In article <efbc3534.0205170217.59510...@posting.google.com>, Elizabeth

[...]

   No, they were not, because Lorentz's interpretation of the Lorentz
transformations was incomplete.  Lorentz himself acknowledged as much.

   The aesthetic appeal (or lack thereof of) of "cultural metaphors" is
irrelevant to the correctness of a physical theory, a matter which is
decided on experimental rather than aesthetic grounds.  In fact,
Einstein himself did not care much for quantum mechanics on aesthetic
grounds, but there he was wrong -- experiment vindicated resoundingly
the quantum theories of Bohr and others that Einstein found so
aesthetically distasteful.

   What on earth are you gibbering about?  To the extent that Lorentz
developed relativity theory, it was *only* the *special theory* --
Lorentz did *not* formulate a relativistic theory of gravitation.  You
appear to have misunderstood *completely* what is meant by the word
"special" in the phrase "special theory of relativity."  The "special
theory" is simply a theory that unifies classical mechanics and
electrodynamics without attempting to incorporate gravitation, a
phenomenon whose Newtonian description is manifestly incompatible with
the version of relativity mandated by the Lorentz transformations.

   The "metaphors" of special relativity -- point particles rather than
wave functions, deterministic evolution of a system even when probed by
an observer, etc. -- are just as "classical" of those of Lorentz's
incomplete and untenable theory of the electron.  It was the *quantum*
theory that introduced disturbing, decidedly nonclassical "metaphors"
-- probabilistic rather than deterministic description of observations,
etc.

   For the *THIRD TIME*, Hsu is *NOT* my "Dartmouth colleague"!  I have
already noted that you evidently do not read French and hence cannot
understand the Poincaré quotation I posted (it refutes your claim that
Poincaré formulated relativity theory geometrically).  I'm beginning to
wonder whether you can even read English, as you continue to refer to
Hsu as my "Dartmouth colleague" despite my having corrected this
hilarious howler *twice* already!  Here is what I wrote the last two
times you described this hallucination of yours:

   "There is nobody named Hsu among my colleagues at Dartmouth; I
   don't know where you hallucinated this factoid.  The most likely
   explanation is that you don't even know the difference between
   *Dartmouth College*, a private, Ivy League institution, and the
   University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, a branch campus of the
   public University of Massachusetts system.  The latter has *no*
   affiliation whatever with the former -- its campus merely happens
   to be located in North Dartmouth, MA -- but it does have Jong-Ping
   Hsu as a member of its Engineering faculty, a circumstance which
   may be the source of your comic confusion."

Moreover, as I already noted, Hsu's is by no means the first attempt to
dispense with Einstein's second postulate; Ignatowsky, Pars, and others
long ago attempted this, beginning around 1910, as I recall, so it is
not exactly the revolutionary new "neo-Lorentzian" idea you seem in
your profound ignorance of the literature to believe that it is.  For a
related discussion, see N. D. Mermin, "Relativity without light", _Am.
J. Phys._ 52 (1984), 119-124.

   As your ignorance of the literature makes abundantly clear, you
certainly have *NOT* looked into it -- or at any rate, you have not
done so *competently*.

   I've given perfectly clear, direct answers, combining specific
references to the scientific literature with directly pertinent
quotations from that literature, not a one of which you have even
acknowledged, let alone understood.  By contrast, your activity seems
to have been confined to grepping nutcase web sites, as well as a very
few reliable web sites whose content you have farcically misunderstood.
Indeed, you have not furnished even a *single citation*, let alone a
quotation, that shows Poincaré formulating relativity kinematically or
geometrically; on the other hand, I have posted -- repeatedly -- a
direct quotation from Poincaré's famous paper on the subject that
clearly states his dynamical approach.  Indeed, in the _Rendicotti_
paper, Poincaré attributed the relativistic kinematic effects to a
*force*, *not* to the geometry of spacetime.  Here it is again, since
you appear not to have been able to read it the first four times:

   "Il faut donc a revenir à la theorie de Lorentz; mais si l'on veut
   la conserver et éviter d'intolérables contradictions, il faut
   supposer une *force speciale* [emphasis added] qui explique à la
   foi la contraction et la constance de deux des axes [of the
   electron].  J'ai chercher à determiner cette force, j'ai trouvé
   qu'*elle peut être assimilée à une pression extérieure constante,
   agissant sur l'électron déformable et compressible, et dont le
   travail est proportionnel aux variations du volume de cet
   électron*."  [Emphasis in Poincaré]

However, as I've already noted, you probably think that _Rendicotti_ is
a kind of pasta.

               David Webb

In article <ac23fh$hl...@slb7.atl.mindspring.net>, Neil Brennen

   No doubt -- but don't exclude the Templars, Rosicrucians, the
Illuminati, and especially the Priory of Sion.  (I believe that Art
even includes the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks in the
ur-conspiracy now.)

   True, but the Ken-nada version is especially senile -- it can't even
remember what it posted itself.

   I read that group a little some years ago, around the time of its
inception, and it wasn't so bad then; there was little real content,
but there were few if any raving nutcases.  If the group now surpasses
h.l.a.s. in density of cranks, I'm not tempted to revisit it -- the
cranks here are depressing enough.

[[ This message was both posted and mailed: see
   the "To," "Cc," and "Newsgroups" headers for details. ]]

In article
<fdba2f18106b955696ff3a5937ee7448.12...@mygate.mailgate.org>, Bob

   Do you mean the history of *scientific* conceptions of space?  Or do
you mean surveys that include the cosmological myths of various
religions and cultures?  In the latter case, I can't help much.  In the
former case, here are a few suggestions.  Of course, one must draw a
distinction between physical space and mathematical space, a
distinction that has not always been clear historically.

   In fact, perhaps one of the most revolutionary developments arose in
the understanding that the "space" of common experience is just one of
various possibilities, a realization occasioned by the discovery (by
Gauss and others) of so-called "non-Euclidean geometry," by which is
usually meant the two-dimensional hyperbolic geometry of Lobachevsky,
Bolyai, Poincaré, etc.  After devoting an emormous amount of time and
effort to an attempt to deduce Euclid's parallel postulate from the
other axioms (all of which were viewed as far more intuitive than the
parallel postulate), it was realized that there are several possible
geometries satisfying the other axioms of Euclidean geometry, exclusive
of the parallel postulate.  To understand this adequately requires some
mathematics beyond the usual synthetic geometry taught in high school,
but a book that keeps mathematical prerequisites to a bare minimum is
Nikulin and Shafarevich's _Groups and Geometries_.  (This book requires
only a high school background, but it is nevertheless a serious book on
mathematics, so it does require that the reader think.)  Another
classic is Hilbert and Cohn-Vossen's _Geometry and the Imagination_.

   For an understanding of the notions of spacetime underlying special
relativity, some excellent sources are Max Born's book (old, but still
a classic), Taylor and Wheeler's _The Geometry of Spacetime_, and
French's _Special Relativity_.  The latter assumes only a very modest
mathematical background, little beyond single-variable calculus.

   However, more recent conceptions of space-time must take into
account the nature of the quantum vacuum, string theory, etc.  It is
impossible to do justice to this subject without the mathematics
underlying quantum theory, and unlike the case of special relativity
(whose underlying kinematic ideas can be conveyed using mostly high
school-level algebra), the mathematics needed is not that accessible.
However, Brian Greene's _The Elegant Universe_ and Guth's _The
Inflationary Universe_ are good popularizations.

            David Webb

I probably am not sure exactly what I want but it seems to me that
it was long taken for granted that space was what things were in--
and my concern is with physical space.  Then the ether was
introduced--as a kind of near-space?  But it was inside space, I
think.  Then there came mathematical space (which I believe I
understand the logic of)--and theories of physical space which
seem to me to theorize that physical space made me non-Euclidean
in some way.  In any case, it is now believed that physical space
has curvature, yes?  That makes it a different kind of space than
the Greeks believed in, I would think.

I would want all attempts to define physical space included.

snip of worthwhile recommendations with accompanying commentary

These books sound interesting but wouldn't be what I'm looking for,
I don't think, because I think I follow Non-Euclidean geometry (up
to the point that it is used to describe reality).  I spent too much
time trying to deduce Euclid's parallel postulate from the other
Euclidean axioms, myself.  I can't say that I understand the proofs
that it can't be done, but I do understand that I couldn't do it.  I
guess it was good inasmuch as it did teach me quite a bit about
geometry, and humbled me.

snip

                                     David Webb

Thanks for the tips, David--again.  One of these days, I'll get to one
or more of the recommended books . . . assuming Elizabeth hasn't
finally shown in words even I can understand why it's all hokum.

                                              --Bob G.

--
Posted via Mailgate.ORG Server - http://www.Mailgate.ORG

[[ This message was both posted and mailed: see
   the "To," "Cc," and "Newsgroups" headers for details. ]]

In article
<1444f5583ba9a1c535e2589145f87691.12...@mygate.mailgate.org>, Bob

   The ether proved to be a sort of red herring.  Prior to Maxwell's
electrodynamics, physics was acknowledged to obey Galilean relativity:
the laws of physics are the same for any two observers moving with
constant velocity relative to one another; in particular, there is no
way to establish experimentally which observer was "really" at rest.
There were two principles: (1) Newton's second law holds for an
inertial observer, and (2) any observer moving with constant velocity
relative to an inertial observer is himself inertial.  After Maxwell
fixed Ampere's Law, however, one of the logical consequences of the
equations of electrodynamics was an equation describing propagating
waves of a velocity c that could be easily computed in terms of the
values of two constants easily measured in the laboratory, the
"permittivity of the vacuum" and the "magnetic permeability of the
vacuum."  The velocity c that emerged from this computation was the
observed velocity of light, and the conclusion was inescapable that
light was the wave phenomenon predicted by Maxwell's equations.  Thus
Maxwell's equations singled out a *particular* velocity, so Galilean
relativity is destroyed and there is now a privileged "rest frame": the
absolute rest frame is the one in which light has the velocity c.  To
determine whether he is moving, an observer need only measure the
velocity of light -- if it is c, he is at rest; if not, he is in
motion.  The ether was suggested as a kind of medium for the
propagation of electromagnetic waves predicted by Maxwell's equations,
and the frame of reference of the ether was the obsolute rest frame.
The ether was not logically necessary as a medium for wave propagation
(after all, physicists had long accepted gravitational ineraction over
long distances with no intervening substance to mediate the interaction
-- but the fact that there seemed to be an absolute rest frame made the
model of the ether as a sort of gelatin, fixed at rest in space time
and transmitting electromagnetic disturbances rather as a solid
transmits shock waves, was a very appealing idea.  However, the
Michelson-Morley experiment and its many variants dispensed
conclusively with the notion that light's velocity depends upon the
motion of the observer, and with it the ether.

   Some of these abstract mathematical spaces describe very real
physical phenomena, although they do not model the "space" of normal
experience.  For example, the phase space of a mechanical system is an
abstract mathematical space whose geometry is very far from Euclidean,
yet it is very useful.

   Mass-energy imparts curvature to spacetime locally, near a massive
object, by the Einstein field equation.  

   Yes.

   The simplest proof is that one can construct geometric systems
(e.g., the Poincaré upper half-plane) which satisfy all of Euclid's
axioms *except* the parallel postulate.  Therefore the parallel
postulate cannot be a logical consequence of the other axioms.

   Don't hold your breath.

You should see what goes on in the computer-programming groups,
particularly from the sociopaths who see Bill Gates as a technical
genius (trust me, he ain't) and some kind of culture hero.  Important
technical subjects often have a specific *.*.*.advocacy group to bleed
off the worst of it.

--
John W. Kennedy
Read the remains of Shakespeare's lost play, now annotated!
http://pws.prserv.net/jwkennedy/Double%20Falshood.html

I'm a part-time semi-pro opera singer, so I know that world.  Cranks
come with the territory, among both the fans and the artists.  (I was
involved for a while with the pitch-reform movement -- the quite
justified reaction against the upward drift from A=432 to A=440 to
A=444, A=450, A=454, A=460... -- but it got co-opted by Lyndon "The
international drug trade is run by the House of Windsor" LaRouche, of
all people.)

--
John W. Kennedy
Read the remains of Shakespeare's lost play, now annotated!
http://pws.prserv.net/jwkennedy/Double%20Falshood.html

I don't know that it ever has been _proven_ impossible.  But
non-Euclidean geometry has been around for a long, long time, and has
not yet been shown to be self-contradictory, which is a pretty darn good
indicator.  If A and B and not-C don't contradict, then A and B
shouldn't imply C.

As to the application to the physical world -- it's not certain that
General Relativity is absolutely right, but experiment clearly shows
that it's mostly right.  Either space is curved, whether we like the
idea or not, or the universe is playing us a really dirty trick.

--
John W. Kennedy
Read the remains of Shakespeare's lost play, now annotated!
http://pws.prserv.net/jwkennedy/Double%20Falshood.html

Or, to come in from near-total ignorance, there's a way to describe
what seems to be the curvature of space without giving materiality to
the immaterial.  I've never understood why we have to say space is
curved rather than say gravity bends light (although I know there's
a lot more to curvature of space than that).  In believing the latter,
I assume that light is a particle (I know about the experiments that
suggest otherwise) and that gravity is, in effect, particulate.  
One of my theories is that matter completely fills space except during
the instants between quantum-position changes, and that gravity is
the effect of any surface of a unit of matter on another.  Each
matter-unit expands until all of its surface touches other matter
and/or it becomes some maximal size.  Its gravitational effect is
inversely proportionate to its size.

There's a lot more to it, but I'm just describing enough to show that
I can outdo any anti-Stratfordian when it comes to crankery.

                                 --Mr. Meta-Weir

--
Posted via Mailgate.ORG Server - http://www.Mailgate.ORG

From David Webb:

    The ether proved to be a sort of red herring.  Prior to Maxwell's
 electrodynamics, physics was acknowledged to obey Galilean relativity:
 the laws of physics are the same for any two observers moving with
 constant velocity relative to one another; in particular, there is no
 way to establish experimentally which observer was "really" at rest.
 There were two principles: (1) Newton's second law holds for an
 inertial observer, and (2) any observer moving with constant velocity
 relative to an inertial observer is himself inertial.  After Maxwell
 fixed Ampere's Law, however, one of the logical consequences of the
 equations of electrodynamics was an equation describing propagating
 waves of a velocity c that could be easily computed in terms of the
 values of two constants easily measured in the laboratory, the
 "permittivity of the vacuum" and the "magnetic permeability of the
 vacuum."  The velocity c that emerged from this computation was the
 observed velocity of light, and the conclusion was inescapable that
 light was the wave phenomenon predicted by Maxwell's equations.  Thus
 Maxwell's equations singled out a *particular* velocity, so Galilean
 relativity is destroyed and there is now a privileged "rest frame": the
 absolute rest frame is the one in which light has the velocity c.  To
 determine whether he is moving, an observer need only measure the
 velocity of light -- if it is c, he is at rest; if not, he is in
 motion.  The ether was suggested as a kind of medium for the
 propagation of electromagnetic waves predicted by Maxwell's equations,
 and the frame of reference of the ether was the obsolute rest frame.
 The ether was not logically necessary as a medium for wave propagation
 (after all, physicists had long accepted gravitational interaction over
 long distances with no intervening substance to mediate the interaction

I wonder about that.  My impression is that universal gravity took
a while to get really thought about.  Don't some physicists still
have problems with gravitational action-at-a-distance?  Isn't that
why someare searching for particles of gravity?  Or some kind of
gravity ray?

-- but the fact that there seemed to be an absolute rest frame made the
 model of the ether as a sort of gelatin, fixed at rest in space time
 and transmitting electromagnetic disturbances rather as a solid
 transmits shock waves, was a very appealing idea.  However, the
 Michelson-Morley experiment and its many variants dispensed
 conclusively with the notion that light's velocity depends upon the
 motion of the observer, and with it the ether.

I thought M-M just showed that light traveled at the same speed
against the "ether-wind" as it did with it, which demonstrated
there was no ether wind, as there had to be.  Although I don't know
why there had to be an ether-wind.

snip

Yes, I now remember reading about that or something like it that
made sense to me at the time.

Thanks for the continuing responses, David.  I'm finding them
very interesting, and it I think they're building a nest of
some sort in my brain.  When I'm finally made chief-over-supremus
of the Masons, I'll definitely make you my number-two science
advisor.  (I have to make Art number-one to shut him up.)

                                        --Bob G.

--
Posted via Mailgate.ORG Server - http://www.Mailgate.ORG

----------------------------------------------------------------
The European CUCKOO ({CUCUlus canorus}) builds no nest of its own,
     but lays its eggs in the nests of other birds.

     Middle English CUCCU, Date: 13th century

   a grayish brown European bird (CUCUlus canorus) that is a
 parasite given to laying its EGGs in the nests of other birds which
 hatch them and rear the offspring; broadly : any of a large family
  (CUCUlidae of the order CUCUliformes) to which this bird belongs
----------------------------------------------------------------
          ABCDEF    DRAZIW   L(CU)LIW   EREVIV  EVIL
          ZYXWVU    WIZARD   O(XF)ORD   VIVERE  VERO
----------------------------------------------------------------

----------------------------------------------------------------
                              [g]OO-D
                                 LL-W
-------------------------------------------------------------------
       [A]nd says a WIZARD told him that by G
       [H]is issue disinherited should be;
       [A]nd, for my name of GEORGE begins with G,
          It follows in his thought that I am he.
----------------------------------------------------------------
  "Going to dark bed there was a square round Sinbad the Sailor
  roc's AUK'S egg in the night of the bed of all the auks of the
 rocs of Darkinbad the Brightdayler." - Joyce, _Ulysses_ (p. 737)
-------------------------------------------------------------------
  <<As my explanations here are probably above your understand-
 ings, lattlebrattons, though as augmentatively uncomparisoned
  as Cadwan, Cadwallon and Cadwalloner, I shall revert to a
 more expletive method which I frequently use when I have to
  sermo with muddlecrass pupils. Imagine for my purpose that
   you are a squad of urchins, snifflynosed, goslingnecked,
 clothyheaded, tangled in your lacings, tingled in your pants,
                     etsitaraw etcicero. . .>> - FW by Joyce
----------------------------------------------------------------
       ZYXWVU    WIZARD   O(XF)ORD  VIVERE    VERO
       ABCDEF    DRAZIW   L(CU)LIW  EREVIV    EVIL
----------------------------------------------------------------
       QUICK, a. [As. cwic, CUCU, cwicu, cwucu, LIVING;
                   L. vivus LIVING, VIVERE to LIVE]

          1. Alive; living; animate;

   "Not fully QUYKE, ne fully dead they were." --Chaucer.

       Shakspeare with whome QUICK nature DYED,

<<Shake-speare, with the English Man of War, lesser in bulk,
    but lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides,
      tack about, and take advantage of all winds,
  by the QUICKness of his Wit and Invention.>> - THOMAS FULLER

   "who shall judge the QUICK and the dead" --2 Tim. iv. 1.

 "Man is no STAR, but a QUICK COAL Of mortal fire." -- Herbert.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
CUCKOO (Heb. SHAHAPH), from a root meaning "to be lean; slender." This
bird is mentioned only in Lev. 11:16 and Deut. 14:15 (R.V., "seamew").
  Some have interpreted the Hebrew word by "petrel" or "shearwater"
(Puffinus cinereus), which is found on the coast of Syria; others think
it denotes the "sea-gull" or "seamew." The common CUCKOO (CUCUlus
canorus) feeds on reptiles and large insects. It is found in Asia and
Africa as well as in Europe. It only passes the winter in Palestine. The
Arabs suppose it to utter the cry _Yakub_, and hence they call it _tir
el-Yakub_; i.e., "Jacob's bird."
--------------------------------------------------------------------
  April 14  FIRST COOKOO Day:  The first day of full SPRINGtime.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
                Love's Labour's Lost  Act 5, Scene 2

ADRIANO DE ARMADO   This side is Hiems, Winter,
                          this VER, the SPRING;
                the one maintained by the owl,
                the other by the CUCKOO. VER, begin.

                        [THE SONG]
        SPRING.
        When daisies pied and VIOLETS blue
        And lady-smocks all silVER-white
        And CUCKOO-buds of yellow hue
        Do paint the meadows with delight,
        The CUCKOO then, on eVERy tree,
        Mocks married men; for thus sings he,   CUCKOO;
        CUCKOO, CUCKOO: O word of fear,
        Unpleasing to a married ear!
----------------------------------------------------------------
        Circe (Nighttown) from James Joyce's Ulysses

THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS (Unbuttoning her gauntlet violently.)
I'll do no such thing. PIG dog and always was EVER since he was PUPPED!
To dare address me! I'll flog him black and blue in the public streets.
I'll dig my spurs in him up to the rowel. He is a wellknown CUCKOLD.
(She swishes her hunting crop savagely in the air.) Take down his
trousers without loss of time. Come here, sir! QUICK! Ready?

 BLOOM (Trembling, beginning to obey.) The weather has been so warm.

 (Davy Stephens, ringleted, passes with a bevy of barefoot newsboys.)

 DAVY STEPHENS Messenger of the Sacred Heart and Evening Telegraph with
Saint Patrick's Day Supplement. Containing the new addresses of all the
CUCKOLDS in Dublin.

 (The very reVEREnd Canon O'Hanlon in cloth of gold cope elevates
   and exposes a marble timepiece. Before him Father Conroy
   and the reVEREnd John Hughes S.J. bend low.)

 THE TIMEPIECE (Unportalling.)

      CUCKOO
      CUCKOO
      CUCKOO

 (The brass quoits of a bed are heard to jingle.)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
He is, Stephen said. The boy of act one is the mature man of act five.
All in all. In Cymbeline, in Othello he is bawd and CUCKOLD. He acts and
is acted on. Lover of an ideal or a perversion, like Jose he kills the
real Carmen. His unremitting intellect is the hornmad Iago ceaselessly
willing that the moor in him shall suffer.

Man delights him not nor woman neither, Stephen said. He returns after a
life of absence to that spot of earth where he was born, where he has
always been, man and boy, a silent witness and there, his journey of
life ended, he plants his mulberry tree in the earth. Then dies. The
motion is ended. Gravediggers bury Hamlet pre and Hamlet fils. A king
and a prince at last in death, with incidental music. And, what though
murdered and betrayed, bewept by all frail tender hearts for, Dane or
Dubliner, sorrow for the dead is the only husband from whom they refuse
to be divorced. If you like the epilogue look long on it: prosperous
Prospero, the good man rewarded, Lizzie, grandpa's lump of love, and
nuncle Richie, the bad man taken off by poetic justice to the place
where the bad niggers go. Strong curtain. He found in the world without
as actual what was in his world within as possible. Maeterlinck says: If
Socrates leave his house today he will find the sage seated on his
doorstep. If Judas go forth tonight it is to Judas his steps will tend.
Every life is many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves,
meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows,
brothers-in-love, but always meeting ourselves. The playwright who wrote
the folio of this world and wrote it badly (He gave us light first and
the sun two days later), the lord of things as they are whom the most
Roman of catholics call dio boia, hangman god, is doubtless all in all
in all of us, ostler and butcher, and would be bawd and CUCKOLD too but
that in the economy of heaven, foretold by Hamlet, there are no more
marriages, glorified man, an androgynous angel, being a wife unto
himself."
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Art Neuendorffer  § :¢ þ)¤÷÷÷÷

 ----------------------------------------------------------------

ETC.

Thanks for setting us all straight on this, Art.  And thanks for
the continuing excerpts from Finnegans Wake, which I may try again
to read before trying on of the books David recommends.

                                                --Bob G.

--
Posted via Mailgate.ORG Server - http://www.Mailgate.ORG

Bob, I find it easier now to deal with Art Nonsense, thanks to my killfile.
He's the only member of HLAS sleeping in it at the moment.

Aw, Neil--Art's only insane.  I rarely read his posts, but I'd
never kill-file him.  Richard Kennedy is the only one I'd be
tempted to, but--well, those of us who are studying mental
dysfunction cannot afford to kill-file ANYone.

                                                   --Bob G.

P.S., keep an eye on Beautiful Lyra; looks like she's catching
up to Art in word-gaming.

--
Posted via Mailgate.ORG Server - http://www.Mailgate.ORG

[[ This message was both posted and mailed: see
   the "To," "Cc," and "Newsgroups" headers for details. ]]

In article
<358f9225d153476d7f9f5295d29985bf.12...@mygate.mailgate.org>, Bob

   Let me clarify.  Physicists had long accepted the idea of action at
a distance in Newton's spectacularly successful theory of gravitation,
despite the fact that there is only vacuum between the heavenly bodies
whose motion is described by Newton's mehanics, i.e., that there is no
substance transmitting or mediating the interaction.  In other words,
physicists recognized the reality of the gravitational field of a
massive body: a particle responds instantaneously to the field and
moves accordingly (more precisely, the force felt by the particle is
just the field vector scaled by the particle's mass; the particle then
accelerates in response to this force according to Newton's second
law).  A change in the field is thus perceived instantly by the
particle.  Thus nineteenth century physicists should have had no
*logical* difficulty with the idea of interactions in the absence of
any ambient medium to transmit the interaction, and hence with the idea
of disturbances in Maxwell's electromagnetic field propagating through
the vacuum.  

   What probably made the ether hypothesis so attractive after
Maxwell's discovery is not the fact that the ether furnished a putative
medium through which electromagnetic waves could be transmitted (which
would not be strictly necessary), but rather that Maxwell's equations
seemed to single out a *universal* rest frame, the one relative to
which light traveled with velocity c.  Thus it must have been almost
irresistible to suggest a model in which the ether was an all-pervasive
medium, at rest in this Maxwellian universal rest frame, through which
Maxwell's electromagnetic waves propagated in much that same way that
shock waves are transmitted through an elastic solid medium.

   Einstein alone of all the early contributors to special relativity
realized that in order that a coordinate transformation (like the
Lorentz transformation) leave the light cone invariant, one must
jettison the Galilean notion of a universal time coordinate common to
all observers; hence inertial observers in relative motion will
disagree about the simultaneity and hence the temporal order of events.  
Einstein then used this simple but profound insight to derive the
Lorentz transformations as natural and inevitable consequences of two
universal principles, rather than as rather desperate, _ad hoc_
explanations of vexing experimental results with no real physical
meaning, as in Lorentz's interpretation.

   Of course, Einstein's new kinematic foundation of all of physics
made Newton's theory of gravitation untenable, as special relativity in
effect forbade instantaneous transmission of information.  In fact,
Maxwell's fix to Ampere's Law had already shown the way: physicists
already knew that disturbances in the electromagnetic field were *not*
felt instantly by charged particles responding to the field; rather,
the field disturbances propagated at velocity c.  Indeed, physicists
had introduced the idea of "retarded time," "retarded position,"
"retarded potential," etc., to describe the fact that when a charged
test particle responds to the changing electromagnetic field of a
moving charged body, the test particle perceives the charged body at
its *retarded* position rather than at its actual position (the charged
body has moved since it emitted the radiation to which the test
particle is responding, because the interaction was trasmitted *not*
instantaneously but at speed c; this is analogous to the fact that when
you look at a distant N light years distant, you are seeing the galaxy
at it was N years ago, not as it is now).  Accordingly, Newton's theory
had to be modified in such a way that gravitational interaction
traveled at finite speed like the electromagnetic interaction.  And
indeed, general relativity, Einstein's theory of gravitation, does
predict the existence of gravitational waves that travel at velocity c;
this is the "gravity ray" you have in mind.  (Taylor's observation of
the slowing of pulsar periods is in remarkable agreement with the
prediction of energy lost by gravitational radiation according to
general relativity; to my knowledge, it's the best evidence of
gravitational radiation thus far.)

   Einstein was by no means the only one to realize that such a change
was necessary -- it was quite evident that the theory of gravitation
would have to be fixed somehow to banish instantaneous transmission, as
Poincaré pointed out explicitly.  However, it was far from clear how to
effect such a repair -- gravity is such an incredibly weak force, and
the effects predicted in which the Newtonian theory and general
relativity differ are so minute as to be virtually undetectable (the
anomalous behavior of the perihelion of Mercury is about the only
classically known instance) that formulating and testing such a theory
was a daunting task.  There were various unsatisfactory _ad hoc_
suggestions (e.g., the paper of Gerber that Weir accuses Einstein of
having "plagerized"), but there was no succesful comprehensive theory
of gravity until Einstein's general theory of relativity.  Einstein's
theory is almost purely geometric and has essentially *no* free
parameters that one can adjust in order to bring the theory into
agreement with experiment, yet it predicts the observed perihelion
anomaly.  This was really a stunning success.  General relativity is on
shakier observational grounds than special relativity, since the
effects that must be detected are so minute that it is difficult to
distinguish general relativity from various competing theories; for
pretty up-to-date information about the experimental probes of general
relativity, see Clifford Will's book.

   Finally, Einstein's general theory of relativity is very classical,
in the spirit of Maxwell's equations: it deals with point particles and
fields that evolve according to deterministic laws, regardless of the
activities of observers; there are no noncommuting observables,
uncertainty relations, probabilistic descriptions of the outcomes of
measurements, etc.  However, around the same time Einstein formulated
special relativity, it was being realized that at the small scale,
nature doesn't behave that way.  General relativity is *not* a quantum
theory, so it could not be the ultimate theory of gravity, just as the
quantum theory of Schrödinger and Heisenberg, being nonrelativistic,
could not be the ultimate theory at the subatomic scale.  Considerable
success has been attained in formulating quantum theories compatible
with special relativity (e.g., quantum electrodynamics, which made the
most astonishingly accurate predictions of any physical theory to
date), but the quest for a quantum theory of gravity is ongoing.  When
(if?) such a theory is eventually formulated and tested experimentally,
it will undoubtedly feature a boson, already named the graviton, that
mediates the gravitational interaction (as the photon mediates
electromagnetic interactions); these are the "particles of gravity" I
think you have in mind.  According to Witten, a variant of string
theory now called M-theory shows considerable promise.

...

read more »

             David Webb

I really think your explanations are sinking in, David.  In any event,
you've given me good stuff to mull.  Thanks!  As for my first name,
I thought you knew it WAS John.  Surely you don't think my real
name is "Bob Grumman" or variations thereon!

                                           --Bob G.

--
Posted via Mailgate.ORG Server - http://www.Mailgate.ORG

             David Webb

I really think your explanations are sinking in, David.  In any event,
you've given me good stuff to mull.  Thanks!  As for my first name,
I thought you knew it WAS John.  Surely you don't think my real
name is "Bob Grumman" or some variation thereon!

                                           --Bob G.

--
Posted via Mailgate.ORG Server - http://www.Mailgate.ORG

On Tue, 7 May 2002 21:40:45 +0000 (UTC), "Bob Grumman"

Hi Bob,

Sorry, but I didn't remove any of these messages.  Google still lists
my Web page as number one when you type in Marlowe and Shakespeare or
Shakespeare and Marlowe...Peter's is just behind me as number two.

I am off the net for a few more weeks, having just posted a blast for
today, but I will be back.  

I have all my messages, so I can post them again if you'd like.....

john

John Baker

Visit my Webpage:
http://www2.localaccess.com/marlowe
or e-mail me at: Marl...@localaccess.com

"The ultimate truth is penultimately always a falsehood.
He who will be proved right in the end appears to be
wrong and harmful before it."  
 _Darkness at Noon_, Arthur Koestler

On 12 May 2002 20:31:39 -0700, elizabeth_w...@mail.com (Elizabeth

She was working her way through the The Einstein Hoax".

If you check alt.sci.physics under this heading, i.e., ""The Einstein
Hoax" you'll find a good place to start.

baker

ps: let's get married...and take Webb out to lunch...
John Baker

Visit my Webpage:
http://www2.localaccess.com/marlowe
or e-mail me at: Marl...@localaccess.com

"The ultimate truth is penultimately always a falsehood.
He who will be proved right in the end appears to be
wrong and harmful before it."  
 _Darkness at Noon_, Arthur Koestler

It's been a while, but if I remember correctly, assuming that gravity
bends particulate light in a Newtonian way predicts a different value.
Einstein's curved-space equations give the right result.  They also, by
the way, explain _why_ Galileo's legendary two-falling-weight experiment
works; Newton had to assume that gravity is, for no known reason,
exactly proportional to inertia; Einstein assumes that they're two
aspects of the same phenomenon, which is neater.

As to the fine structure of light, now you're getting into Quantum
Theory, which has yet to be reconciled with General Relativity.  Loosely
speaking, General Relativity works right with objects down to about the
size of atoms, Quantum Theory works right with subatomic particles, and
neither works quite right when extended to the other's domain.

But all you need is a pair of Polaroid sunglasses to demonstrate that a
simple particulate theory of light doesn't work.  And there are other
problems:

    If light were made of particles, then either the speed of light
        in (e.g.) glass would be faster than the speed of light in a
        vacuum (which we know isn't true) or lenses would bend light
        in the opposite direction than they do.

    We can _make_ radio waves, and we know that it's waves that we're
        making.  But we also know that radio waves are just another
        form of light.

--
John W. Kennedy
Read the remains of Shakespeare's lost play, now annotated!
http://pws.prserv.net/jwkennedy/Double%20Falshood.html

Either the Earth is the unmoving center of the universe or there's an
ether-wind.  Or else there's no ether.

Of course, by now, other experiments, having nothing to do with either
the motion of the Earth or ether, have demonstrated the truth of Special
Relativity.  Most obviously, the GPS system requires Special Relativity
compensators to give the correct results.

--
John W. Kennedy
Read the remains of Shakespeare's lost play, now annotated!
http://pws.prserv.net/jwkennedy/Double%20Falshood.html