Introduction
I've been reading a book called PsychoPhysics, part of the "Illuminati God Series" by Mike Hockney (a pseudonym). Without getting into too much detail, they basically believe that the theory of relativity is wrong.
From the marketing blurb:
One hundred percent of scientists think that Einstein’s special theory of relativity is correct. One hundred percent of scientists are wrong. Isn’t that astounding? Why is it so hard for scientists to see the blatant errors in Einstein’s logic?
I am not here to argue this statement however! (I assume that most people on this site would blatantly disagree, and I am definitely not trying to be a troll here. Indeed, I am a skeptic myself).
Question
However, what I am interested in finding out is if anyone can refute one of the concrete predictions made by this "illuminism" model. They believe that any length contraction due to traveling close to the speed of light is an actual absolute contraction experienced by the person moving near light speed, and is not just an "illusion" as perceived by the person at rest. From Kindle location 725:
Take two objects, one travelling through space at 0.866 of light speed and the other at 0.5 of light speed....These respective speeds are associated with absolute, not relative length contraction and time dilation. A person travelling at close to light speed through space would be physically contracted, and die. They could not regard themselves as stationary and non-contracted, as Einstein claimed.
In other words, if we could simply take a person, or some macro object like a cat, an insect, or possibly even a protein molecule, accelerate them close to the speed of light (say 0.5c), and if that object is literally crushed, then this would back their theory and refute relativity. If the person lived, then even they admit it would 100% refute their theory.
Caveats
At first I thought there should be plenty of macro objects that meet this criteria. However, keep in mind the following:
- Atomic particles don't count since they're not composed of constituent parts, and thus, cannot break apart.
- While there are objects as large as galaxies that are known to be receding from us and at speeds actually greater than the speed of light, this is due to the fabric of spacetime itself stretching and not due to "real" relative motion.
- I would think that any macro-molecule accelerated to a significant portion of the speed of light due to falling into a black hole wouldn't count, as any breaking up could be explained by Spaghettification from gravitational tidal forces.
Ideally, I would think a star or planet that we know to be moving quickly relative to us, but not due to red-shifting of space, would be a good answer.
However, even here, this would be problematic as:
- A star is composed of gas and could be compressed without harm (?)
- A planet would be great, but we wouldn't be able to see it.
Conclusion
I was unable to come up with something that matched the criteria. It would be best if we could just simply perform the experiment directly, but the closest we have is the CERN collider, and my guess is that only accelerates atomic particles.
Can anyone else think of something? Once again, I'm not interested in arguing the merits of relativity, or the lack of merits of this theory, just any sort of concrete object that would refute this model. The validity of Relatively, from the scientific perspective, is beyond doubt in my opinion, so need to argue about that.
Many Thanks
