The role of dynamics in the synchronization problem

摘要

Is Einstein's procedure for the synchronization of clocks in Special Relativity merely a convention about the one-way speed of light? This issue was first raised in the 1920s by H. Reichenbach, who argued that the standard synchronization involves circular reasoning, and that a nonstandard synchronization convention can be adopted, with unequal values of the speed of light in opposite directions. This "conventionalist thesis" has been widely discussed by physicists and philosophers in the context of kinematics, but not in the context of dynamics. We will show that an examination of the laws of dynamics resolves all ambiguities in synchronization. The nonstandard Reichenbach synchronization introduces pseudoforces into the equation of motion, and these pseudoforces are fingerprints of the nonstandard synchronization, just as the centrifugal and Coriolis pseudoforces are fingerprints of a rotating reference frame. In an inertial reference frame, the nonstandard synchronization is forbidden. (C) 2004 American Association of Physics Teachers. [References: 30]