Thread-breaking experiment

Background
This experiment is generally known as Bell's Spaceship Experiment because it involves two accelerating spaceships connected by a thread. About 1976 John Bell described the experiment to physicists at CERN and asked them to predict whether or not the gradual acceleration and resulting large change in the ships' velocity would cause the thread to break. Somewhat more than half the physicists thought the thread would not break and the others thought it would break. This is understandable because relativity theory does not provide an understanding of the physical causes responsible for the experimental result.

A more detailed version of Bell's experiment will be described below. It will be apparent that the qm view provides logical physical causes for the experimental result, and that anyone aware of the physical causes would be unlikely to predict the incorrect result.

The experiment
Two spaceships are floating in space 1 light-second (ls) apart, which means that a round-trip light signal between the two ships takes exactly 2 seconds (s) according to the atomic clocks aboard the ships. The ships face in the same direction, one behind the other, as shown in Fig. 1. The exact 1 ls separation between the short masts attached at the centers of the ships is automatically controlled by instrumentation that sends and receives round-trip light signals between the masts. If the round-trip signals take more or less than 2 s on the ships' clocks, thrusters are used to correct the distance to 1 ls.
A thread capable of stretching one part in ten million before breaking is put under light tension and attached to the masts. Therefore, the thread could be stretched 30 meters (m) before breaking. We would like to determine if and when the thread will break if the two spaceships begin accelerating at the same time and with the same low acceleration along a line parallel to the thread. For convenience we will assume an acceleration of 1E-8 c/s or 3 m/s or about .3 g, but it could be much less.

To assist in determining the accelerations and speeds of the ships, space stations designated by black rectangles are parked next to the ships at the 0 ls and 1 ls locations. The clocks aboard the ships and space stations are synchronized with one another via radio signals broadcast from a master clock aboard the space station at the 0 ls location. For example, if the master clock broadcasts its −1000 s time, the clocks at the 1 ls location are automatically set to −999 s. This procedure allows for the 1 s signal travel time. The clock aboard the ship next to the master clock is automatically set to the broadcast time because the signal travel time is insignificant.

At a prearranged time when all the clocks read 0 s, the ships begin accelerating toward two distant space stations aligned with stations 0 and 1 but parked at the 50 ls and 51 ls locations, as shown in Fig 2. Because the spaceships accelerate with exactly the same thrusts and move with exactly the same speeds relative to the space stations, the rearward ship will reach the 50 ls location when the forward ship reaches the 51 ls location. This arrival of the ships at the 50 ls and 51 ls locations is simultaneous according to the space station clocks which display identical times when the ships arrive. The clocks aboard the ships will also remain synchronized with one another because they experienced the same accelerations and there was no reason for one to advance more or less than the other.

Expected results of the experiment according to relativity theory
According to relativity theory observers aboard space stations 50 and 51 should observe a broken thread as the spaceships pass due to the thread's contraction as a result of its motion relative to the space stations. On the other hand observers in the reference frame of the thread should see all the space stations, including 50 and 51, closer together due to their motion relative to the thread. And because the spaceships maintain the same spacing as the space stations, the thread should have some slack and not be broken. Possibly these two conflicting pictures contributed to the disagreement among the CERN physicists.

These two conflicting pictures are an inherent characteristic of special relativity theory. They are a result of the "law" or assumption of constant light speed, c, on which relativity theory is based. They are the result of a logical consequence of special relativity: the relative motion between two reference frames causes observers in the reference frames to observe a foreshortening of bodies and distance scales in the other reference frame, and the foreshortening is along lines parallel to the direction of relative motion. Presumably most physicists will agree with the preceding statements in this paragraph.

The experiment in the qm view
The qm view shows why the thread will break. The explanation is not simple because it involves four reference frames in which the time and distance observations depend on a reference frame's velocity through the quantum medium. The four reference frames include the reference frame at rest in the qm, the reference frame of the space station system, sss, and the reference frames of the rearward and forward spaceship systems, ssr and ssf.

The simplest case is when the reference frame of the space station system, sss, is at rest in the qm. This reduces the number of reference frames to two and it results in the observers in frame sss observing the absolute phenomena occurring in the qm because, in this case, the speed of light in sss is constant and isotropic as the observers assume. Figure 3 shows this case at absolute time, ta=0 sa, where ta means a particular absolute time throughout the qm and sa means absolute seconds kept by atomic clocks at rest in the qm. Only in this special case where the absolute velocity of sss is zero (i.e. vsssa = 0 as shown) are the clocks aboard the spaceships and space stations absolutely synchronized. And only in this case do the sss clocks keep absolute time. This is shown in Fig. 3 where the seconds (s) on the space station clocks (shown below the space stations) agree with the absolute seconds, as shown by the absolute seconds symbol (sa).
When all the clocks read 0 s as shown, the spaceships begin a constant 1E-8 c/s acceleration. During the first 14142 s of travel, the ships move 1 ls in the +x direction, and after 20000 s they have traveled 2 ls in reference frame sss. After 100 000 s, or about 28 hours, the spaceships pass the space stations parked at the 50 ls and 51 ls locations in sss, as shown in Fig. 4. At this 100 000 sa time the observers with the spaceships and space stations all determine that the velocity of ssr and ssf relative to sss is .001 c. This also happens to be the .001 ca absolute velocity of the ships and thread through the qm (because sss is at rest in the qm) and it causes a lengthwise contraction of the ships and thread. It does not cause a contraction of the distance between the masts on the ships because nothing occurs that would cause a change in this distance.

The contraction of the ships and thread and a slowing of the clocks aboard ssr and ssf is determined via the physical change ratio, rv, in the following equation where va is the absolute velocity of the ships and thread through the qm, which is .001 ca because in this case the observed relative velocity between the spaceships and the space stations system is also the absolute relative velocity.
According to the rv equation, the atoms comprising the thread contract to about .999 9995 times their length when at rest in the qm, and had the thread not been attached to the rearward ship it would have contracted to .999 9995 LS, where 1 LS is the distance that light travels through the qm in one absolute second (sa). This is a .000 0005 LS or 150 absolute meter (ma) contraction. Therefore, the thread would have broken at about the 10 ls or 10 LS distance in the sss reference frame when the thread's contraction would have been 30 ma. Had ssr been accelerating relative to sss and had ssf maintained a constant 1 ls distance from ssr, the 1 ls distance between the ships would also have contracted, and the thread would not have broken.

As pictured in Fig. 4, the time in system ssr and ssf for a round-trip light signal between the masts, which are 1 ls apart in system sss, is more than 2 s. This is because the speed of light from ssr to ssf is .999 ca due to their .001 ca speed through the qm, so light from ssr takes (1 LS / .999 ca) or 1.001001... sa to travel to ssf. And light from ssf takes (1 LS / 1.001 ca) or .999000999000... sa to travel to ssr, so the round trip time is about 2.000002 sa. This is (2.000002 * .999 995) s or 2.000001 s on clocks ssr and ssf. Therefore, observers on the ships who assume constant light speed, c, would observe that the ships are 1.000 0005 ls apart and therefore increased their separation by .000 0005 ls or 150 m during the acceleration and would conclude that this increase in distance between the ships caused the thread to break.

Had the thread not been attached to ssr and broken, the ssr and ssf observers would have observed that the thread had a constant 1 ls length in their gradually changing ssr-ssf system throughout the experiment. The real cause of the actual, absolute contraction of the thread is the change in energy-exchange rates within and between the atoms of the thread (and ssr and ssf) due to the .001 ca increase in their absolute velocity. This is explained in the qm view introduction videos and elsewhere on the qm view website, and will not be discussed here.
A second and last example of the causes of the thread breaking will be a more complex case because system sss will be moving in the −x direction through the qm with a constant absolute velocity of −.002 ca. In this case the observers aboard the space stations and spaceships who assume constant light speed, c, will make exactly the same observations and the thread will break at the same location in frame sss, but the causes of the break are different. In this case the thread increases in length as its velocity through the qm decreases.

Figure 5 shows the situation at time ta=0 sa, .002 s after ssf began its acceleration. The observers aboard the space stations and spaceships observe that all the clocks are synchronized. The reason that the clocks reading .002 s appear synchronized to the observers at the 0 ls location in sss is that the light from the .002 s clocks takes (.999998 LS / .998 ca) or 1.002 sa to reach the 0 ls observers when their clocks read 1.002 s, as the observers expect. This same phenomena, in which the observers are unintentional participants, is responsible for the virtual synchronization and absolute asynchronization of all the other clocks.
The absolute asynchronization of the clocks results in ssf starting its acceleration .002 s before ssr starts. And this results in ssf having a slightly greater absolute relative velocity (.002E−8 ca or 2E−11 ca) during the ships' travels through system sss. By the time ssr and ssf reach the 50 ls and 51 ls locations in sss, at ta=100 000.2 sa as shown in Fig. 6, the distance between the masts on ssr and ssf will have increased by 2E−6 LS or 600 ma. On the other hand, the thread, if not secured to ssr and therefore broken, would have expanded lengthwise by 450 ma due to the change in its absolute velocity from .002 ca to .001000002000004 ca, which changed its rv from about .999997999998 to .999999499998, which caused its length to increase by .0000015 LS or by 450 ma. Therefore, the observers would have observed a net foreshortening of the thread relative to the masts of 150 m. This is the same observed foreshortening relative to the masts that occurred in the first example.
If you try other combinations of absolute velocities of system sss and observed velocities of the spaceships relative to sss, you should get similar results. We think you will find that the qm view provides a satisfactory explanation for the thread breaking and that no one who understands the explanation would be led to believe the thread would not break. The qm view shows why the relative motion explanation for observed length changes is misleading and causes paradoxes and confusion, even among experts.

Bell's thread-breaking experiment is one of many examples where the qm view provides physical causes for otherwise inexplicable phenomena. It is part of a large body of evidence supporting this view and showing that constant light speed, c, is an illusion having a complex combination of causes that are consequences of energy quanta propagating through a quantum medium. If the qm view is not correct, and electromagnetic energy and all other forms of energy are not propagated through a medium, then the fact that the logical consequences of a quantum medium explain a wide range of poorly understood phenomena including light speed, c, inertia, and gravity must be an incredible coincidence.