🚀 go-pugleaf

Pentcho Valev wrote on Wed, 19 Aug 2009 22:35:13 -0700:

> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/6057362/Give-scientists-the-freedom-
to-be-wrong.html
> Martin Rees: "Over the past week, two stories in the press have

"In the press". Press news are often unaccurate. Press news are not 
scientific literature.

> suggested that scientists

*Some* scientists, not all scientists.

> have been very wrong about some very big
> issues. First, a new paper seemed to suggest that dark energy – the
> mysterious force that makes up three quarters of the universe, and is
> pushing the galaxies further apart – might not even exist. (...)

What paper? Not given.

Moreover, the cosmological constant has been measured.

> And if
> we do arrive at such a unified theory, will it invalidate the efforts of
> Newton and Einstein – or all of the modern physicists who have tried to
> explain the inexplicable? Not a bit of it. Scientists know that they can
> never reach finality. Cynics said that Einstein might as well have gone
> fishing from 1920 onwards, given the failure of much of his research."

This is unrelated to above.

> Lord Rees is President of the Royal Society
> 
> This seems to be the real beginning of the shock and horror announced a
> few years ago:
> 
> http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/2003/04/waseinsteinwrong/ Paul Davies:
> "Was Einstein wrong? Einstein's famous equation E=mc2 is the only
> scientific formula known to just about everyone. The "c" here stands for
> the speed of light. It is one of the most fundamental of the basic
> constants of physics. Or is it? In recent years a few maverick
> scientists have claimed that the speed of light might not be constant at
> all. Shock, horror! Does this mean the next Great Revolution in Science
> is just around the corner?"

More news.

Some (untested) theories predict variable speed of light with 
cosmological evolution or similar stuff, but of course, those theories 
reduce to special or general relativity in some limit (e.g. local). That 
variable speed of light has nothing to see with the well-stablished law 
of constancy of c to changes of frame.

> http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/519406/posts "A GROUP of
> astronomers and cosmologists has warned that the laws thought to govern
> the universe, including Albert Einstein's theory of relativity, must be
> rewritten. The group, which includes Professor Stephen Hawking and Sir
> Martin Rees, the astronomer royal, say such laws may only work for our
> universe but not in others that are now also thought to exist. "It is
> becoming increasingly likely that the rules we had thought were
> fundamental through time and space are actually just bylaws for our bit
> of it," said Rees, whose new book, Our Cosmic Habitat, is published next
> month. "Creation is emerging as even stranger than we thought." Among
> the ideas facing revision is Einstein's belief that the speed of light
> must always be the same - 186,000 miles a second in a vacuum. There is
> growing evidence that light moved much faster during the early stages of
> our universe. Rees, Hawking and others are so concerned at the impact of
> such ideas that they recently organised a private conference in
> Cambridge for more than 30 leading cosmologists."

More news. 

Again some (untested) theories predict variable speed of light with 
cosmological evolution or similar stuff, but of course, those theories 
reduce to special or general relativity in some limit (e.g. local). That 
variable speed of light has nothing to see with the well-stablished law 
of constancy of c to changes of frame.

That Hawking and other says is that c' = c is valid, but now is

186,000 miles a second in a vacuum = 186,000 miles a second in a vacuum

and at early stages was (for instance)

286,000 miles a second in a vacuum = 286,000 miles a second in a vacuum

Of course this is speculative.

> I think Einstein should have gone fishing even before 1920 since, as I
> explain below, "deductive theories are either absolutely true or
> absolutely false". Unlike today's Einsteinians Einstein knew this quite
> well:
> 
> Albert Einstein: "If the speed of light is the least bit affected by the
> speed of the light source, then my whole theory of relativity and theory
> of gravity is false."

And here is again your misconception. Nothing new.

> Pentcho Valev
> pvalev@yahoo.com


-- 
http://www.canonicalscience.org/