🚀 go-pugleaf

Other signals carefully sent by fat rats:

http://discovermagazine.com/2004/sep/einsteins-lonely-path
Lee Smolin: "SPECIAL RELATIVITY WAS THE RESULT OF 10 YEARS OF
INTELLECTUAL STRUGGLE, YET EINSTEIN HAD CONVINCED HIMSELF IT WAS WRONG
WITHIN TWO YEARS OF PUBLISHING IT. He rejected his own theory, even
before most physicists had come to accept it, for reasons that only he
cared about. For another 10 years, as others in the world of physics
slowly absorbed special relativity, Einstein pursued a lonely path
away from it. Why? The main reason..... A second reason was his
concern with incorporating gravity, making use of what he called the
equivalence principle, which postulates that observers can never
distinguish the effects of gravity from those of acceleration as long
as they observe phenomena only in their neighborhood."

http://www.blazelabs.com/f-g-gcont.asp "The first confirmation of a
long range variation in the speed of light travelling in space came in
1964. Irwin Shapiro, it seems, was the first to make use of a
previously forgotten facet of general relativity theory -- that the
speed of light is reduced when it passes through a gravitational
field....Faced with this evidence, Einstein stated:"In the second
place our result shows that, according to the general theory of
relativity, the law of the constancy of the velocity of light in
vacuo, which constitutes one of the two fundamental assumptions in the
special theory of relativity and to which we have already frequently
referred, cannot claim any unlimited validity. A curvature of rays of
light can only take place when the velocity of propagation of light
varies with position."......Today we find that since the Special
Theory of Relativity unfortunately became part of the so called
mainstream science, it is considered a sacrilege to even suggest that
the speed of light be anything other than a constant. This is somewhat
surprising since even Einstein himself suggested in a paper "On the
Influence of Gravitation on the Propagation of Light," Annalen der
Physik, 35, 1911, that the speed of light might vary with the
gravitational potential. Indeed, the variation of the speed of light
in a vacuum or space is explicitly shown in Einstein's calculation for
the angle at which light should bend upon the influence of gravity.
One can find his calculation in his paper. The result is c'=c(1+V/c^2)
where V is the gravitational potential relative to the point where the
measurement is taken. 1+V/c^2 is also known as the GRAVITATIONAL
REDSHIFT FACTOR."

http://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/papers/OntologyOUP_TimesNR.pdf "What Can
We Learn about the Ontology of Space and Time from the Theory of
Relativity?", John D. Norton: "In general relativity there is no
comparable sense of the constancy of the speed of light. The constancy
of the speed of light is a consequence of the perfect homogeneity of
spacetime presumed in special relativity. There is a special velocity
at each event; homogeneity forces it to be the same velocity
everywhere. We lose that homogeneity in the transition to general
relativity and with it we lose the constancy of the speed of light.
Such was Einstein's conclusion at the earliest moments of his
preparation for general relativity. ALREADY IN 1907, A MERE TWO YEARS
AFTER THE COMPLETION OF THE SPECIAL THEORY, HE HAD CONCLUDED THAT THE
SPEED OF LIGHT IS VARIABLE IN THE PRESENCE OF A GRAVITATIONAL FIELD."

http://www.amazon.com/Relativity-Its-Roots-Banesh-Hoffmann/dp/0486406768
"Relativity and Its Roots" by Banesh Hoffmann, Chapter 5.
(I do not have the text in English so I am giving it in French)
Banesh Hoffmann, "La relativite, histoire d'une grande idee", Pour la
Science, Paris, 1999, p. 112:
"De plus, si l'on admet que la lumiere est constituee de particules,
comme Einstein l'avait suggere dans son premier article, 13 semaines
plus tot, le second principe parait absurde: une pierre jetee d'un
train qui roule tres vite fait bien plus de degats que si on la jette
d'un train a l'arret. Or, d'apres Einstein, la vitesse d'une certaine
particule ne serait pas independante du mouvement du corps qui l'emet!
Si nous considerons que la lumiere est composee de particules qui
obeissent aux lois de Newton, ces particules se conformeront a la
relativite newtonienne. Dans ce cas, il n'est pas necessaire de
recourir a la contraction des longueurs, au temps local ou a la
transformation de Lorentz pour expliquer l'echec de l'experience de
Michelson-Morley. Einstein, comme nous l'avons vu, resista cependant a
la tentation d'expliquer ces echecs a l'aide des idees newtoniennes,
simples et familieres. Il introduisit son second postulat, plus ou
moins evident lorsqu'on pensait en termes d'ondes dans l'ether."
Translation from French:
"Moreover, if one admits that light consists of particles, as Einstein
had suggested in his first paper, 13 weeks earlier, the second
principle seems absurd: a stone thrown from a fast-moving train causes
much more damage than one thrown from a train at rest. Now, according
to Einstein, the speed of a particle would not be independent of the
state of motion of the emitting body! If we consider light as composed
of particles that obey Newton's laws, those particles would conform to
Newtonian relativity. In this case, it is not necessary to resort to
length contration, local time and Lorentz transformations in
explaining the negative result of the Michelson-Morley experiment.
Einstein however, as we have seen, resisted the temptation to explain
the negative result in terms of Newton's ideas, simple and familiar.
He introduced his second postulate, more or less evident as one thinks
in terms of waves in aether."

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."

http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00001743/02/Norton.pdf
John Norton: ""The principle of relativity, if implemented in Galilean
kinematics, dictated that the modified theory must embody an emission
theory of light. We know that Einstein entertained such a
theory.....Einstein leveled objections against all theories of this
type. Some were technical complications. The most fundamental,
however, was that these EMISSION THEORIES ADMITTED NO FIELD THEORY."

http://www.perimeterinstitute.ca/pdf/files/975547d7-2d00-433a-b7e3-4a09145525ca.pdf
John Stachel: "It is not so well known that there was "another
Einstein," who from 1916 on was skeptical about the continuum as a
foundational element in physics..." The other Einstein: "I consider it
entirely possible that PHYSICS CANNOT BE BASED UPON THE FIELD CONCEPT,
that is on continuous structures. Then nothing will remain of my whole
castle in the air, including the theory of gravitation, but also
nothing of the rest of contemporary physics."

Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com