Theoretical Concepts and Empirical Equivalence: Will the Real Concept Please Stand Up

[T_aquaticus]

@Jim

What we know from SR experiments are the verified measurements. Those are relevant facts. Whether it’s actually time or clocks slowing down has to be inferred from those facts.

In the case of the muons, we are measuring the physical process of particle decay. The stability of muons is a direct result of physical constants, or at least what we understand to be constants. It isn’t as if muons are a gear driven clock with a hour, minute, and second hand.

So how do you think velocity would change the physical constants that govern muon decay? What is the mechanism? Einstein’s equations accurately predict observations, so why do you reject the theory?

@Jim

I would say that it’s a much bigger leap to infer from those facts that time itself is slowing down and affecting the clocks than to infer that the clocks are being affected by gravity and velocity.

I would say just the opposite. I don’t see how velocity would change the most basic physical constants that are measured to be the same throughout the universe. Why would velocity change the stability of muons?