4. The POAMS stance on Einsteinian Relativity and Time Dilation.

Currently, the Physics community is split between orthodox Einsteinian relativists and a reactionary group of anti-Einsteinians, followers of the late Herbert Dingle who congregate under the banner of 'Dissidents'. The two groups remain chronically divided over the issue of 'relativistic time dilation'. The Einsteinians regard time dilation as a real consequence of relative motion while their opponents regard it as no more than apparent, insisting no more than dogmatically, so the relativists judge, that the 'real time' by which things endure has to be the same everywhere.

POAMS is not completely aligned with either of these groups. In Machian physics, all motion is relative; that is, the motion of any one body is relative to some other or others, there being no motion of anything with respect to 'space as such' - whatever that might mean. All masses are therefore universally and instantly interrelated, as indeed they are in an angular momentum nexus.

The difference between this Machian relativity and Einstein's is two-fold. First, in Einstein's version, due to the limit on physical interaction imposed by his 'absolute speed of light', there can be no instantaneous at-a-distance correlation of the sort required by Mach - also, as it so happens, by modern quantum theory. Secondly, in Einstein's theory there is no ultimately preferred reference-frame for the motion of a body. The motion is simply relative to whoever happens to be observing it, with all such observer-frames regarded as physically indistinguishable. In the Machian view, however, there is a definite physical distinction between real and apparent relative motion. Real motion is ultimately referred to an 'alpha frame', which is that of the centre-of-mass-coordinate-system (CMCS) of all the various angular momentum motions and convolutions. This implies that much of what Einstein called 'relative' motion is no more than apparent, or transient, in the way the Dissidents stress.

Also, in POAMS, as for Mach, there is no space other than that defined by the distances between bodies, and there is no time other than what is measured in motion and other physical changes, by arbitrarily chosen standards like that of the revolutions of the earth around the sun, the moon around the earth, the motion of the sand-grains in an hour-glass, the hands around the face of a clock … and so on. Certainly, there is neither length nor time in and of 'the vacuum' as such. Length and time are inseparable dimensions of angular momentum and changes in angular momentum, with no meaning apart from that.

From the fact that mass, length and time are not independent measures but thoroughly inter-dependent components of a single dimensional package (angular momentum), it follows that any body which moves relatively to another moves in time as well as space. (Witness the objects observed by Römer.) These two geometrical, orthogonally projected dimensional components of relative motion, the one in seconds and the other in metres-divided by c (i.e. units of 3.3 nanoseconds) produce, by straightforward Pythagoras, a temporal resultant equivalent to what is called 'time-dilation' in Einsteinian relativity. All this is explained in the POAMS literature. [See Seminal Publications & Resources ] As the Dissidents see it, however, if motion is completely relative, as it is according to Einstein, then A's description of B's motion relative to A has to be symmetrical with B's description of A's motion relative to B, so that regardless of how A and B move relatively to each other when they return together at the end of the motion, their respective records of its duration must be the same. These Dissidents remain unconvinced by Einstein's teaching that whichever party to the motion actively reverses his outward journey to bring the two back together, breaks the symmetry and ends up having recorded less time than the other for the overall motion.

In POAMS, the motions of bodies are gauged not only relatively to one another but also relatively to the angular momentum alpha frame. In such cases, the asymmetry distinguishing which observer's duration is dilated and which is contracted is ultimately manifest in terms of acceleration in relation to the alpha frame, rather than simply in the frame of the one observer relative to the other. The alpha frame of the angular momentum CMCS is therefore the frame whose time is the least dilated of all. This corresponds to what astronomers call the 'frame of the fixed stars', the Machian frame with respect to which gyroscopes naturally orientate themselves. And since, in POAMS, all motion is fundamentally rotational and therefore 'gyroscopic', this same alpha frame serves as the reference-frame for the magnitude and direction of all motion whatsoever.

In this way, POAMS restores the 'universal' time-background that the Dissidents castigate Einstein for seeking to remove, whilst retaining Einsteinian time-dilation for motions relative to that Machian background frame. However, like interfering in a marital quarrel, instead of this prospect of reconciliation being welcomed by the oppositely entrenched Relativists and Dissidents in the conflict over time-dilation, POAMS, by announcing its prospect of peace from its standpoint between the two warring factions is, predictably, berated by both sides.

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