CRIMESTOP IN EINSTEINIANA

[Pentcho Valev]

http://www.amazon.com/Trouble-Physics-String-Theory-Science/dp/0618551050
Lee Smolin, The Trouble With Physics: The Rise of String Theory, the Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next, p. 226: "Einstein's special theory of relativity is based on two postulates: One is the relativity of motion, and the second is the constancy and universality of the speed of light. Could the first postulate be true and the other false? If that was not possible, Einstein would not have had to make two postulates. But I don't think many people realized until recently that you could have a consistent theory in which you changed only the second postulate."

http://www.fqxi.org/community/articles/display/148
"Many physicists argue that time is an illusion. Lee Smolin begs to differ. (...) Smolin wishes to hold on to the reality of time. But to do so, he must overcome a major hurdle: General and special relativity seem to imply the opposite. In the classical Newtonian view, physics operated according to the ticking of an invisible universal clock. But Einstein threw out that master clock when, in his theory of special relativity, he argued that no two events are truly simultaneous unless they are causally related. If simultaneity - the notion of "now" - is relative, the universal clock must be a fiction, and time itself a proxy for the movement and change of objects in the universe. Time is literally written out of the equation. Although he has spent much of his career exploring the facets of a "timeless" universe, Smolin has become convinced that this is "deeply wrong," he says. He now believes that time is more than just a useful approximation, that it is as real as our guts tell us it is - more real, in fact, than space itself. The notion of a "real and global time" is the starting hypothesis for Smolin's new work, which he will undertake this year with two graduate students supported by a $47,500 grant from FQXi."

The thoughts "Einstein's second postulate is false" and "The relativity of simultaneity is deeply wrong" do emerge in Lee Smolin's head from time to time. In contrast, the thought "The relativity of simulteneity is a consequence of Einstein's second postulate" never emerges in Lee Smolin's head - his powerful mind always stops short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of it:

http://www.liferesearchuniversal.com/1984-17
George Orwell: "Crimestop means the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical to Ingsoc, and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. Crimestop, in short, means protective stupidity."

Pentcho Valev
pva...@yahoo.com

[Pentcho Valev]

Lee Smolin's habit to make career and money by advancing pseudoheresy (more precisely, heresy neutralized by crimestop) is despicable but still it has its bright side. Smolin often makes hints which, if properly deciphered, could reveal important truths. For instance:

http://www.logosjournal.com/issue_4.3/smolin.htm
Lee Smolin: "Special relativity was the result of 10 years of intellectual struggle, yet Einstein had convinced himself it was wrong within two years of publishing it."

What happened in 1907? Another pseudoheretic in Einsteiniana explains:

http://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/papers/OntologyOUP_TimesNR.pdf
John Norton: "Already in 1907, a mere two years after the completion of the special theory, he [Einstein] had concluded that the speed of light is variable in the presence of a gravitational field."

So the careful reader may start suspecting that, if the speed of light is variable in the presence of a gravitational field, then it is variable in the absence of a gravitational field as well.

The performances of Smolin's enemies, so-called string theorists, have no bright side. There can be nothing sillier than this:

http://motls.blogspot.com/2006/12/lorentz-violation-and-deformed-special.html
Lubos Motl: "The second postulate of special relativity morally follows from the first one once you promote the value of the speed of light to a law of physics which is what Einstein did. In classical Newtonian mechanics, it was not a law of physics. The speed of light according to Newton depended on your speed and the speed of the source; something that was in tension with Maxwell's equations."

A similar performance:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEn64S67VDc&feature=related

Pentcho Valev
pva...@yahoo.com

[Pentcho Valev]

Jean Eisenstaedt's head is full of positive thoughts about Newton's emission theory of light - he sincerely loves and even worships that theory. Sometimes Eisenstaedt even thinks of and sincerely hates the emission theory's worst enemy - the "taken-for-granted fact of the constancy of the velocity of light". Yet the thought "The taken-for-granted fact of the constancy of the velocity of light must be false" never emerges in Jean Eisenstaedt's head - his trained mind always stops short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of it:

http://www.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/wtundwg/Forschung/tagungen/OWR_2006_10.pdf
Jean Eisenstaedt: "At the end of the 18th century, a natural extension of Newton's dynamics to light was developed but immediately forgotten. A body of works completed the Principia with a relativistic optics of moving bodies, the discovery of the Doppler-Fizeau effect some sixty years before Doppler, and many other effects and ideas which represent a fascinating preamble to Einstein relativities. It was simply supposed that 'a body-light', as Newton named it, was subject to the whole dynamics of the Principia in much the same way as were material particles; thus it was subject to the Galilean relativity and its velocity was supposed to be variable. Of course it was subject to the short range 'refringent' force of the corpuscular theory of light --which is part of the Principia-- but also to the long range force of gravitation which induces Newton's theory of gravitation. The fact that the 'mass' of a corpuscle of light was not known did not constitute a problem since it does not appear in the Newtonian (or Einsteinian) equations of motion. It was precisely what John Michell (1724-1793), Robert Blair (1748-1828), Johann G. von Soldner (1776-1833) and François Arago (1786-1853) were to do at the end of the 18th century and the beginning the 19th century in the context of Newton's dynamics. Actually this 'completed' Newtonian theory of light and material corpuscle seems to have been implicitly accepted at the time. In such a Newtonian context, not only Soldner's calculation of the deviation of light in a gravitational field was understood, but also dark bodies (cousins of black holes). A natural (Galilean and thus relativistic) optics of moving bodies was also developed which easily explained aberration and implied as well the essence of what we call today the Doppler effect. Moreover, at the same time the structure of -- but also the questions raised by-- the Michelson experiment was understood. Most of this corpus has long been forgotten. The Michell-Blair-Arago effect, prior to Doppler's effect, is entirely unknown to physicists and historians. As to the influence of gravitation on light, the story was very superficially known but had never been studied in any detail. Moreover, the existence of a theory dealing with light, relativity and gravitation, embedded in Newton's Principia was completely ignored by physicists and by historians as well. But it was a simple and natural way to deal with the question of light, relativity (and gravitation) in a Newtonian context."

http://www.amazon.com/Einstein-Changing-Worldviews-Physics-Studies/dp/0817649395/
Einstein and the Changing Worldviews of Physics, Einstein Studies, 2012, Volume 12, Part 1, 23-37, The Newtonian Theory of Light Propagation, Jean Eisenstaedt: "It is generally thought that light propagation cannot be treated in the framework of Newtonian dynamics. However, at the end of the 18th century and in the context of Newton's Principia, several papers, published and unpublished, offered a new and important corpus that represents a detailed application of Newton's dynamics to light. In it, light was treated in precisely the same way as material particles. This most interesting application - foreshadowed by Newton himself in the Principia - constitutes a relativistic optics of moving bodies, of course based on what we nowadays refer to as Galilean relativity, and offers a most instructive Newtonian analogy to Einsteinian special and general relativity (Eisenstaedt, 2005a; 2005b). These several papers, effects, experiments, and interpretations constitute the Newtonian theory of light propagation. I will argue in this paper, however, that this Newtonian theory of light propagation has deep parallels with some elements of 19th century physics (aberration, the Doppler effect) as well as with an important part of 20th century relativity (the optics of moving bodies, the Michelson experiment, the deflection of light in a gravitational field, black holes, the gravitational Doppler effect). (...) Not so surprisingly, neither the possibility of a Newtonian optics of moving bodies nor that of a Newtonian gravitational theory of light has been easily "seen," neither by relativists nor by historians of physics; most probably the "taken-for-granted fact" of the constancy of the velocity of light did not allow thinking in Newtonian terms."

Pentcho Valev
pva...@yahoo.com