Relativity Theory and Relative Motion

Encyclopedia of Early Modern Philosophy and the Sciences, 2020

Modern philosophy of physics debates whether motion is absolute or relative. The debate began in the 1600s, so it deserves a close look here. Primarily, it was a controversy in metaphysics, but it had epistemic aspects too. I begin with the former, and then touch upon the latter at the end.

2013

Motion in a reference frame seems as a cornerstone of physics for many centuries. Classical mechanics were abandoned by Relativity because of "inability" to explain "strange" behavior of light and its constant speed in the observer's reference frame. However, Relativity itself has a number of problems which appeared last decades. Those are new observations staying in contrary to the theory and theoretical research leading beyond "the human comprehension".

The central concept of the theory of relativity is the relativity of velocity. The velocity of a material body is not an intrinsic property of the body; it depends on a free choice of another reference material body, a reference system. Relative velocity is thus referencedependent; it is not an absolute concept, and it needs the precise mathematical concept of a material body. Yet at present, most widely accepted definition of velocity is dependent on primary mathematical concepts of time and space, without invoking explicitly the concept of a physical material body.

The idea of motion includes propagation of signals in a given medium and motion of a physical bodies (including observers) relative to the same medium. Combinations of various types of motion lead to many phenomena detectable and hidden from the observer's point of view. Usually, light offers the most mysterious way of motion regarding the observer. To reveal the truth and eliminate the mystery, we need to use another sophisticated way of imagination and experimentation to reach a clear view on the fundamental processes of motion despite all illusions, old ideas and wrong postulates.

Physics Essays, 2015

Relative motion can be very complicated and today's physics offers a confusing explanation even for the simpler variant of relative motion-Galilean motion. There are three main problems in relative motion: The first problem is how the event takes place; the second problem is how observers in relative motion see that event; and the third problem is when do they see that the event happened. This paper, commenting on several experiments and some theoretical achievements, will make efforts to answer these three basic questions of relative motion. Indeed, these answers will be found in the works of Galilei, Doppler, and Voigt. V

The General Science Journal, 2024

This paper includes several arguments that confront the absolute nature with the relative nature of motion, an old problem that for the reasons given here, and in spite of the absolutely prevailing relativism, is not properly resolved.

IJESR, 2018

Relative motion is the calculation of the motion of an object with respect to some other moving/stationary object. The velocity of the moving object depends on the reference object. In simple words, if one or both objects are moving then we can take one of them as reference object (object on which the observer is) which is always considered as stationary (by the observer), and velocity of other object is calculated with respect to this reference object. For example, a person sitting in a train is at zero velocity relative to the train, but moving with the velocity (v) relative to the earth, for the person the train is stationary (because both are moving with same velocity) but, is the earth which is moving with a velocity (v) in the opposite direction. We use this concept of relative motion for finding the relative velocity of an object. In the above example, assume you are the observer and you are observing the trees outside of your window, which are moving in backward direction (with reference to you) and let their velocity be (v). When you observe two trees(t 1) and(t 2) which are at distance(d 1) and (d 2) respectively (d 2 > d 1);you will find that the tree (t 1) appears to move faster than tree (t 2). Not only this, you will also observe that the trees which are at larger distance from you are moving slower in comparison to the nearer ones. According to laws of relative motion all of them should move with same velocity(v), then how tree (t 1) can move faster than tree (t 2) or how nearby trees can move faster than distant ones? I think we are missing something in finding the accurate relative velocity. Let's talk about it...

2013

By examining the theory of relativity, we postulate that every massive particle specifies a space-time body frame in a universal entity, which may be referred to as ether. As a result, the four-dimensional theory of general accelerating motion is developed. It is seen that the relative motion of particles is actually the result of relative four-dimensional rotation of their corresponding space-time body frames. Consequently, the governing geometry of relative motion is non-Euclidean.

viXra, 2017

The theory of relativity’s concept o motion suggests that every observer must assume that his own frame of reference is always at rest; therefore, he must ascertain the state of the motion of all other entities in relation to his own frame of reference. In this article, we have shown that for every entity its own frame of reference actually behaves as if it is in the state of the absolute rest. Therefore, the motion of an entity has to be ascertained in relation to its own frame of reference. Thus, we have made only a slight but very significant change in the proposal of the theory of relativity. Our proposal is based on actual observations of how things behave.

Journal of Modern Physics, 2014

The Equivalence Principle put forward by Albert Einstein is currently undergoing comprehensive revision to determine its degree of accuracy. Notwithstanding, this principle refers to a very specific circumstance, as free-fall; thus in our opinion it cannot be generalised to any other movement in space. This paper refers to the dynamic hypotheses of moving rigid bodies and a particular, structured theory that would establish how such bodies behave when subject to different actions that oblige them to make successive, non-coaxial spins. With respect to bodies subject to acceleration by rotation, we understand that there are indications to identify the prior dynamic state of the moving object and that examples of a violation of the aforementioned Equivalence Principle can be deduced thereof. Based on the findings of this paper and the theory put forward herein, we suggest that an observer can identify the prior situation of absolute rest or absolute non-rotation of a body, thus leading to the conclusion that movement does not necessarily have to be a relative concept. The foregoing leads us to propose that the Equivalence Principle is fully valid for the situation put forward by Albert Einstein, but cannot be generalised to any dynamic situation.