EINSTEINIANS CHUCKLE BUT DO NOT TAKE OFFENSE

[Pentcho Valev]

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-einstein-changed-the-world/
Brian Greene in Scientific American: "Albert Einstein once said that there are only two things that might be infinite: the universe and human stupidity. And, he confessed, he wasn't sure about the universe. When we hear that, we chuckle. Or at least we smile. We do not take offense."

Why do Einsteinians chuckle without taking any offense? John Barrow FRS explains:

http://plus.maths.org/issue37/features/Einstein/index.html
John Barrow FRS: "Einstein restored faith in the unintelligibility of science. Everyone knew that Einstein had done something important in 1905 (and again in 1915) but almost nobody could tell you exactly what it was. When Einstein was interviewed for a Dutch newspaper in 1921, he attributed his mass appeal to the mystery of his work for the ordinary person: "Does it make a silly impression on me, here and yonder, about my theories of which they cannot understand a word? I think it is funny and also interesting to observe. I am sure that it is the mystery of non-understanding that appeals to them...it impresses them, it has the colour and the appeal of the mysterious." Relativity was a fashionable notion. It promised to sweep away old absolutist notions and refurbish science with modern ideas. In art and literature too, revolutionary changes were doing away with old conventions and standards. All things were being made new. Einstein's relativity suited the mood. Nobody got very excited about Einstein's brownian motion or his photoelectric effect but relativity promised to turn the world inside out."

How did relativity turn the world inside out? The first but decisive step in that direction was the invalid conclusion Einstein offered to the gullible world in 1905:

http://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/einstein/specrel/www/
ON THE ELECTRODYNAMICS OF MOVING BODIES, A. Einstein, 1905: "From this there ensues the following peculiar consequence. If at the points A and B of K there are stationary clocks which, viewed in the stationary system, are synchronous; and if the clock at A is moved with the velocity v along the line AB to B, then on its arrival at B the two clocks no longer synchronize, but the clock moved from A to B lags behind the other which has remained at B by tv^2/2c^2 (up to magnitudes of fourth and higher order), t being the time occupied in the journey from A to B."

See the valid conclusions (fatal for Einstein's relativity) in my comment on Brian Greene's paper in Scientific American referred to above.

Pentcho Valev

[Pentcho Valev]

Einstein's famous conclusion which made him a superstar, "moving clocks run slow", as well as the breathtaking implications "time travel into the future is possible" and "the travelling twin returns younger", are the offspring of a couple of flaws. Initially Einstein advanced his false constant-speed-of-light postulate, which allowed him to validly deduce that:

(A) moving clocks run slow, as judged from the stationary system;

(B) stationary clocks run slow, as judged from the moving system.

Then both "as judged from the stationary system" and the entire (B) were illegitimately ignored, and the gullible world was informed that

moving clocks run slow (time travel into the future is possible; the travelling twin returns younger).

In other words, even if Einstein's 1905 constant-speed-of-light postulate were true (actually it is false), special relativity's breathtaking conclusions would remain invalid.

Pentcho Valev