrot offers a reconstruction rather than a refutation in Explanation of twin paradox according to the Euclidean Reality model (2013), in which the four-dimensional Euclidean Reality model is used to show why time dilation is symmetrical for both twins during uniform rectilinear motion, and under what circumstances a dilation is actually measured in one twin's system.

Not every contribution here is critical. Chalmers W Sherwin's Some Recent Experimental Tests of the "Clock Paradox" (1960) argued that the Pound–Rebka measurement of the temperature dependence of the Mössbauer effect in Fe57, and the rotating-drum experiment of Hay, Schiffer, Cranshaw and Egelstaff, supplied the first direct experimental verification of the time-keeping properties of accelerated clocks of the kind that occur in the classic clock paradox.

Clock retardation in a preferred frame

The most widely held alternative on this wiki is not that the experiments are wrong but that they measure something else: a physically produced retardation of clock mechanisms moving through a medium or with respect to a preferred frame, leaving time itself untouched. On this view the Lorentz factor is retained and the metaphysics is discarded. See Aether for the medium itself.

Joseph Levy gives the position its clearest statement in Aether-Theory Clock Retardation vs Special Relativity Time Dilation (2008). Assuming an aether not entrained by the motion of celestial bodies, he argues that the readings of moving clocks result from two separate facts: the clocks tick more slowly than in the aether frame because they move through the aether, and the usual synchronisation procedures generate a synchronism discrepancy. Contrary to special relativity, he insists, time itself is not affected by motion.

Thomas G Barnes and Francisco S. Ramirez make the same substitution in Velocity Effects on Atomic Clocks and the Time Question (1982), presenting the experimental and theoretical work of Herbert E Ives as the logical alternative to special relativity. Rotational experiments, they argue, indicate a light-bearing medium and thereby refute the foundations of the theory; relativity's time dilation is replaced by a physically produced clock-rate reduction when clocks move through the reference medium, and the common-sense concept of time is upheld as a fundamental quantity of science.

Chong-Wu Guo reaches the same conclusion by a different route in Research on the Crossed Doppler Effect in Classical Physics (2007), reconstructing the Doppler effect of light in an ether space from momentum conservation and the Planck relation, obtaining a crossed Doppler effect within Newtonian space and time, and concluding that the Larmor–Lorentz hypothesis that clocks moving relative to the ether run slow needs reconsideration.

John-Erik Persson dispenses with the effect entirely. In Dilatory Dilation (2011) he abandons the sound-wave analogy for light in favour of a strict wave model and concludes that time dilation is simply not needed. In two later papers, "Fundamental Error behind Time Dilation" (2019) and "Fundamental Error behind Paradoxes in Physics" (2019), he traces the invention of time dilation to a false interpretation of the Michelson–Morley result and argues that the denial of the ether, together with confusion between wave and particle descriptions of light, is what produced the twin paradox and the other paradoxes of modern physics.

Cameron Rebigsol argues in Relativity Is Self-Defeated (3 of 3): Lorentz Factor, Aberration, and Ether (2016) that the Lorentz factor is an inseparable mathematical consequence of aberration — which he regards as an illusion appearing whenever an observer moves relative to the light source examined — and that a proper analysis of aberration returns one to the ether.

John R Warfield, in The Speed of Light, the "Tic Rate" of Atomic Clocks, and the Earth Centered Inertial Frame (2007), postulates that the Earth-centred non-rotating inertial frame is the preferred frame for both the speed of light and the tick rate of atomic clocks, and that these are two separate processes related only indirectly, through that common frame. See also Speed of Light.

What the atomic-clock experiments actually measure

Hafele–Keating

Louis Essen — whose own field was caesium time standards — published a short, sharp criticism in Atomic Clocks Coming and Going (1977), objecting that in their theoretical discussion the authors of the flying-clock experiment ignore detailed and fully documented criticisms of Einstein's relativity which had been made and had not been refuted.

Dennis J McCarthy pressed a technical objection in The Hafele-Keating Contradiction (1997). Hafele and Keating, in interpreting their own result, preferred a reference frame having the same angular velocity as the Earth in its orbit; but, as Swift and Pellegrini pointed out in the American Journal of Physics in August 1995, "it is not true that special relativity can be applied if the angular velocity is small enough or the radius is large enough." A more defensible choice of frame, McCarthy argued, produces a contradiction with the theory the experiment is said to confirm.

McCarthy developed the argument into a positive case for the Lorentzian reading in The Orbiting Clock Paradox: Should the Lorentzian View Be Preferred? (1999). Experiments confirm that a circling observer sees a stationary inertial clock at the centre of the circle run fast. For a large enough circle one can always posit a co-moving inertial "lab partner", co-located with and essentially stationary relative to the circling observer for a finite period; the circling observer, using the relativistic Doppler equation, must nevertheless conclude that the central clock runs fast with respect to his own stationary clocks.

GPS and satellite clocks

Satellite navigation is the centrepiece of the case made here, because it is the one application in which clock rates are compared continuously and to very high precision. The argument, made by Percival among others, is that the corrections are computed from each clock's velocity with respect to a single frame — the Earth-Centred Inertial frame — and not from the relative velocity of one clock with respect to another, which is what special relativity's time dilation is a function of. The equation used resembles Einstein's, but the quantity fed into it is an absolute velocity, and choosing a different inertial frame for the calculation would give different and mutually contradictory answers for the same pair of satellites. On this reading the navigation systems are evidence for asymmetric, physical clock retardation with respect to a preferred frame, not for reciprocal time dilation. See GPS.

Viraj Fernando proposes a mechanism for the satellite clock rates in Internal Momentum Changes Manifesting as Clock Rate Changes in GPS Clocks (2009). His complaint is that physical theories have treated bodies as mass points without internal structure, and are therefore unable to consider how the internal energy (mc2) and internal momentum (mc) of a body interact with applied momentum, or how internal momentum functions in gravitational processes. Once those internal changes are made visible, he argues, the clock-rate changes cease to look bizarre.

Ruyong Wang approached the question experimentally. In From the triangle Sagnac experiment to a practical, crucial experiment of the constancy of the speed of light using atomic clocks on moving objects (Europhysics Letters 43, 1998) he takes as his starting point the triangle Sagnac experiment, in which the light travel times between two points A and B in circular motion differ by Δt = 2VDL/c2, and proposes to use atomic clocks on moving objects as a crucial test of the constancy of the speed of light. See Sagnac Effect.

Howard C Hayden examined the rotating-Mössbauer family in Rotating Mossbauer Experiments and the Speed of Light (1992). Champeney's 1963 experiment was performed as a first-order test of ether velocity despite an earlier proof that the ether-velocity effect and the Lorentz time-dilation effect cancel exactly at first order. But, Hayden notes, the experiments show that clock rates are determined by velocity with respect to non-rotating geocentric coordinates, so the first-order time-dilation term reappears and must be balanced by something else if agreement with the measurement is to be recovered.

Carroll O Alley's Investigations with Lasers, Atomic Clocks and Computer Calculations of Curved Spacetime and of the Differences Between the Gravitation Theories of Yilmaz and of Einstein (1994) uses laser ranging and atomic clocks to look for observable differences between Einstein's field equations and Yilmaz's alternative theory of gravitation, noting that the form of Einstein's field equations — in particular the exclusion of the gravitational field's own stress-energy from the source term — is an assumption rather than a derivation.

Mesons, muons and particle lifetimes

The extended lifetime of fast particles is the experimental result most often presented as decisive. Several researchers here accept the measurement and reject the interpretation.

Donald T MacRoberts put the case bluntly in The "Time Dilation" of Mesons Re-Examined (1992): the high-velocity meson experiments at CERN and elsewhere are definite evidence that meson lifetime is a function of velocity with respect to the Earth, and have nothing whatever to do with the time dilation of special relativity. He read them additionally as ether-drift investigations, returning the usual answer — that the Earth's velocity with respect to a fundamental frame is zero.

Thierry De Mees supplies a mechanism in On the Origin of the Lifetime Dilation of High Velocity Mesons (2010). Applying gravitomagnetism (his "gyrotation", the Heaviside–Maxwell analogy for gravity) to fast particles, he finds a physical cause of the lifetime extension in a self-induction effect rather than a delay of time. He notes two further points: that the observed lifetime dilation has been found not to correspond exactly to the predictions of special relativity, and that neither special nor general relativity has ever supplied a physical mechanism at all.

Al F Kracklauer reaches a similar destination from relativistic electrodynamics. In Action-at-a-Distance on the Light Cone (2006) he presents a modified Wheeler–Feynman action-at-a-distance formulation stripped of advanced interaction and of asymmetric ageing, and reports initial results of an analysis of muon-decay time-dilation experiments showing the effect to be a space-time perspective effect that does not contribute to asymmetric ageing — that is, one that does not produce a twin paradox.

Harry Hamlin Ricker surveys the evidence generally in Empirical Verification of Time Dilation in Special Relativity (2011), reassessing the usual reading of the constancy postulate as implying a change in the structure of space and time, and concluding that with respect to the experimental evidence the interpretations offered within special relativity are neither logically consistent nor supported by the facts of experiment.

Deriving the physics without time dilation

A distinct group of contributors does not attack the experiments at all. Their claim is that the working content of relativistic physics can be derived without the kinematic effects, which makes those effects dispensable.

Nizar Hamdan has pursued this programme most systematically. In Abandoning the Ideas of Length Contraction and Time Dilation (2003) he shows that bringing the three-vector Lorentz force law inside special relativity allows the fundamental relativistic equations for a charged particle to be derived without the Lorentz transformation, and hence without its kinematic consequences — length contraction and time dilation. The invariance of the speed of light, he argues, can then be interpreted in a way that does not depend on the properties of space-time. He extends the method in On the Interpretation of the Doppler Effect in Special Relativity Theory (2006), calculating the relativistic Doppler effect from the Lorentz force law and the relativity principle alone, and recovering an intrinsic particle energy that restores compatibility with de Broglie's wave theory.

Kjell Prytz takes a related approach in Force Between Electric Charges: a New Approach to Relativity Theory (2007), introducing relativity from the electric and magnetic forces and deriving time dilation without using the concept of light at all.

Declan Traill models the effect physically rather than eliminating it. On the Quantum-Wave Nature of Relativistic Time Dilation and Length Contraction (2010) explains the kinematic effects of both the special and general theories in terms of the wave nature of matter and light and the way those waves propagate through space, which he offers as a possible route to integrating relativity with quantum mechanics.

Vivian Pope and Anthony D Osborne derive the effect from a different foundation in Orbital Time Dilation (2008). Their Pope–Osborne Angular Momentum Synthesis postulates that all motion is naturally orbital and that orbital angular momentum is holistically conserved; from this they obtain the standard special-relativistic time dilation formula more economically and predict orbital time dilation effects identical to those of general relativity, but without any reference to the Einstein field equations.

Oleg D Jefimenko, author of a well-regarded textbook on electricity and magnetism, treated invariance, length contraction and time dilation as consequences of the electrodynamics of moving charge rather than as postulates about space and time; his approach is discussed in Jefimenko Paper Reviews (2000).

Gravitational time dilation

The gravitational effect attracts a smaller but more pointed literature.

Vyacheslav N Streltsov argues in The Crash of General Relativity: General-Relativistic Time Dilation Contradicts Gravitational Time Slowing Experiments (2001) that general-relativistic time, like special-relativistic time, comes out larger than proper time — and that this conclusion is contradicted by the experiments on gravitational time slowing that are supposed to confirm it.

John Philip Claybourne offers a substitution rather than a refutation in A New Analysis of Time Dilation (1990). He observes that in every experiment in which the moving-clock prediction has been verified, the clocks were subjected to significant accelerations; clocks run slow when accelerated, by the equivalence principle of general relativity, and this predicts results consistent both with special relativity and with the observations. The attraction of the alternative, he argues, is that it is independent of those conclusions of special relativity that have only ever been postulated.

Don Savage pursued an unorthodox experimental line in Measuring Local Time Dilation Using Sandglass Egg Timers (1987), proposing that the effects of time dilation extend some distance out from the system experiencing them, communicated through potential fields such as gravity. He presents data which he reads as showing that certain devices can alter inertial time, as suggesting the existence of "time waves", and as indicating that the phenomenon is at least partly reversible.

Cosmological time dilation

A separate front concerns the claim that the light curves of distant type Ia supernovae are stretched by cosmological time dilation, which is treated as direct evidence for the expansion of the universe.

Ari Brynjolfsson argues that the effect is absent. In Plasma Redshift, Time Dilation, and Supernovas Ia (2004) he shows that conventional physics including plasma redshift fully explains the observed magnitude–redshift relation of the supernovae, with the Hubble constant as the only parameter — against the several adjustable parameters (an initial explosion, a dark-matter parameter, a time-adjustable dark-energy parameter) that the expanding-universe account requires. In Magnitude-Redshift Relation for SNe Ia, Time Dilation, and Plasma Redshift (2006) he extends the analysis to the SNLS data, obtaining a standard deviation of about 0.14 magnitudes from the plasma-redshift curve, and concludes that the data indicate there is no cosmic time dilation and that big-bang cosmology therefore appears false. See Redshift, Dark Matter and Big Bang.

Lyndon E Ashmore reaches the same conclusion from the low-redshift end. Supernovae Ia Light Curves Show a Static Universe (2012) points out that high-redshift light-curve broadening is the only direct evidence for expansion and is routinely used to dismiss Tired Light theories, but that the papers making the argument confine themselves to high redshifts. Reviewing the supernova ageing data at smaller redshifts, and allowing for Malmquist bias and for the fact that intrinsically brighter type Ia supernovae have intrinsically broader light curves, he argues that the mainstream evidence itself points to a static universe.

Experiments claimed to contradict time dilation

Peter Ripota reports a direct experimental challenge in Einstein's Time Dilation Experimentally Refuted (2009). He describes an experiment performed at CERN in 1996 by Antoine Suarez and Valerio Scarani, in which a laser beam was sent into a potassium niobate crystal to produce two entangled beams; one was sent to Bernex and the other to Bellevue, about ten kilometres apart, and the detector at Bellevue was rotated rapidly so that its peripheral velocity approached that of light. A time dilation should have followed; Ripota's account is that the expected effect did not appear.

Michele Barone's "Ritardo degli orologi in moto" (2002) treats the retardation of moving clocks in the volume La Natura del Tempo: propagazioni super-luminali, paradosso dei gemelli, teletrasporto, edited by Franco Selleri.

Researchers on this wiki

  • Nick Percival — American; foundations of physics; the most sustained analysis here of what the time-dilation data actually show, and of Lorentz relativity as the alternative reading.
  • Dennis J McCarthy — American researcher; the Hafele–Keating frame-choice objection and the orbiting-clock argument for the Lorentzian view.
  • Joseph Levy — French theorist; aether-theory clock retardation plus synchronism discrepancy in place of time dilation.
  • Louis Essen — English physicist and time-standards specialist; early and unyielding critic of the relativistic interpretation of the flying-clock experiment.
  • Franco Selleri — Italian physicist; inertial transformations and a privileged frame with the Lorentz ether at rest.
  • Nizar Hamdan — Syrian physicist; derivation of relativistic dynamics from the Lorentz force law, dispensing with length contraction and time dilation.
  • Ari Brynjolfsson — Icelandic-American physicist; plasma redshift, and the argument that the supernova data show no cosmic time dilation.
  • Howard C Hayden — American physicist, editor of Galilean Electrodynamics; analysis of the rotating-Mössbauer experiments.
  • Harry Hamlin Ricker — American electrical engineer; assessment of the empirical case for time dilation.
  • John-Erik Persson — Swedish electrical engineer; strict wave model of light in an ether, in which time dilation is unnecessary.
  • Thierry De Mees — Belgian engineer; gyro-gravitation as the physical mechanism of meson lifetime extension.
  • Cynthia Kolb Whitney — American physicist, editor of Galilean Electrodynamics; the twins, the mesons and the paradox.
  • Raymond H Gallucci — American nuclear engineer; time dilation as an apparent effect.
  • Peter Hayes — British academic; the clock paradox as a case study in the ideology of relativity.
  • Ruyong Wang — Chinese-American physicist; Sagnac-based crucial experiments with atomic clocks on moving objects.
  • Julio Palacios — Spanish physicist; the clock paradox as grounds for a new theory of relativity.
  • Chalmers W Sherwin — American physicist; the Mössbauer experiments as verification of the time-keeping of accelerated clocks.
  • Kjell Prytz — Swedish physicist; time dilation derived from the forces between charges, without the concept of light.
  • Declan Traill — Australian researcher; quantum-wave model of the kinematic effects.
  • Vivian Pope and Anthony D Osborne — British; orbital time dilation from the Pope–Osborne Angular Momentum Synthesis.
  • Lyndon E Ashmore — British physics teacher; supernova light curves and the static universe.
  • Vyacheslav N Streltsov — Russian physicist; general-relativistic time dilation against the gravitational time-slowing experiments.
  • Al F Kracklauer — German researcher; muon time dilation as a perspective effect without asymmetric ageing.
  • Viraj Fernando — Sri Lankan-Canadian independent researcher; internal momentum as the source of GPS clock-rate changes.
  • Curtis E Renshaw — American electrical engineer; a proposed test of relativistic simultaneity.
  • Donald T MacRoberts — American researcher; meson lifetimes as a function of velocity relative to the Earth.
  • John R Warfield — American physician; the Earth-centred inertial frame as preferred frame for light speed and clock rate.
  • Carroll O Alley — American professor; laser and atomic-clock tests distinguishing the Yilmaz and Einstein gravitation theories.
  • Wen-Xiu Li — Chinese researcher; foundational problems with the relativity and light principles.
  • Chong-Wu Guo — Chinese researcher; the crossed Doppler effect in an ether space.
  • Oleg D Jefimenko — Ukrainian-American physicist; electrodynamic treatment of invariance, contraction and dilation.
  • Michele Barone — Greek experimental physicist; the retardation of moving clocks.
  • John Philip Claybourne — American researcher; acceleration and the equivalence principle as the alternative explanation.
  • Don Savage — American researcher; local time dilation experiments and "time waves".
  • Peter Ripota — Austrian physicist and author; report of the Suarez–Scarani entangled-photon experiment.
  • Zbigniew Modrzejewski — Polish-Canadian philosopher; revision of the principle of relativity.
  • J W Rush — American researcher; Einstein's 1918 attempt on the clock paradox.
  • Allen D Allen — reciprocity of speed and the spatial interval over which dx/dt is a speed.
  • Thomas G Barnes — American professor of physics; clock-rate reduction in a reference medium, following Herbert E Ives.
  • Witold Nawrot — Polish researcher; the Euclidean Reality model of the twin paradox.
  • Cameron Rebigsol — Chinese-American researcher; the Lorentz factor as a consequence of aberration.

See also