>From Fran I see that Horace has already spoken definitively on the subject of "shrinkage."
... > ... so say I widen one dimension of the eye large enough > for the basketball but keep the other dimension just > wide enough for the pancake to slip through – assuming > I got my orientation dead on to agree with the oncoming > basketball my question becomes IS LORENTZ contraction > “real” or only a “relative illusion” ? Someone with more electrical knowledge than I will hopefully reply to your question in regards to the effects attributed to LORENTS contraction. I know I can't answer it. As to the rest of this interesting thought experiment: Speaking on behalf on the basketball only... Rotating the "flattened" basketball 90 degrees, i.e. the flattened pancake that is traveling close to luminous speeds, so that it's "shrunken" dimension can conveniently pass through the eye of a deliberately elongated needle is, to me, like trying to walk forever towards a mirage of imaginary water in the middle of a desert in order to dip one's cup in the refreshing liquid. Any act of "rotating" the dimensions of the 3D basketball will invariably cause shrinkage to be most noticeable in the direction of maximum luminosity. IOW, one can never get the speeding flattened pancake properly rotated to accommodate its passage through the eye of the stationary needle. Your interesting conjecture strikes me more as philosophical in nature rather than scientific. Actually, it strikes me more as a clever koan. Very Zen of you, Fran! My complements. Where are my little blue pills. Regards Steven Vincent Johnson www.OrionWorks.com www.zazzle.com/orionworks
