Can Atomic Clocks Yield the Same Time Dilation Equation as Light Clocks?

[PeroK]

To be fair to the authors I should mention that they have published a response to their critics:

R. de Sangro, G. Finocchiaro, P. Patteri, M. Piccolo, G. Pizzella, "Why the interpretation of ``Measuring propagation speed of Coulomb fields'' stands",
Eur. Phys. J. C, 77 (2017), 75. arXiv:gr-qc/1611.06935v1

Eugene.

In any case, I would say that a "B" level thread has been well and truly hi-jacked!

 

[benorin]

So then the clocks are separated along an axis perpendicular to the motion, right? Boom! Now what?

 

[Ibix]

So then the clocks are separated along an axis perpendicular to the motion, right? Boom! Now what?

You need to include the effects of the boost on the communication between clocks. Since the clocks are moving, whatever signal says "tick completed" has a different distance to travel and possibly a different velocity compared to measurements when the clocks are at rest. These differences will always result in the "tick completed" signal arriving at a given location simultaneously in all frames, or non-simultaneously in all frames. And since the bomb can only be in one position, whether the "tick completed" signals are received at its position at the same time is the only thing that matters.

Avoiding this unnecessary complication was why I proposed a thought experiment with colocated clocks.

 

[PeroK]

So then the clocks are separated along an axis perpendicular to the motion, right? Boom! Now what?

In that case, the clocks are equidistant from the bomb in both frames. I.e. equidistant in the rest frame; and equidistant in the moving frame.

It doesn't need to be a bomb, it just needs to be a device that confirms that communications (ticks) from each clock arrive at the same time.

If the clocks were running at different rates in the moving frame, then the communication with the central device would get out of synch, which would be a physical fact at that central location. This is then the element of "reality". Because the central device is a single device at a single location, you can't have two realities: two communications arrive at the same time or they do not and this cannot be dependent on whether the device is seen to be moving or not.

Dramatically, you could use the device to trigger a bomb and then the reality becomes whether the bomb goes off or not.