🚀 go-pugleaf

On Jun 28, 1:01 am, Pentcho Valev <pva...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Volume 1, Chapter 15-1:
> "Suppose we are riding in a car that is going at a speed u, and light
> from the rear is going past the car with speed c. Differentiating the
> first equation in (15.2) gives dx'/dt=dx/dt-u, which means that
> according to the Galilean transformation the apparent speed of the
> passing light, as we measure it in the car, should not be c but should
> be c-u."
>
> Needless to say, Feynman rejects the equation c'=c-u (it is
> incompatible with Einstein's special relativity) but:
>
> 1. According to Maxwell's theory, the equation c'=c-u is correct (u is
> the speed of the car relative to the ether).
>
> 2. According to Newton's emission theory of light, the equation c'=c-u
> is correct (u is the speed of the car relative to the emitter).
>
> 3. In the absence of ad hoc auxiliary hypotheses (Lorentz-FitzGerald's
> length contraction), the Michelson-Morley experiment confirms the
> equation c'=c-u and refutes the alternative equation c'=c compatible
> with Einstein's special relativity:
>
> http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00001743/02/Norton.pdf
> John Norton: "Einstein regarded the Michelson-Morley experiment as
> evidence for the principle of relativity, whereas later writers almost
> universally use it as support for the light postulate of special
> relativity......THE MICHELSON-MORLEY EXPERIMENT IS FULLY COMPATIBLE
> WITH AN EMISSION THEORY OF LIGHT THAT CONTRADICTS THE LIGHT
> POSTULATE."

The Michelson-Morley experiment is fully compatible with the light
postulate that contradicts the emission theory of light. Therefore you
cannot use the Michelson-Morley experiment as a discriminator between
emission theories and relativity and you have to rely on other
independent experiments. Any idiot could see that. Why can't you?

>
> http://books.google.com/books?id=JokgnS1JtmMC
> "Relativity and Its Roots" By Banesh Hoffmann
> p.92: "Moreover, if light consists of particles, as Einstein had
> suggested in his paper submitted just thirteen weeks before this one,
> the second principle seems absurd: A stone thrown from a speeding
> train can do far more damage than one thrown from a train at rest; the
> speed of the particle is not independent of the motion of the object
> emitting it.

Yes, that is true for stones.

> And if we take light to consist of particles and assume
> that these particles obey Newton's laws,

But they don't. And there is no reason for assuming that if it is
counter to experimental measurements, which it is.

> they will conform to
> Newtonian relativity and thus automatically account for the null
> result of the Michelson-Morley experiment without recourse to
> contracting lengths, local time, or Lorentz transformations.

Yes, that is true. However, emission theories are incompatible with
experiments OTHER THAN the Michelson-Morley experiment.
Any author who thinks that the validity of relativity as opposed to
competing models rests solely on the Michelson-Morley experiment is an
idiot and not worth quoting as a reliable reference.

> Yet, as
> we have seen, Einstein resisted the temptation to account for the null
> result in terms of particles of light and simple, familiar Newtonian
> ideas, and introduced as his second postulate something that was more
> or less obvious when thought of in terms of waves in an ether."
>
> Pentcho Valev
> pva...@yahoo.com