Similarly, as an object approaches closer to the speed of light, time slows down (dilates), per the t’ equation in Figure 1, shrinking asymptotically to zero, from the perspective of a stationary observer.
There is an empirical basis for SR that is an important part of its history: the 1872 Michelson-Morley experiments found a null result in trying to detect a difference in the speed of light through the ether, as measured from different velocities of our planet during its orbit. However, Lorentz created his theory of relativity specifically to explain these empirical data, a decade before Einstein’s alternative approach, and Lorentz suggested that Michelson-Morley’s null result occurred because of interaction between moving objects and the ether. That is, as objects move through apparently empty space, which is better conceived of in Lorentz’s theory as the ether field and not truly empty, there is a drag effect that causes matter to contract as it moves closer to the speed of light. Similar to how a bar of iron will expand or contract based on its temperature, the same bar will expand or contract based on its velocity through the ether.
Lorentz viewed time dilation as a “mathematical fiction” or “coordinate effect,” not a real physical effect like length contraction. A coordinate effect is, for example, like changing time zones when traveling (Galison 2004). When we change time zones there is no real loss or gain of time. Time passes continuously no matter what time zone we’re in and we don’t literally gain or lose an hour as we change time zones. Rather, each time zone is just a different convention for keeping track of the same shared passage of time. Just so with the time dilation of the Lorentz transformations: the “local time” of each frame of reference is a way to keep track of time between different frames of reference, but global time proceeds independently of the conventions used for measuring the local time. Galison writes:
Lorentz called tlocal “local time” (Ortszeit), the same word used in everyday life to describe the (longitude-dependent) time of Leiden, Amsterdam, or Djakarta. The crucial point was this: Lorentz’s local time was purely a mathematical fiction used to simplify an equation.
In SR, however, there is no global time and the apparent passage of time itself is rendered an illusion. This is the case because if time is malleable and the speed of light absolute, then there is no privileged time and no universal “now.” We can slice the universe into an infinite number of possible “nows” depending on the speed at which we move in relation to the distribution of matter and energy in our universe. The sum of these infinite slices of “now” is known as the “block universe.” Its name is clear enough as to its consequences: all nows exist in some manner concurrently (“at the same time,” which itself is paradoxical) in the block universe. There is no privileged past, present or future. And this is why there is no true change in SR, no passage of time. This is the basis for Einstein’s assertion that the passage of time is an illusion.
If this is the case, why do we see nothing but evidence of change, of the passage of time, all around us? Bardon 2013 highlights this conflict between theory and experience: “This is the core challenge in the contemporary philosophy of time: how to reconcile the seeming ineliminability of the experience of the passage of time (manifest time) with the cold, hard conclusions of logic and physics (scientific time).”
The present paper is an attempt at a solution to this core challenge. The solution I suggest is, based on the accumulated empirical evidence, a return to either the Lorentzian interpretation of the Lorentz transformations or a variant thereof (one of the various extant neo-Lorentzian approaches). In sum, we have enough evidence now to make a strong empirical case for preferring Lorentz’s relativity over Einstein’s relativity, or at least one of the various neo-Lorentzian versions of relativity theory. I review this evidence in the following sections.
3. Has cosmology rendered Special Relativity out of date?
We have learned a great deal about the universe since Lorentz and Einstein created their theories. In 1905, we had little inkling that our galaxy was just one of literally hundreds of billions of other galaxies (or maybe even trillions, based on the most recent analysis in 2016). We had no idea that there was a cosmic microwave background. We didn’t realize that the cosmological principle was not accurate. And we had no idea about quantum entanglement or the Higgs field.
But we did have knowledge of the “cosmic frame” of reference, consisting at that time of the fixed stars. In practice, in cosmology, astronomy and in space exploration, there is always a background frame of reference, and this has serious implications for SR. I will go through the various lines of evidence in favor of a preferred frame of reference above and beyond the fixed stars frame of reference.