Doppler Effect

Most everyone out of grade school understands the Doppler Effect in sound. We understand that if a sound emitter is sitting still in its medium and we are moving toward that emitter, the raise in frequency is only a perceived one because of our speed in relation to the medium and therefore our speed in relation to the speed of sound. Think about that a good moment and visualize it so you understand. As a listener you are running into the waves more ‘frequently’ because, though the speed of sound is constant in its medium, the sound is actually passing you at (the speed of sound) + (your speed). With light the same thing happens and the Doppler Effect is readily accepted by the scientific community without question because there is a formula to describe it developed by a guy named Lorentz.

After thinking about it, I've realized this concept really is a little overly complex so I've made a page with some images to help me explain what I mean and to help you visually relate to the inner workings of the Doppler Effect.

I don’t think anyone has pointed this paradox out before because there are just so many other paradoxes to get your attention in relativity, but let me explain it in greater detail since I’ve not seen others brooch the subject. The problem with the current explanation is that there is no questioning of “How?” and “Why?”. If the Lorentz  mathematical model exists as the explanation, I contend that with a few adjustments, Lorentz equations could be used to explain that sound travels without a medium as well.

Using our understanding of Doppler with light, let's assume an emitter is still -since there is supposedly no medium- and we are traveling toward that emitter. Science accepts as fact that a Doppler effect will be observed in light and for this to occur, motion is necessary between the observer and the emitter. To explain why there is a frequency increase the only conclusion we can logically come to is that the moving observer is running into the waves more frequently because his speed in relation to the speed of light has changed and light is passing by him at (speed of light) + (observer’s speed). With relativity however this is impossible since light supposedly travels the same speed in relation to the observer regardless of any other factor or motion. “The same speed in all frames of reference”

So, as you are increasing speed towards the emitter, light never passes you with any additional speed and therefore you cannot be traversing additional waves. Where then does the frequency change come from? Let us go back to the sound example a moment for a thought experiment. If the emitter was constantly emitting one pure tone and we could freeze one instant in time and could see the wave between the emitter and the observer it would look exactly like the visualizations of a recording you commonly see on computers. It would be a sine wave all the way from the emitter to the listener like ripples on a pond.(ignoring the rest of the spherical emanation) My purpose is to say that at any given time, there are waves to traverse. In that frozen moment you could walk along that wave and touch each peak and valley and if you walked along at a steady rate your passing could be thought of as a frequency. If you had a recording on a computer and a slider bar you could manipulate to play the sound you could run the slider back and forth and the speed of your mouse would determine the pitch (frequency) of the sound. This again shows how Doppler is the relation of the listener(slider) to the speed of sound(stationary in this case).

The point of this long explanation is to try to logically examine a completely illogical subject. With relativity, regardless of how fast you go and even if you instantly traveled from one point to another, you could not traverse any additional waves because the travel of light is relative to your own speed. If you froze one moment in time, there would be no waves to look at. You cannot travel past a wave faster than the normal speed of light. This concept ascribes prescience to light.

grate Okay, I'm going to get a little silly now... Here are some strange considerations that come to mind: You cannot count the number of waves between the emitter the observer at any one instant. By extension this means that you cannot freeze time and see waves from the emitter to the observer. By further extension, this means that light really doesn’t travel at all. This really means that it is actually instantaneous then doesn’t it? Is the speed of light just a trick of simultaneity? Special Relativity holds that events that are simultaneous in one frame of reference need not be simultaneous in another frame of reference… Feeling frustrated? Well that must mean that you are just inferior to me, or perhaps it’s because the whole concept is a big ball of LSD induced illogic? Let’s just not apply occam’s razor to it because I prefer being superior to you

Oh wait, I know! We simply need to apply time dilation! Since frequency is a number of peaks per time period. Since we are traveling, time has slowed down for us, so we measure more peaks per second since our second is longer… Sounds good doesn’t it? However, since there is no universal reference we can just as easily, in the same experiment, assume that it is in fact the emitter that is traveling and therefore aging more slowly and we would measure a lower frequency. Or we could just say that we are both traveling at exactly the same speed (half the total) in opposite directions (towards eachother) and we should have no time dilation comparatively. If relativity is accepted, the Doppler effect cannot be explained except by simply and unquestioningly accepting as fact a mathematical model that predicts the effect. It comes to the same output without needing the same inputs. This still does not explain the “how & why” of how Doppler effect works in light. We can easily explain it in sound and can easily do so in light if we assume Relativity false and Aether true.