🚀 go-pugleaf

http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a909857880
Peter Hayes "The Ideology of Relativity: The Case of the Clock
Paradox" : Social Epistemology, Volume 23, Issue 1 January 2009, pages
57-78
"The gatekeepers of professional physics in the universities and
research institutes are disinclined to support or employ anyone who
raises problems over the elementary inconsistencies of relativity. A
winnowing out process has made it very difficult for critics of
Einstein to achieve or maintain professional status. Relativists are
then able to use the argument of authority to discredit these critics.
Were relativists to admit that Einstein may have made a series of
elementary logical errors, they would be faced with the embarrassing
question of why this had not been noticed earlier. Under these
circumstances the marginalisation of antirelativists, unjustified on
scientific grounds, is eminently justifiable on grounds of
realpolitik. Supporters of relativity theory have protected both the
theory and their own reputations by shutting their opponents out of
professional discourse."

Gatekeepers have always known that "the elementary inconsistencies of
relativity" are all consequences of Einstein's 1905 false light
postulate but from time to time they fear that believers may suddenly
stop singing "Divine Einstein" and "Yes we all believe in relativity,
relativity, relativity" and notice the obvious falsehood of the light
postulate. In such cases gatekeepers teach, and believers should learn
by rote, that Einstein's 1905 false light postulate is superfluous,
that is, even if "light in vacuum does not travel at the invariant
speed of the Lorentz transform", Einstein's special relativity "would
be unaffected":

http://o.castera.free.fr/pdf/Chronogeometrie.pdf
Jean-Marc Lévy-Leblond "De la relativité à la chronogéométrie ou: Pour
en finir avec le "second postulat" et autres fossiles": "D'autre part,
nous savons aujourd'hui que l'invariance de la vitesse de la lumière
est une conséquence de la nullité de la masse du photon. Mais,
empiriquement, cette masse, aussi faible soit son actuelle borne
supérieure expérimentale, ne peut et ne pourra jamais être considérée
avec certitude comme rigoureusement nulle. Il se pourrait même que de
futures mesures mettent enévidence une masse infime, mais non-nulle,
du photon ; la lumière alors n'irait plus à la "vitesse de la
lumière", ou, plus précisément, la vitesse de la lumière, désormais
variable, ne s'identifierait plus à la vitesse limite invariante. Les
procédures opérationnelles mises en jeu par le "second postulat"
deviendraient caduques ipso facto. La théorie elle-même en serait-elle
invalidée ? Heureusement, il n'en est rien ; mais, pour s'en assurer,
il convient de la refonder sur des bases plus solides, et d'ailleurs
plus économiques. En vérité, le premier postulat suffit, à la
condition de l'exploiter à fond."

http://www.hep.princeton.edu/~mcdonald/examples/mechanics/levy-leblond_ajp_44_271_76.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://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20026801.500-why-einstein-was-wrong-about-relativity.html
Why Einstein was wrong about relativity
29 October 2008, Mark Buchanan, NEW SCIENTIST
"This "second postulate" is the source of all Einstein's eccentric
physics of shrinking space and haywire clocks. And with a little
further thought, it leads to the equivalence of mass and energy
embodied in the iconic equation E = mc2. The argument is not about the
physics, which countless experiments have confirmed. It is about
whether we can reach the same conclusions without hoisting light onto
its highly irregular pedestal. (...) But in fact, says Feigenbaum,
both Galileo and Einstein missed a surprising subtlety in the maths -
one that renders Einstein's second postulate superfluous."

http://henry.pha.jhu.edu/henryMinkowski.pdf
"In September of 1905 Einstein published a development from relativity
- the discovery of the implication that E = mc2, and in this new paper
he mentions a single postulate only. But the paper contains a sweet
footnote: "The principle of the constancy of the velocity of light is
of course contained in Maxwell's equations." How I love that "of
course!" Einstein was human! I do not know if it is true, but I recall
being told that during the Middle Ages undergraduates learned to
multiply and divide using Roman numerals, while the exotic Arabic
numerals were reserved for the more advanced students. That is exactly
what we do today in teaching special relativity. Antique postulates
that are not of anything but historical interest to genuine physicists
are presented to students as "Special Relativity." Some books do
better than others in warning students how seemingly impossible the
second postulate is; but all have the students working out true but
unintuitive consequences (e.g. relativity of simultaneity) using
thought experiments with of course the second postulate producing the
bizarre result. A small number of texts (Ohanian, Knight, a few
others) at least follow Einstein's second paper in having but a single
postulate; but none do what needs to be done, which is to drop
Einstein and adopt Minkowski."

http://www.amazon.com/Einsteins-Relativity-Beyond-Approaches-Theoretical/dp/9810238886
Jong-Ping Hsu: "The fundamentally new ideas of the first purpose are
developed on the basis of the term paper of a Harvard physics
undergraduate. They lead to an 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."

http://groups.google.ca/group/sci.physics.relativity/msg/dc1ebdf49c012de2
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)."

Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com