Relativity Bifurcates Space and Time to Preserve Newtonian Objects

Relativity Bifurcates Space and Time to Preserve Newtonian Objects Max Karson December 8, 2025 Abstract Relativity is operationally defined by light exchange, yet its textbook language treats “space” and “time” as independent geometric entities. This split is not discovered by experiment; it is imposed to preserve Newtonian object identity in the face of frame disparity. When light paths fail to fit a rigid object, the discrepancy is assigned to a separate “time” or “curvature” variable. The rotating disk provides the canonical example: operationally, its radius is a materially longer light-defined path, but is rebranded as an invariant Euclidean distance while the excess is pushed into local time. Time dilation, curvature, and stress thus emerge as linguistic conventions, portrayed as relativistic “effects” acting upon stable Newtonian objects and persistent observers. 1 Identity as an Operational Assumption An “object” is whatever subset of events an observer chooses to track as one thing. Operationally, the only data are light paths between these chosen endpoints. Any statement about the object’s “size,” “motion,” or “deformation” is a reification of that chosen identity. •If the one-way light paths across the chosen object are equal and constant, it is called “at rest.” •If the one-way paths differ in length, it is called “moving.” •If the pattern of this asymmetry changes, it is called “accelerating.” •If all paths scale together, the observer faces a choice of attribution: –if the object is treated as a spatial standard (a rod), it is “stressed”; –if the object is treated as a temporal standard (a clock or observer), it is “time-dilated.” These words introduce “states” by labeling changes to light paths as effects external to the very object defined by those same paths. 2 Preserving Objects by Dividing Light Data into Space and Time The quantity cis introduced as a fixed conversion factor between signal paths and an observer’s clock. To interpret this paired data as “objects in space,” physics assigns part of each light path to the object’s “shape” and places the remainder into a separate variable, “time.” This split is not enforced by signals; it is imposed by the human requirement that something remain identifiable as the “same object” despite changes to these signals. When experiments 1 yield uniformly scaled light paths across the chosen object, there are thus only two consistent interpretations: either the object has changed shape, or the calibration we call “the speed of light”—and hence “time”—has changed. By conventionally defining cas invariant, physics rules out the second interpretation in advance. All discrepancies must then be labeled “time dilation,” “curvature,” or “stress” acting upon an otherwise unchanged object. The invariance of cthus emerges not as an observational fact, but as a definitional choice protecting the concept of stable objects. 3 Example: The Rotating Disk The rotating disk provides the canonical example of relativity’s space/time bifurcation. As shown previously [3], the operational radius measured by light exchange traces a material spiral that is physically longer than the static coordinate radius assigned by convention. Rather than accepting a change in the object’s shape, physics assigns the discrepancy to “local time” and “stress,” preserving the disk as a persistent Euclidean object. 4 Metrics as Convention When observers collate multiple measurements of a chosen object, they make two prior commitments: first, that the object remains the same entity; and second, that they themselves remain persistent observers. Enforcing just one of these priors would strain operational coherence—enforcing both at once reduces the experiment to purely linguistic convention. A spacetime metric formalizes this dual commitment. It is an agreement between observers to partition changes in measured signals into “space” (preserving object identity) and “time” (preserving observer identity). Thus, the metric does not reveal a measurement-independent manifold, but rather codifies our collective decision to define language as external reality. AI Disclosure The author used AI language models to assist with drafting, editing, and consistency checks. References [1] P. Ehrenfest, “Gleichf¨ormige Rotation starrer K¨orper und Relativit¨atstheorie,” Physikalische Zeitschrift 10, 918 (1909). [2] A. Einstein, “Die Grundlage der allgemeinen Relativit¨atstheorie,” Annalen der Physik 49, 769 (1916). [3] M. Karson, “The Radius of a Rotating Disk Must Also Contract,” Zenodo (2025), DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17657569. 2