Kinematic dilation: the helical path

Standard physics says that time slows for an object moving near the speed of light, as a consequence of the geometry of spacetime. RSI gives this a mechanical cause.

A subatomic knot such as a muon is an unstable inversion. It has a natural speed wobble, a geometric dissonance that gives it a fixed chance of unzipping on each internal cycle. When the knot moves, its circulating wave is drawn forward into a helix. The wave still travels at c, but each internal cycle takes longer, by exactly the factor relativity gives.

Because the chance of decay is fixed per cycle, the muon's life, seen from outside, is stretched by the same factor. This is observed for muons made by cosmic rays high in the atmosphere, which reach the ground in numbers they could not if their clocks ran at the normal rate, and for muons circling in storage rings, where CERN confirmed the effect to about one part in a thousand in 1977. The muon lives longer because its internal machinery runs more slowly, not because it is pushed or held.