🚀 go-pugleaf

On Oct 9, 2:17 am, Pentcho Valev <pva...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> http://www.physorg.com/news111075100.html
> "Further, Einstein based his theories on the assumption that the speed
> of light, c, is constant, and used gedanken ("thought") experiments
> involving light rays to reach his conclusions. Now Joel Gannett, a
> Senior Scientist in the Applied Research Area of Telcordia
> Technologies in Red Bank, New Jersey, has found that Einstein didn't
> have to do the work the hard way. A researcher in optical networking
> technologies, Gannett has shown that the Lorentz transformations and
> velocity addition law can be derived without assuming the constancy of
> the speed of light, without thought experiments, and without calculus.
> In this case, Einsteinian relativity could have been discovered
> several centuries before Einstein."
>
> The discovery is breathtaking of course but it seems to me that this
> Joel Gannett is a plagiarist: the same discovery has already been made
> by three geniuses: Jean-Marc Levy-Leblond, Tom Roberts and Jong-Ping
> Hsu:
>
> http://o.castera.free.fr/pdf/onemorederivation.pdf
> Jean-Marc Levy-Leblond: "This is the point of view from wich I intend
> to criticize the overemphasized role of the speed of light in the
> foundations of the special relativity, and to propose an approach to
> these foundations that dispenses with the hypothesis of the invariance
> of c....We believe that special relativity at the present time stands
> as a universal theory discribing the structure of a common space-time
> arena in which all fundamental processes take place....The evidence of
> the nonzero mass of the photon would not, as such, shake in any way
> the validity of the special relalivity. It would, however, nullify all
> its derivations which are based on the invariance of the photon
> velocity."
>
> http://groups.google.ca/group/sci.physics.relativity/browse_frm/threa...
> Tom Roberts: "If it is ultimately discovered that the photon has a
> nonzero mass (i.e. light in vacuum does not travel at the invariant
> speed of the Lorentz transform), SR would be unaffected but both
> Maxwell's equations and QED would be refuted (or rather, their domains
> of applicability would be reduced)."
>
> http://www.worldscibooks.com/physics/4114.html
> Jong-Ping Hsu: "....unexpected affirmative answer to the long-standing
> question of whether it is possible to construct a relativity theory
> without postulating the constancy of the speed of light and retaining
> only the first postulate of special relativity. This question was
> discussed in the early years following the discovery of special
> relativity by many physicists, including Ritz, Tolman, Kunz, Comstock
> and Pauli, all of whom obtained negative answers."
>
> Still the plagiarism is not so important in this case. What is
> important is that Einstein criminal cult finally got rid of Einstein's
> false light postulate and now Einstein zombie world is going to see a
> new unimaginable development of Einstein's relativity.
>
> Pentcho Valev

Plagiarism?  Did this turkey even bother to look at the paper before
hurling accusations?  Well I did.  Joel Gannett is not a plagiarist.
As Gannett correctly points out, the idea that a relativity theory can
be constructed without postulating the constancy of the speed of light
is an OLD idea, dating from 1910, and is well-documented in the
literature.  Ignatowsky was probably the first to publish this idea.
His 1910 paper pre-dates the three excerpts that PV lists by many
years.