Challenge to the special theory of relativity

This paper finds that the time of the special theory of relativity (STR) is no longer the physical time measured by physical clocks. In fact, a clock can never measure time directly; it can only record the status of a physical process during a period of time, such as the number of cycles of an oscillatory mechanism, which is the product of time and oscillation frequency. After a Lorentz transformation from a moving inertial reference frame to a stationary inertial reference frame, the time in the moving frame is dilated by a factor γ , but the frequency of a clock in the moving frame decreases by the same factor γ , leaving the resulting product (i.e., the time displayed by the moving clock) unchanged. In other words, the time displayed by any physical clock is invariant with respect to Lorentz transformation, unlike the time of the STR. It is a mistake to use the properties of time in the STR to predict time dilation for physical clocks or any other physical process. Based on the Lorentz invariance of clock time, we can prove that within the framework of the STR, our Earth-based standard physical time is absolute, universal, and independent of the inertial reference frame. The existence of such an absolute and universal clock time is confirmed by the universal synchronization of all ground and satellite clocks of the global positioning system and by the theoretical existence of the absolute and universal Galilean time within the framework of the STR. We can further prove that in the STR, the time dilation and length contraction of a moving inertial reference frame observed from a stationary inertial reference frame are pure illusions. Moreover, in the STR, the real speed of light still exists and follows Newton's velocity-addition formula, which directly falsifies the postulate of the STR that the speed of light is constant in all inertial reference frames. All these findings lead us to question the validity of the STR as a theory of physics.