02/16/24 1: Errata in Principle of Relativity diagram and associated text (editions 1 through 5) Corrected diagram and associated text: The distance from mirror QA to QB is 0.8 light second (contracted from 1 light second due to P's absolute speed of 0.6). P2 is where P is at the moment his light beam reflects at QB2. Remember -- this is the God's eye view, where simultaneity (a moment) is not something that is a perception of the parties involved. Observations made by an omnipresent God are not dependent on the speed of light. And that omnipresent being need be nothing more than the reader viewing this static diagram. 2: As part of the preparation for writing my journal article, I decided to confirm for myself, by way of diagramming, my assumption that there was a necessarily unconscious skewed aiming of a photon as discussed on page 22 in the second and third edition (and not mentioned in the fourth and fifth edition). But my diagram quickly confirmed that there could be no such unconscious skewed aiming. Therefore, I write (conservatively) in my journal article: "Although a moving source of light-emission cannot impart additional speed to a photon, it is reasonable that it would affect the vector components of the photon's motion, creating a vector component in the direction of motion of the source, while the perpendicular vector component is diminished. A photon does, after all, have a non-zero amount of momentum, and we can therefore imagine that a moving source of emission can have an effect on its trajectory." |