🚀 go-pugleaf

In fact, Hawking's work started in 2001 when he and Sir Martin Rees
decided to rewrite "the laws thought to govern the universe, including
Albert Einstein's theory of relativity" because the principle of
constancy of the speed of light seemed false to them:

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.....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.....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."

Now that Hawking is going to build his new theory "ON A TRADITION
DATING BACK TO ISAAC NEWTON OVER THREE CENTURIES AGO", he needs a
suitable motto. I am sure he will choose the famous words of
Einstein's apostle, Banesh Hoffmann:

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."

Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com