This explanation should help clarify my position:

The observer in Special Relativity inertial frame of reference is fooled into thinking that nothing has changed because the changes at speeds well below the speed of light are undetectably small for the observer in the inertial frame of reference. This fact has been used to completely misinterpret Special Relativity.

The flaw in our current day understanding of Special Relativity comes from this postulate: “the laws of physics are invariant (i.e. identical) in all inertial systems.”

* An inertial frame of reference in classical physics and special relativity is a frame of reference in which a body with zero net force acting upon it is not accelerating; that is, such a body is at rest or it is moving at a constant speed in a straight line.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertial_frame_of_reference

The flaw imbedding is subtle. There needs to be a distinction made in the concept or definition of what an inertial system is. I believe that if there is an “ether medium” then the laws of physics will be different when a body is at rest relative to the ether and when it is moving at a constant speed in a straight line relative to the “ether”. This makes sense because these are two different states of motion. If in fact the ether did not exist then the statement would be correct as is. But the evidence from experiments proves there is an ether medium. When you increase the velocity of an object through space its clock slows down. If the ether did not exist a change in velocity would have no effect on the speed at which the clock ticks. It would have no effect because we would be accelerating through a non-existent medium. Accelerating through nothing will have no effect on the rate of the ticking clock. Why? It would have no effect because the accelerating object would have nothing to interact with. It’s just that simple.

The evidence for the ether is strong and it comes from experimental verification of Special Relativity.

* Special relativity implies a wide range of consequences, which have been experimentally verified, including length contraction, time dilation, relativistic mass, mass–energy equivalence, a universal speed limit, the speed of causality and relativity of simultaneity.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_relativity

In particular the verification of the existence of an ether comes from length contraction, time dilation, relativistic mass increase and Universal speed limit.

General Relativity also supplies evidence of the existence of an ether as General Relativity was built upon special relativities length contraction principle. Einstein’s happiest thought which explains the origin of mass.

It is my belief that as one gradually accelerates and approaches the speed of light a person on board that space ship they will be flattened and pressed back into their chair. The ship length will be compressed and it will require more and more thrust to continue to accelerate to the speed of light. Eventually the human brain will not be able to function because the electrons in their brain will no longer be able to move forward in the direction of motion that the ship is traveling." — ↪MrCypress

So this is completely wrong. Again, it uses the concept of a property of speed. There is no such thing. In the frame of the ship, the occupant will notice nothing and his brain works just fine. There is no contraction at all since the occupant is stationary in this frame. He is not going fast at all, but the stuff outside the window certainly is, which accounts for its red and blue shifts. — noAxioms

The reasoning you are using to claim what I said is wrong is not consistent. Of course the property of speed is correct. There is evidence that objects moving through space is everywhere you look. Inertia is evidence that objects possess the property of speed. This is already common knowledge known to all. Further more if an object is moving relative to some other object then it has a speed. You can tell it is moving relative to the other object because its clock will move slower than the object you are comparing to. This is more evidence that objects are moving through space. The speed at which your clock ticks is real hard evidence that you have motion within space. The action is really not about ones relative motion to some other thing in space. It's really about the relationship of the moving object and its interaction with the space it is moving through. This is especially true when the motion is accelerated. Surely you believe in General Relativity. When a spaceship accelerates, inertia is demonstrated. Are you proposing that the accelerating object does not possess the property of acceleration which is a 2 dimensional representation of speed. All the evidence supports what I am saying. It's time for you to wake up and smell the coffee.

Here are some of the evidences that proves that all objects have a property of motion through space.

. Clocks on orbiting satellites move slower
. Atomic clocks on planes move slower
. Michelson-Morley experiment - Proves the constancy of light independent from the emitting source.
. Muon particles decay more slowly while falling
. The fact that particle accelerators work the way they do is evidence that speed of an object is a real thing that can be measured and has effects. When scientists have tried to apply more energy to the particles in the accelerator they will not move beyond the speed of light. The question is, What is holding the particles back? Obviously, the particles must be interacting with something. The only thing the particles can interact with is the space they are moving within. So space in someway is impeding the acceleration of the particles beyond the speed of light.

The point is that there is a huge pile of evidence that supports the concept that particles moving through space possess a real absolute speed not only as it relates to other moving frames of reference but to the stationary background of space itself. In all honesty there is no evidence that supports what you are saying when you say this. "

I can only have speed relative to an arbitrary reference. — noAxioms

That statement is the classic incorrect assumption about Special Relativity. That is what needs to be fixed in the realm of the current scientific community. If you have a speed relative to one arbitrary reference then by default you now have a speed relative to all other moving frames of reference including the stationary substance of space. This is an inescapable conclusion that has to be arrived at. The alternative is to assume an inconsistent unsupported notion that speed only exists relative to something else we compare to. This is a very limited point of view.

Clearly the best example of absolute motion is light. It has a speed that is the same to all other moving frames of reference. That is a real speed and a property of light. Light possesses autonomous motion and that is a real absolute velocity that can be compared to everything else.

I wonder if you could be made to move at 99% the speed of light using just thrust power without the protection of a spatial bias drive and you could see for yourself the effects of moving at that speed would you then accept that the spaceship has a real absolute speed? Would you believe it's true when when you arrive at 99% the speed of light and you find its impossible to get up out of your chair? Would you believe it's true when you look out the front window of your spaceship and see nothing but blackness because all of the starlight is blue shifted and is now no longer visible? Would you believe it's true when you look at the clock on the control panel and see that it has stopped counting? You will believe then but by then it will be too late. There won't be a thing you can do to slow down and if the rockets are still accelerating your ship things will only get worse.

We have been tricked into believing that we would not notice anything different because in our frame of reference within the spaceship while traveling at relatively slow speeds compared to the speed of light we cannot perceive a difference. This is a folly. This belief system is similar to when scientists believed the earth was flat and the earth was the center of the Universe.

Light moves at c relative to any frame. This has been experimentally confirmed. — noAxioms

I don't argue with this statement above. This fact of reality does not have any impact on what I am claiming is wrong with the interpretation of Special Relativity. What physicists say is that all the laws of physics look the same to you regardless of how fast you are traveling. I interpret that to mean as I have been told by others that you cannot tell that your clock is slowing and you cannot notice that your length in the direction of motion is shrinking and that your increase in mass is also not noticeable. The constancy of light speed is maintained regardless of anyone else's motion. While the speed of light is maintained the light incoming to your space ship is effected by your increase in speed and you can see the Doppler effect in play when you accelerate to the speed of light. It is everything else that is affected within the accelerating frame of reference. It is my belief that as one gradually accelerates and approaches the speed of light a person on board that space ship they will be flattened and pressed back into their chair. The ship length will be compressed and it will require more and more thrust to continue to accelerate to the speed of light. Eventually the human brain will not be able to function because the electrons in their brain will no longer be able to move forward in the direction of motion that the ship is traveling. This will then stop the person from aging and will freeze the clocks in their motion. It will appear to us that time has stopped for the space travelers. Time has not stopped. The motion of all the particles that exist in the clocks onboard the space ship have stopped. Now in this moment all the particles on the ship and in the people within the ship are all already moving at the speed of light in the direction that the ship is moving. Maybe a person could survive this but I doubt it. Even if they could the instruments used to slow the ship down will be frozen and in accessible. No automated timer will work unless it is programmed to run at the just below the speed of light. Then after a short duration of a second or two local space ship time the ship can be slowed down. This would most likely put them light years away from where they started.

If on the other hand if they could actually reach the speed of light there would be no escape. They would be unable to slow down. The only way to slow down would be to collide with something and that most certainly would end in a spectacular explosion.

but it describes a universe in which it is far easier to understand what's happening since electromagnetic and nuclear forces don't change with speed relative a fixed frame of reference. — boethius

That statement is primarily what I intend on proving is not true. I think this is a misinterpretation of what is really physically happening. Nuclear forces and the motion of electromagnetic particles will be affected just as Stephen Hawking says in his book. Einstein in his speech on the "ether" in 1920 said that General Relativity proved that there is an ether. Unfortunately because of the misinterpretation of the null result of the Michelson & Morley experiment he came to believe that you cannot sense motion relative to it. Einstein said, "But this ether may not be thought of as endowed with the quality characteristic of ponderable media, as consisting of parts which may be tracked through time. The idea of motion may not be applied to it." The confusion about this was created by the failure to detect the ether wind. The design of this experiment was incorrect. Looking for a difference in the motion of light will never be detectable relative to the emitting source motion. This is true because light moves autonomously relative only to the medium it is moving within. The density and tension of the medium is what determines the maximum velocity. It moves at this velocity and will be measured at the maximum speed no matter how fast you are moving in any particular direction. You can detect what your motion is relative to another moving frame of reference by using the doppler shift. Still it is hard to determine your velocity relative to the ether. In order to successfully determine an absolute velocity relative to a stationary ether back ground we will have to use clock motion. The fastest moving clock will determine that you are not moving at all relative to the ether. This I believe is the same conclusion that Lorentz came to many years ago. Unfortunately after the Michelson & Morley experiment people stopped listening to talk about the ether.

tests have been shown in airplanes traveling for several days (P-3) that the clocks slow down or tell time slower than the clock on the earth's surface. This is due to each particle within the clock (each particle has a x vector, y vector, z vector) has vectors and when you combine the 3 vectors the sum can never exceed C (speed of light). When you increase the clock in one direction (at higher speeds over a long period time for analysis purposes) you are slowing each particle down in one or two of it's other vectors. The net result is the clock loses its ability to accurately tell time. A good book on this is "a brief history of time" by Stephen Hawking. A lot of Physicists write bad books, this is not the case with that book. — christian2017

I agree with this paragraph. This is an excellent description of exactly what I am saying happens. This example is a wedge that can be used to prove all of the other transformations will also be physically observable when the spaceship gets close to the speed of light. What slows down when we accelerate a frame of reference is all of the devices that we use to measure time. My spin on that is that time itself is not a real thing and cannot be affected by anything we do regarding accelerated motion. The mechanics of particle motion is affected and that causes the clocks to slow down and things will age slower as a result of the increased motion relative to a stationary spatial background. The relative motion versus some other slower moving frame of reference is not the big deal. The apparent time slowing phenomena is caused by motion relative to the stationary ether. This is just exactly what Lorentz calculated and that is really what the time dilation formula is saying. Lorentz thought this was so strange at first that he didn't believe it.

MrCypress I think the forum you want is https://www.physicsforums.com/ — Wayfarer

Already been there. Believe me when I say alternate dissenting theories to accepted main stream theories are not welcome on that website. They refuse to have this kind of discussion there. This topic really is a matter of deciding what the proper interpretation is. It is a philosophical difference I have with the physics community. At least here an open discussion is welcomed and appreciated.

Given that experiments hold up the theory, maybe it would be more interesting to discuss how to visualise it all and get a handle on it? — Kippo

That is exactly what I want to do in this discussion!

Is this an anomaly though? Surely it would be a conformation that the laws of physics are holding up. I'm not sure anyone is saying that moving at near light speeds won't be calamitous to life are they? — Kippo

In the past on the physics forum it has been claimed that the inhabitant of the space craft traveling near the speed of light will not be able to notice any difference in this rapidly moving frame of reference. According to the physicists on that forum everything will appear unchanged and the only people that would notice that the Lorentz transformations are in effect is people who are stationary relative to the motion of the rapidly moving space ship.

Good we have some agreement. You would be able to detect your absolute motion by determining your motion relative to other slower frames of reference that you are traveling toward or away from via the doppler shift. I agree.

Okay here you give me a more correct statement about what physicists say.

What physicists say is that all the laws of physics look the same to you regardless of how fast you are traveling. — Kippo

This is what I intend on proving is incorrect. Thank you for stating that more clearly than I did.

Your clock would be ticking away normally as far as you are concerned. What physicists say is that all the laws of physics look the same to you regardless of how fast you are travelling. So you would not know how fast you are travelling by looking for anomalies - there would be none. — Kippo

Here is where the the incorrect interpretations start to breakdown. We have both just agreed that you can tell you are moving at 99% the speed of light by using Doppler effect. It does not matter that you are just moving 99% the speed of light compared to some frame of reference like the planet earth you left behind. That frame of reference is moving so slow relative to the speed of light that it is essentially stationary. So in reality if you are moving at the speed of light relative to the earth you are essentially moving at the speed of light relative to everything else in the Universe. The only differences will be slight because of their relative motions relative to you and the stationary back ground of space. The Doppler measurement is the first anomaly that gives the person in the spacecraft a clear indication they are moving at 99% the speed of light.

Modern day physicists assumption there would be no other anomalies is woefully incorrect. Let us take "time" for example. The claim is that the person in the spaceship traveling at 99% speed of light would not notice anything different about their clock rate slowing down. It is assumed that the space travel would still be conscious. I doubt very seriously that he would be. The same real physical effects that are causing the clock to slow down are also effecting the brain processes of the space traveler. The inertial effects at moving at this speed relative the stationary spatial background would also be very apparent. The space traveller would be pinned to the back of his chair even if he were no longer accelerating. The space traveller and his space ship would also be flattened like a pancake and the ship would have acquired nearly infinite mass. If the space traveler could survive all of this he would very definitely notice all kinds of anomalies indicating the high rate of absolute motion relative to the stationary background of space. The original Lorentz transformations were discovered by Lorentz and his model for those transformations was based on a quasi-elastic stationary ether. If the equations are right and I assume they are in the special circumstances of Special Relativity then what is important is the relative motion versus the ether and not the relative motion relative to other moving frames of reference.

We assume that none of these things would be noticeable because the changes are so small relative to the speeds we are able to achieve using rockets and our puny thrust capabilities. This assumption is woefully incorrect. It would be fatal mistake trying to accelerate to the speed of light without taking the proper precautions. The only way to safely achieve light speed velocity is to use a spatial bias drive.

The first question in this argument is to determine whether it is time that is slowing down when we accelerate to the speed of light or is it the clock that is slowing down and not time. To me the answer is obvious. It is all of the physical processes that we use to measure time that are slowed. Time itself is not a real thing so it cannot be physically slowed or sped up.

There are many responses here and I have limited time to respond. Over time I will try and address every argument that is made. The overall point that I am going to prove is that the experiments done so far backup my interpretation of Special Relativity. Physicists have badly misinterpreted the meaning of Special Relativity. The laws of physics will not look the same regardless of how fast you are traveling. The time measurements and experiments performed have already proven what I am saying.