Hillary

Relative motion-It is something we observe every day but never really think about. When you were younger -- before you had your own car and had to ride the bus to school -- did you ever look out the window and 'watch the trees go by?' It seemed natural from your frame of reference to think of the trees, the houses, the ground as 'going by.' When you think about it, you know that they are stationary, and it is in fact you in motion (although you remain relatively stationary to the bus).

Newton's Bucket is a simple way to force our minds to really contemplate what motion means with a more complicated example. From our view point, the bucket is spinning, then the water and the bucket, then only the water. But what about the water's point of view? The bucket's point of view? How would traveling up a 'beanstalk' into geostationary orbit change your point of view? Or driving by in a car? As Newton's bucket experiment failed to observe the water and bucket from an accelerated frame of reference outside of the bucket.

As for an ultimate frame of reference… For people who believe in an omnipotent God, the answer is simple and absolute. If this is accepted as truth, there is still a problem. What is God's frame of reference? How does he view our motion? This is impossible to answer from our Earthly point of view. So I propose to look for a frame not contingent on religion or ethereal planes.

Since the universe, as far as scientists can tell, is currently undergoing some sort of expansion, it could be that the ultimate frame of reference would need to be outside our universe, if there is such a thing. The ultimate frame of reference would need to be such that everything can be considered in relation to itself, and possibly account for any forces due to other dimensions not experienced by human senses. There is still the problem, however, of a human being able to understand how this frame of reference would view any event that we observe.

Therefore, I believe it would be simpler and accurate, for most events, to assume that all motion is relative and choose the best frame of reference for each individual event. At least until such a time that an ultimate frame of reference is identified, and it is discovered how to observe events from this frame of reference -- a task, that for all options previously identified seems quite difficult (at least for me).