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EINSTEINIANS ASK QUESTIONS TO THEMSELVES

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Pentcho Valev

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Sep 1, 2014, 2:32:17 AM9/1/14
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http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2014/08/26/343483711/has-next-tuesday-already-happened
Adam Frank: "So has next Tuesday already happened? Is the flow of time an illusion? World lines and relativistic space-time are certainly part of every physicist's education. But, to be fair, there is a lot of philosophical debate about the meaning and reality of the 4-D block universe of relativity. That debate is going to go on. And, at some point, some theory will replace relativity as we dig even deeper into the nature of the world. But the new theory might not change all of relativity's perspectives on this most basic question. And so the question remains. Has next Tuesday already happened? Does next January already exist? Is the day of your death already fully formed?"

The only honest (and "most basic") question any Einsteinian should ask to him/herself is:

"Isn't it time for me to stop feeding on the absurd consequences of Einstein's 1905 false constant-speed-of-light postulate?"

Pentcho Valev

Pentcho Valev

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Sep 1, 2014, 3:30:19 AM9/1/14
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Some time ago Lee Smolin seemed to be very close to asking the honest question ("Isn't it time for me to stop feeding on the absurd consequences of Einstein's 1905 false constant-speed-of-light postulate?") to himself:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/jun/10/time-reborn-farewell-reality-review
Philip Ball: "And by making the clock's tick relative - what happens simultaneously for one observer might seem sequential to another - Einstein's theory of special relativity not only destroyed any notion of absolute time but made time equivalent to a dimension in space: the future is already out there waiting for us; we just can't see it until we get there. This view is a logical and metaphysical dead end, says Smolin."

http://www.amazon.com/Time-Reborn-Crisis-Physics-Universe/dp/0547511728
"Was Einstein wrong? At least in his understanding of time, Smolin argues, the great theorist of relativity was dead wrong. What is worse, by firmly enshrining his error in scientific orthodoxy, Einstein trapped his successors in insoluble dilemmas..."

That was a false impression - Smolin was just selling his new book. Actually he could think of no reason why he should ask the honest question to himself:

http://www.independent.com/news/2013/apr/17/time-reborn/
QUESTION: Setting aside any other debates about relativity theory for the moment, why would the speed of light be absolute? No other speeds are absolute, that is, all other speeds do indeed change in relation to the speed of the observer, so it's always seemed a rather strange notion to me.
LEE SMOLIN: Special relativity works extremely well and the postulate of the invariance or universality of the speed of light is extremely well-tested. It might be wrong in the end but it is an extremely good approximation to reality.
QUESTION: So let me pick a bit more on Einstein and ask you this: You write (p. 56) that Einstein showed that simultaneity is relative. But the conclusion of the relativity of simultaneity flows necessarily from Einstein's postulates (that the speed of light is absolute and that the laws of nature are relative). So he didn't really show that simultaneity was relative - he assumed it. What do I have wrong here?
LEE SMOLIN: The relativity of simultaneity is a consequence of the two postulates that Einstein proposed and so it is deduced from the postulates. The postulates and their consequences are then checked experimentally and, so far, they hold remarkably well.

Pentcho Valev

Pentcho Valev

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Sep 1, 2014, 6:52:55 PM9/1/14
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A decade ago Joao Magueijo seemed to be very close to asking the honest question ("Isn't it time for me to stop feeding on the absurd consequences of Einstein's 1905 false constant-speed-of-light postulate?") to himself:

http://www.amazon.com/Faster-Than-Speed-Light-Speculation/dp/0738205257
Joao Magueijo, Faster Than the Speed of Light, p. 250: "Lee [Smolin] and I discussed these paradoxes at great length for many months, starting in January 2001. We would meet in cafés in South Kensington or Holland Park to mull over the problem. THE ROOT OF ALL THE EVIL WAS CLEARLY SPECIAL RELATIVITY. All these paradoxes resulted from well known effects such as length contraction, time dilation, or E=mc^2, all basic predictions of special relativity. And all denied the possibility of establishing a well-defined border, common to all observers, capable of containing new quantum gravitational effects."

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E03E7D8143FF932A05751C1A9649C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all
"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."

That was a false impression - Magueijo was just selling his book. Actually he could think of no reason why he should ask the honest question to himself:

http://www.amazon.com/Faster-Than-Speed-Light-Speculation/dp/0738205257
Joao Magueijo: "A missile fired from a plane moves faster than one fired from the ground because the plane's speed adds to the missile's speed. If I throw something forward on a moving train, its speed with respect to the platform is the speed of that object plus that of the train. You might think that the same should happen to light: Light flashed from a train should travel faster. However, what the Michelson-Morley experiments showed was that this was not the case: Light always moves stubbornly at the same speed. This means that if I take a light ray and ask several observers moving with respect to each other to measure the speed of this light ray, they will all agree on the same apparent speed!"

Nowadays Magueijo is a great professor at Imperial College London. He teaches... "the root of all the evil", among other things:

http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4010/4611948391_4122552b04_z.jpg

http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/o/orwell/george/o79n/chapter2.9.html
"Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. The Party intellectual knows in which direction his memories must be altered; he therefore knows that he is playing tricks with reality; but by the exercise of doublethink he also satisfies himself that reality is not violated. The process has to be conscious, or it would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling of falsity and hence of guilt. Doublethink lies at the very heart of Ingsoc, since the essential act of the Party is to use conscious deception while retaining the firmness of purpose that goes with complete honesty. To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies - all this is indispensably necessary."

Pentcho Valev

Pentcho Valev

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Sep 2, 2014, 3:11:29 AM9/2/14
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Etienne Klein, the leader of Einsteiniana in France, has been asking the honest question ("Isn't it time for me to stop feeding on the absurd consequences of Einstein's 1905 false constant-speed-of-light postulate?") to himself for years. So far the answer has been "No it isn't":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDYIdBMLQR0
Etienne Klein (1:06:45): "Est-ce que l'avenir existe déjà dans le futur ? C'est une question fondamentale ... Les relativistes disent oui - le futur est déjà là mais nous on n'y est pas encore ... Les physiciens quantiques, les présentistes disent non - le futur est un néant ... Les voyages dans le futur sont impossibles pour les présentistes alors qu'ils sont possibles pour les relativistes."

http://www.franceinter.fr/player/reecouter?pause=442163
"Vous dites le temps c'est comme le paysage qui ne bouge pas..."
ETIENNE KLEIN: "Ça c'est une conception c'est pas forcement la bonne mais c'est celle que défend Einstein."
"C'est pas la vôtre?"
ETIENNE KLEIN: "Heu... disons que c'est une conception qui pose des problèmes quand on compare ce que dit la relativité d'Einstein à ce que dit une autre théorie physique qui s'appelle la physique quantique..."

http://ciret-transdisciplinarity.org/bulletin/b12c5.php
Etienne Klein: "On pourrait s'attendre à voir la cosmologie confirmer la vision d'un espace-temps statique telle que la prône la relativité restreinte. Il n'en est rien. La quasi-unanimité des physiciens s'accorde aujourd'hui sur des modèles d'univers particuliers, dits de big bang, dans lesquels on peut définir un temps cosmologique, lié à l'expansion de l'univers. Sans pour autant s'identifier au temps absolu de Newton, ce temps cosmologique partage avec lui la propriété d'être universel : des observateurs qui ne sont soumis à aucune accélération et ne subissent aucun effet gravitationnel mutuel peuvent en effet synchroniser leurs montres, et celles-ci resteront en phase tout au long de l'évolution cosmique."

In France, Etienne Klein plays the role the two Brians (Brian Greene and Brian Cox) play in the rest of the world - systematic brainwashing of the gullible public from all media. Yet the two Brians are silly and don't know what they are doing while Klein is not so silly and has problems with his conscience:

http://deenoverduniya.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/repentance.jpg

Pentcho Valev
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