Article View: sci.physics.relativity
Article #808Re: Anti-Einsteiniana: Natural Philosophy Alliance?
From: Pentcho Valev
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 2010 11:08
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 2010 11:08
125 lines
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8656 bytes
Nowadays both anti-relativists and (clever) relativists know that Einstein's special relativity is false but the large number of alternatives offered or hinted at is both confusing and frustrating. So let me offer, without any justification, a statement which, if correct, will clarify the situation: The statement: Granted the null result of the Michelson-Morley experiment, THE ONLY alternative to Einstein's special relativity is Newton's emission theory of light: http://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/papers/companion.doc John Norton: "Imagine that some emitter sends out a light beam at c. According to this kinematics, an observer who moves past at v in the opposite direction, will see the emitter moving at v and the light emitted at c+v. This last fact is the defining characteristic of an emission theory of light: the velocity of the emitter is added vectorially to the velocity of light emitted." 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://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. And if we take light to consist of particles and assume that these particles obey Newton's laws, 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. 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." James H. Smith "Introduction à la relativité" EDISCIENCE 1969 pp. 39-41: "Si la lumière était un flot de particules mécaniques obéissant aux lois de la mécanique, il n'y aurait aucune difficulté à comprendre les résultats de l'expérience de Michelson-Morley.... Supposons, par exemple, qu'une fusée se déplace avec une vitesse (1/2)c par rapport à un observateur et qu'un rayon de lumière parte de son nez. Si la vitesse de la lumière signifiait vitesse des "particules" de la lumière par rapport à leur source, alors ces "particules" de lumière se déplaceraient à la vitesse c/2+c=(3/2)c par rapport à l'observateur. Mais ce comportement ne ressemble pas du tout à celui d'une onde, car les ondes se propagent à une certaine vitesse par rapport au milieu dans lequel elles se développent et non pas à une certaine vitesse par rapport à leur source..... Il nous faut insister sur le fait suivant: QUAND EINSTEIN PROPOSA QUE LA VITESSE DE LA LUMIERE SOIT INDEPENDANTE DE CELLE DE LA SOURCE, IL N'EN EXISTAIT AUCUNE PREUVE EXPERIMENTALE. IL LE POSTULA PAR PURE NECESSITE LOGIQUE." Pentcho Valev wrote: W. H. Newton-Smith, THE RATIONALITY OF SCIENCE, Routledge, London, 1981, p. 3: "For vewed sub specie eternitatis scientists (even physical scientists) are a fickle lot. The history of science is a tale of multifarious shiftings of allegiance from theory to theory. Newtonian mechanics had its hour of flourishing with virtual universal allegiance. Then, following a dramatic and brief period of turbulence, relativistic mechanics came to the fore and is espoused with the same universal allegiance and firm commitment on the part of the community." Newton-Smith's is an outdated account: except for the few remaining profeteers (who were unable to become climate change experts), nobody supports Einstein's relativity anymore, let alone "with firm commitment". The problem is that Anti-Einsteiniana is not organized and is difficult to be organized in a world where money, not ideas, is the essence of any organization. Still some anti-relativity community, perhaps too loose for the moment, does exist: http://www.worldnpa.org/main/ "The Natural Philosophy Alliance, quite unlike establishment physics, does not impose any particular ideas on its members, whose ideas are so diverse that generalization about them is very difficult. Aside from virtually unanimous agreement that contemporary cosmology and physics--especially modern or 20th-century physics--are in dire need of a thorough overhaul, and that a much more tolerant spirit than has recently been shown in these fields must be practiced in order to achieve the needed changes, not very much comes close to achieving unanimous approval among NPA members. Nevertheless, certain interests and themes are very widespread, and certain opinions are subscribed to by a very large majority. The central theme that concerns nearly all members, both because of its highly honored position in current dogma and because its rather simple mathematics makes it comparatively easy to deal with, is special relativity (SR). A very large majority in the NPA believe it is seriously flawed, and a clear majority believe it is totally invalid. I earnestly subscribe to the latter view: SR has no validity whatsoever." (By NPA Founder, John E. Chappell) I think NPA should adopt a more concrete stance on special relativity. The theory is strictly deductive so it can only have "no validity whatsoever" if a postulate is false. Official mavericks in Einsteiniana are somewhat more advanced than NPA members in identifying the false postulate: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/31/science/e-and-mc2-equality-it-seems-is-relative.html "As propounded by Einstein as an audaciously confident young patent clerk in 1905, relativity declares that the laws of physics, and in particular the speed of light -- 186,000 miles per second -- are the same no matter where you are or how fast you are moving. Generations of students and philosophers have struggled with the paradoxical consequences of Einstein's deceptively simple notion, which underlies all of modern physics and technology, wrestling with clocks that speed up and slow down, yardsticks that contract and expand and bad jokes using the word "relative."......"Perhaps relativity is too restrictive for what we need in quantum gravity," Dr. Magueijo said. "We need to drop a postulate, perhaps the constancy of the speed of light." Pentcho Valev pvalev@yahoo.com
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X-Google-Thread: 237b8ad48,3dd19db7af033be7 X-Google-Attributes: gid237b8ad48,public,usenet X-Google-NewGroupId: yes X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!g2news1.google.com!postnews.google.com!c34g2000yqn.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail From: Pentcho Valev <pvalev@yahoo.com> Newsgroups: sci.physics.relativity,sci.physics,fr.sci.physique,fr.sci.astrophysique Subject: Re: Anti-Einsteiniana: Natural Philosophy Alliance? Date: Thu, 21 Jan 2010 03:08:43 -0800 (PST) Organization: http://groups.google.com Lines: 125 Message-ID: <d888f14c-c3db-406c-914c-05d96569c82a@c34g2000yqn.googlegroups.com> References: <eaaabedc-4217-43e1-99b3-67708dd39bf6@m26g2000yqb.googlegroups.com> <4B421362.415A8976@hate.spam.net> <2937484d-1aeb-47b3-9775-53153ce5d75d@a21g2000yqc.googlegroups.com> <3dc9baf5-9166-4d2e-9560-ab762f5d1207@e37g2000yqn.googlegroups.com> <7Nq1n.14669$bo7.5679@newsfe05.ams2> <2cb990f8-b727-4158-acfc-76bc8b3d471e@f5g2000yqh.googlegroups.com> <Ujj2n.18180$rP.8630@newsfe28.ams2> NNTP-Posting-Host: 89.215.201.48 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Trace: posting.google.com 1264072123 14430 127.0.0.1 (21 Jan 2010 11:08:43 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 21 Jan 2010 11:08:43 +0000 (UTC) Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: c34g2000yqn.googlegroups.com; posting-host=89.215.201.48; posting-account=Lz-LbgoAAABPDavKeW-eYeobwLHD_cvQ User-Agent: G2/1.0 X-HTTP-UserAgent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 1.1.4322),gzip(gfe),gzip(gfe)