Author(s)

Robert L. Shuler

NASA Johnson Space Center, Retired, Houston, TX, USA.

This paper provides a clear analysis of how hypothetical concepts not allowed in Special Relativity should be treated and exposes hidden assumptions in space-time diagrams used on YouTube, where some prominent physicists have taken to publishing on popular topics that may not survive peer review. Such casual graphical treatment conceals the fact that space-time diagrams provide only for the Einstein synchronization convention for all observers, not the many other valid synchronization protocols, and also obscure that relativity’s equality of reference frames is rebutted if concepts outside relativity, such as instant communication, are introduced. These omissions of unconscious assumptions have been used to “prove” the existence of block time and time travel or time paradoxes. We will show the contradictory assumptions amount to assuming time travel, rather than the more mundane need to adjust synchronization conventions. We further show a new result that the use of the space-time diagrams as proposed by these “explainers” leads to discontinuities in which a differential change in communication speed leads to a sudden jump from present to long-past arrival time, strongly suggesting invalidity of the method.

Space-Time, Block Time, Block Universe, Special Relativity, Faster Than Light, FTL, Causality Violation, Time Paradox, Simultaneity

Shuler, R. (2022) Space-Time Diagrams Lead to False Paradoxes. Journal of Applied Mathematics and Physics, 10, 3804-3813. doi: 10.4236/jamp.2022.1012252.