HARRY POTTER'S SCIENCE
Pentcho Valev
consistent but dull theory is replaced by an inconsistent but exciting
one. Since Newton's emission theory of light had explained everything
within its scope in the 18th century, at the end of the 19th century
it seemed so archaic and dull that scientists did not even remember it
as they were trying to interpret the Michelson-Morley experiment
(although in 1887 the emission theory was the only one able to explain
the null result of the experiment):
http://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/papers/companion.doc
John Norton: "These efforts were long misled by an exaggeration of the
importance of one experiment, the Michelson-Morley experiment, even
though Einstein later had trouble recalling if he even knew of the
experiment prior to his 1905 paper. This one experiment, in isolation,
has little force. Its null result happened to be fully compatible with
Newton's own emission theory of light. Located in the context of late
19th century electrodynamics when ether-based, wave theories of light
predominated, however, it presented a serious problem that exercised
the greatest theoretician of the day."
In other words, a pre-revolutionary situation in science is
characterized by unbearable boredom, not by an unbearably large set of
anomalies as Kuhn teaches. Initially the inconsistency cures the
boredom by producing absurdities as exciting as Harry Potter's
accomplishments:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v433/n7023/full/433218a.html
John Barrow: "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 themit 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."
Eventually the Harry Potter's science comes to a dead end and simply
dies. Thermodynamics is already dead (people don't even remember its
miracles), relativity is in process of dying (Einsteiniana's priests
have already left the sinking ship). Things seem to be irreversible
and yet it may prove reasonable to call the attention to two original
sins: Clausius' 1850 INVALID argument and Einstein's 1905 FALSE
constant-speed-of-light postulate:
http://www.mdpi.org/lin/clausius/clausius.htm
"Ueber die bewegende Kraft der Wärme", 1850, Rudolf Clausius: "Carnot
assumed, as has already been mentioned, that the equivalent of the
work done by heat is found in the mere transfer of heat from a hotter
to a colder body, while the quantity of heat remains undiminished. The
latter part of this assumption--namely, that the quantity of heat
remains undiminished--contradicts our former principle, and must
therefore be rejected... (...) It is this maximum of work which must
be compared with the heat transferred. When this is done it appears
that there is in fact ground for asserting, with Carnot, that it
depends only on the quantity of the heat transferred and on the
temperatures t and tau of the two bodies A and B, but not on the
nature of the substance by means of which the work is done. (...) If
we now suppose that there are two substances of which the one can
produce more work than the other by the transfer of a given amount of
heat, or, what comes to the same thing, needs to transfer less heat
from A to B to produce a given quantity of work, we may use these two
substances alternately by producing work with one of them in the above
process. At the end of the operations both bodies are in their
original condition; further, the work produced will have exactly
counterbalanced the work done, and therefore, by our former principle,
the quantity of heat can have neither increased nor diminished. The
only change will occur in the distribution of the heat, since more
heat will be transferred from B to A than from A to B, and so on the
whole heat will be transferred from B to A. By repeating these two
processes alternately it would be possible, without any expenditure of
force or any other change, to transfer as much heat as we please from
a cold to a hot body, and this is not in accord with the other
relations of heat, since it always shows a tendency to equalize
temperature differences and therefore to pass from hotter to colder
bodies."
http://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/einstein/specrel/www/
ON THE ELECTRODYNAMICS OF MOVING BODIES
By A. Einstein, June 30, 1905
"We will raise this conjecture (the purport of which will hereafter be
called the "Principle of Relativity'') to the status of a postulate,
and also introduce another postulate, which is only apparently
irreconcilable with the former, namely, that light is always
propagated in empty space with a definite velocity c which is
independent of the state of motion of the emitting body. (...) Any ray
of light moves in the "stationary'' system of co-ordinates with the
determined velocity c, whether the ray be emitted by a stationary or
by a moving body. (...) 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. It is at once apparent
that this result still holds good if the clock moves from A to B in
any polygonal line, and also when the points A and B coincide. If we
assume that the result proved for a polygonal line is also valid for a
continuously curved line, we arrive at this result: If one of two
synchronous clocks at A is moved in a closed curve with constant
velocity until it returns to A, the journey lasting t seconds, then by
the clock which has remained at rest the travelled clock on its
arrival at A will be tv^2/2c^2 second slow."
Pentcho Valev
pva...@yahoo.com
Pentcho Valev
Hilton Ratcliffe: "A few years ago, I had the great privilege of
sharing a supper table with some of the finest scientific minds of my
era. Directly opposite me sat Professor Huseyin Yilmaz, formerly of
the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton University, a hallowed
and ivy-decked place where Albert Einstein had spent his later,
introspective years. To his left sat the larger-than-life Professor
Carroll Alley, Yilmaz's experimentalist colleague from the University
of Maryland. On my right was the quietly spoken, amiable Professor
Harold Puthoff, a director of the Institute for Advanced Studies at
Austin in Texas. Dr Puthoff has achieved a fair measure of notoriety
for his work on anti-gravity and the Zero Point Field, but that
doesn't frighten me in the least. What did overawe me was the enormous
scientific stature of these gentlemen, but I needn't have worried.
They were to a fault courteous and accommodating, and entertained my
dumb questions with remarkable patience. The conversation, once we had
come to terms with the unfamiliar cuisine, was about Relativity. (...)
Here were people discussing with great insight and authority the
mathematical implications of the field equations in General
Relativity. What's more (to my great astonishment) it sounded
distinctly like they were suggesting improvements to the Gospel! I
could contain myself no longer. "Professor Yilmaz," I said, glancing
furtively around the room and then dropping my voice to a whisper,
"does that mean Einstein was wrong?" All three gentlemen laughed
spontaneously at my obvious discomfort, and Hal Puthoff put his hand
good-naturedly on my shoulder. "Hilton," he said, "you don't have to
hide under the table. It's no longer controversial to say that
Einstein made mistakes. Most physicists accept that quite openly now."
I had learned one of the most valuable lessons of my life."
Kuhn would say the situation in science is pre-revolutionary, with
anomalies in the leading theory accumulating and being openly
discussed. He would be wrong. An internet search would show that the
"finest scientific minds" have abandoned Divine Albert's Divine Theory
long ago. No serious discussions, no conferences, no seminars,
nothing. Only a few minds that are not so fine still defend the dead
science in much the same way that the salesman proves the vitality and
the beauty of the dead parrot:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vuW6tQ0218
Owner: Oh yes, the, uh, the Norwegian Blue...What's,uh...What's wrong
with it?
Mr. Praline: I'll tell you what's wrong with it, my lad. 'E's dead,
that's what's wrong with it!
Owner: No, no, 'e's uh,...he's resting.
Mr. Praline: Look, matey, I know a dead parrot when I see one, and I'm
looking at one right now.
Owner: No no he's not dead, he's, he's restin'! Remarkable bird, the
Norwegian Blue, idn'it, ay? Beautiful plumage!
........................
Mr. Praline: No, I'm sorry! I'm not prepared to pursue my line of
inquiry any longer as I think this is getting too silly!
Note the unavoidable total frustration of anyone pursuing some
rational "line of inquiry" in a schizophrenic situation. This is
perhaps the main reason why Einstein's relativity has been so vital
and so beautiful for so long.
Pentcho Valev
pva...@yahoo.com
Don Stockbauer
Cybernetics is more important than relativity, for it directs the
creation of huge planetary and galactic-sized artifical minds.
Pentcho Valev
sound too absurd sometimes, even in the era of Postscientism where
theoretical results that are not absurd are not paid any attention. So
is the bug-rivet paradox: If Einstein's 1905 constant-speed-of-light
postulate is true, then a scenario is possible where one observer sees
the bug squashed while the bug (or any observer at rest relative to
the bug) sees itself alive and kicking:
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/Hbase/Relativ/bugrivet.html
"The bug-rivet paradox is a variation on the twin paradox and is
similar to the pole-barn paradox.....The end of the rivet hits the
bottom of the hole before the head of the rivet hits the wall. So it
looks like the bug is squashed.....All this is nonsense from the bug's
point of view. The rivet head hits the wall when the rivet end is just
0.35 cm down in the hole! The rivet doesn't get close to the
bug....The paradox is not resolved."
I an not going to discuss the "paradox" itself (see some discussion
here: http://74.86.200.109/showthread.php?t=57063). I would only like
to call the attention to the fact that, in an internet search, one
would not find the problem even mentioned by Einsteiniana's priests.
The crimestop is absolute in this case:
http://www.liferesearchuniversal.com/1984-17.html#seventeen
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."
If an absolute silence surrounding a serious anomaly (absurdity) in
the theory is not a symptom of dead science, what else could it be?
Pentcho Valev
pva...@yahoo.com
Pentcho Valev
"From the pedagogical point of view, thermodynamics is a disaster. As
the authors rightly state in the introduction, many aspects are
"riddled with inconsistencies". They quote V.I. Arnold, who concedes
that "every mathematician knows it is impossible to understand an
elementary course in thermodynamics". Nobody has eulogized this
confusion more colorfully than the late Clifford Truesdell. On page 6
of his book "The Tragicomical History of Thermodynamics" 1822-1854
(Springer Verlag, 1980), he calls thermodynamics "a dismal swamp of
obscurity". Elsewhere, in despair of trying to make sense of the
writings of some local heros as De Groot, Mazur, Casimir, and
Prigogine, Truesdell suspects that there is "something rotten in the
(thermodynamic) state of the Low Countries" (see page 134 of Rational
Thermodynamics, McGraw-Hill, 1969)."
http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00000313/
Jos Uffink: "Snow stands up for the view that exact science is, in its
own right, an essential part of civilisation, and should not merely be
valued for its technological applications. Anyone who does not know
the Second Law of Thermodynamics, and is proud of it too, exposes
oneself as a Philistine. Snow's plea will strike a chord with every
physicist who has ever attended a birthday party. But his call for
cultural recognition creates obligations too. Before one can claim
that acquaintance with the Second Law is as indispensable to a
cultural education as Macbeth or Hamlet, it should obviously be clear
what this law states. This question is surprisingly difficult. The
Second Law made its appearance in physics around 1850, but a half
century later it was already surrounded by so much confusion that the
British Association for the Advancement of Science decided to appoint
a special committee with the task of providing clarity about the
meaning of this law. However, its final report (Bryan 1891) did not
settle the issue. Half a century later, the physicist/philosopher
Bridgman still complained that there are almost as many formulations
of the second law as there have been discussions of it (Bridgman 1941,
p. 116). And even today, the Second Law remains so obscure that it
continues to attract new efforts at clarification. A recent example is
the work of Lieb and Yngvason (1999)......The historian of science and
mathematician Truesdell made a detailed study of the historical
development of thermodynamics in the period 1822-1854. He
characterises the theory, even in its present state, as 'a dismal
swamp of obscurity' (1980, p. 6) and 'a prime example to show that
physicists are not exempt from the madness of crowds' (ibid. p.
8).......Clausius' verbal statement of the second law makes no
sense.... All that remains is a Mosaic prohibition ; a century of
philosophers and journalists have acclaimed this commandment ; a
century of mathematicians have shuddered and averted their eyes from
the unclean.....Seven times in the past thirty years have I tried to
follow the argument Clausius offers....and seven times has it blanked
and gravelled me.... I cannot explain what I cannot
understand.....This summary leads to the question whether it is
fruitful to see irreversibility or time-asymmetry as the essence of
the second law. Is it not more straightforward, in view of the
unargued statements of Kelvin, the bold claims of Clausius and the
strained attempts of Planck, to give up this idea? I believe that
Ehrenfest-Afanassjewa was right in her verdict that the discussion
about the arrow of time as expressed in the second law of the
thermodynamics is actually a RED HERRING."
Let us assume that the above criticism of thermodynamics is at least
partially correct. Can we expect a professor of thermodynamics to
suddenly stop teaching the "dismal swamp of obscurity" and launch a
consistent-and-comprehensible-science campaign? An ugly heretic CAN
launch such a campaign but then handsome professors would immediately
ruin his life:
http://bip.cnrs-mrs.fr/bip10/valevfaq.htm
Athel Cornish-Bowden: "There are times when to remain silent is to lie
(Miguel de Unamuno, 1936) Reading Mr Valev's postings to the BTK-MCA
and other news groups and trying to answer all the nonsense contained
in them incurs the risk of being so time-consuming that it takes over
one's professional time completely, leaving none for more profitable
activities. On the other hand, not answering them incurs the even
greater risk that some readers of the news group may think that his
points are unanswerable and that thermodynamics, kinetics, catalysis
etc. rest on as fragile a foundation as he pretends. (...) I apologize
to anyone (other than Mr Valev), who thinks this page is lacking in
taste. Believe me, some of us have tried hard to deal calmly and
rationally with his continuous outpouring of nonsense, but now there
is a higher priority than being polite: ensuring that falsehoods are
not accepted as truth. (...) What are Mr Valev's qualifications as a
scientist? (...) Puzzlement on this subject extends even to Bulgaria,
as B. V. Toshev, head of the Departments of Physical Chemistry and of
Chemistry Education at the University of Sofia, noted in a message to
the Chemistry Education Discussion List in April 2005, when he asked:
"Who is Pentcho Valev? What is his education? Nobody in Bulgaria knows
that. He does not belong either to the researchers or to the Bulgarian
education community. I even wonder if he is a real man?!" (...)
Although Mr Valev has by no means abandoned his views on
thermodynamics, he now seems to be more interested in convincing
physicists that their subject took a wrong turn with the special
theory of relativity, from which it has not yet recovered. No words
are too harsh to be applied to Albert Einstein, if we believe Mr
Valev. I don't feel qualified to dissect his arguments in this field,
but interested readers can find some useful pointers at Dirk Van de
Moortel's web site (which suggests that Mr Valev is not the only
purveyor of nonsense that physicists have to deal with). (...)
Comments and corrections to this page are welcome, and may be sent to
Athel Cornish-Bowden. Thanks to Douglas Kell for suggesting it."
Yet the "dismal swamp of obscurity" is so unbearable that even
handsome professors shift allegiance sometimes:
http://www.beilstein-institut.de/bozen2004/proceedings/CornishBowden/CornishBowden.htm
ATHEL CORNISH-BOWDEN: "The concept of entropy was introduced to
thermodynamics by Clausius, who deliberately chose an obscure term for
it, wanting a word based on Greek roots that would sound similar to
"energy". In this way he hoped to have a word that would mean the same
to everyone regardless of their language, and, as Cooper [2] remarked,
he succeeded in this way in finding a word that meant the same to
everyone: NOTHING. From the beginning it proved a very difficult
concept for other thermodynamicists, even including such accomplished
mathematicians as Kelvin and Maxwell; Kelvin, indeed, despite his own
major contributions to the subject, never appreciated the idea of
entropy [3]. The difficulties that Clausius created have continued to
the present day, with the result that a fundamental idea that is
absolutely necessary for understanding the theory of chemical
equilibria continues to give trouble, not only to students but also to
scientists who need the concept for their work."
Needless to say, intelligent students would not devote their lives to
a "dismal swamp of obscurity". From time to time scientists warn the
scientific community that science is dying but such warnings are
getting more and more cynical - the death is getting more and more
irreversible:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2007/may/22/highereducation.education
Harry Kroto: "The wrecking of British science....The scientific method
is based on what I prefer to call the inquiring mindset. It includes
all areas of human thoughtful activity that categorically eschew
"belief", the enemy of rationality. This mindset is a nebulous mixture
of doubt, questioning, observation, experiment and, above all,
curiosity, which small children possess in spades. I would argue that
it is the most important, intrinsically human quality we possess, and
it is responsible for the creation of the modern, enlightened portion
of the world that some of us are fortunate to inhabit. Curiously, for
the majority of our youth, the educational system magically causes
this capacity to disappear by adolescence.....Do I think there is any
hope for UK? I am really not sure."
http://school.maths.uwa.edu.au/~mike/Trouble.doc
Mike Alder: "It is easy to see the consequences of the takeover by the
bureaucrats. Bureaucrats favour uniformity, it simplifies their lives.
They want rules to follow. They prefer the dead to the living. They
have taken over religions, the universities and now they are taking
over Science. And they are killing it in the process. The forms and
rituals remain, but the spirit is dead. The cold frozen corpse is so
much more appealing to the bureaucratic mind-set than the living
spirit of the quest for insight. Bureaucracies put a premium on the
old being in charge, which puts a stop to innovation. Something
perhaps will remain, but it will no longer attract the best minds.
This, essentially, is the Smolin position. He gives details and
examples of the death of Physics, although he, being American, is
optimistic that it can be reversed. I am not. (...) Developing ideas
and applying them is done by a certain kind of temperament in a
certain kind of setting, one where there is a good deal of personal
freedom and a willingness to take risks. No doubt we still have the
people. But the setting is gone and will not come back. Science is a
product of the renaissance and an entrepreneurial spirit. It will not
survive the triumph of bureacracy. Despite having the infrastructure,
China never developed Science. And soon the West won't have it
either."
http://www.autodidactproject.org/other/rose_sci_2/physics_ideology_2.html
Ideology of/in Contemporary Physics, Jean-Marc Lévy-Leblond
"In this way, major advances in modern physics, especially in
relativity and quantum mechanics, have paradoxically fed an intensely
irrational current. One knows the popular expression for scepticism
and unconcern: 'everything is relative . . . as Einstein said' (and
this is not so harmless as one would believe). At a seemingly more
elaborate level, the mad attempts of Bergson to criticise and
reinstate the theory of relativity within his own philosophy, even if
they took place fifty years ago, still give evidence of a serious
crisis in the relations between science and philosophy. (...) As far
as the theories of relativity or quantum physics are concerned, the
last fifty years have hardly witnessed any major evolution in their
mode of presentation. Most handbooks are surprisingly similar,
repeating indefinitely the same schemes of inner organisation. As a
general rule, a historical or rather chronological introduction - of
dubious accuracy - is followed by some philosophical reflections in
which traditional dogmas are enunciated under a much more schematic
and poorer form than that of their creators. Having fulfilled this
first task, the author then approaches the 'strictly scientific'
content of the book. It consists, in general, of purely theoretical,
exaggeratedly formalistic accounts, from which references to real
experiments steadily vanish. Not a single impression is left of the
real procedures of scientific activity, of the dialectic between
theory and practice, heuristic models and formalism, axioms and
history. Modern physics appears as a collection of mathematical
formulae, whose only justification is that 'they work'. Moreover, the
'examples' used to 'concretise' the knowledge are often totally
unreal, and actually have the effect of making it even more abstract.
Such is the case when the explanation of special relativity is based
on the consideration of the entirely fictitious spatial and temporal
behaviour of clocks and trains (today sometimes one speaks of
rockets . . . it sounds better . . . but it is as stupid!). This kind
of science fiction (which is not even funny) is the more dangerous as
erases the existence of a large experimental practice, where the
theory of relativity is embodied in the study of high-energy
particles, involving hundreds of scientific workers, thousands of tons
of steel and millions of dollars. (...) This teaching situation, even
if it appears unhealthy and harmful with regard to the simple aims of
training and teaching (transmission of knowledge), is however in
perfect ideological harmony with the general context of modern
physics. A closed arduous, forbidding education, which stresses
technical manipulation more than conceptual understanding, in which
neither past difficulties nor future problems in the search for
knowledge appear, perfectly fulfils two essential roles: to promote
hierarchisation and the 'elite' spirit on behalf of a science shown as
being intrinsically difficult, to be within the reach of only a few
privileged individuals; and to impose a purely operational technical
concept of knowledge, far from a true conceptual understanding, which
would necessarily be critical and thus would reveal the limits of this
knowledge. This is why discussions about educational problems take on
the form of ideological struggle. It is also why, because of the
essentially political nature of the resistance to change in this
field, no reformist illusions should be entertained as to the
possibility of any major successes, as long as such a struggle only
relies on the internal critique of scientific workers and teachers,
remaining within the framework of an unchanged technical and social
division of labour. (...) The very availability of an essay as this
reflects the existence of a deep ideological crisis in the scientific
milieu. This crisis is particularly obvious in the field of physics.
It is expressed, on the one hand, by a lack of motivation on the part
of many young research workers, and, on the other hand, by the efforts
of readjustment and self-justification on the part of the
establishment. It is characterised by a serious loss of credibility in
traditional values, which before had made it possible for research
workers to create acceptable self-images. (...) Average scientists do
not even control the meaning of their own work. Very often, they are
obscure labourers in theoretical computation or experimentation; they
only have a very narrow perspective of the global process to which
their work is related. Confined to a limited subject, in a specialised
field, their competence is extremely restricted. It is only necessary
to listen to the complaints of the previous generations' scientists on
the disappearance of 'general culture' in science. In fact, the case
of physics is eloquent on the subject. One can say that, until the
beginning of this century, the knowledge of an average physicist had
progressed in a cumulative way, including progressively the whole of
previous discovery. The training of physicists demanded an almost
universal knowledge in the various spheres of physics. The arrival of
'modern' physics has brought about not only the parcelling of fields
of knowledge, but also the abandonment of whole areas. I have already
said that important sections of nineteenthcentury physics are today
excluded from the scientific knowledge of many physicists. Therefore
the fields of competence are not only getting narrower, but some of
them are practically vanishing altogether. If physicists no longer
know about physics, a fortiori they know nothing about science! The
idea of a 'scientific culture', of a 'scientific method', of a
'scientific spirit', which were common to all scientists and used to
give them a large capacity for the rational understanding of all
reality, have turned into huge practical jokes. True, some scientists
have access to a global vision of their field or even of the social
organisation of science and social ties, but that tends to depend
solely on the position of power they occupy. The others, massively,
are dispossessed of all mastery over their activity. They have no
control, no understanding of its direction."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2005/nov/22/schools.g2
"But instead of celebrating, physicists are in mourning after a report
showed a dramatic decline in the number of pupils studying physics at
school. The number taking A-level physics has dropped by 38% over the
past 15 years, a catastrophic meltdown that is set to continue over
the next few years. The report warns that a shortage of physics
teachers and a lack of interest from pupils could mean the end of
physics in state schools. Thereafter, physics would be restricted to
only those students who could afford to go to posh schools. Britain
was the home of Isaac Newton, Michael Faraday and Paul Dirac, and
Brits made world-class contributions to understanding gravity, quantum
physics and electromagnetism - and yet the British physicist is now
facing extinction. But so what? Physicists are not as cuddly as
pandas, so who cares if we disappear?"
Pentcho Valev
pva...@yahoo.com
Pentcho Valev
George Orwell: "Withers, however, was already an unperson. He did not
exist : he had never existed."
REDUCTIO AD ABSURDUM is an unmethod in the era of Postscientism. It
does not exist: it has never existed. The following consequences of
Einstein's 1905 constant-speed-of-light postulate, according to which
an arbitrarily long object can safely be trapped inside an arbitrarily
short container, are regarded as glorious illustrations of the power
of Divine Albert's Divine Theory rather than as absurdities showing
the falsehood of the postulate:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSRIyDfo_mY&mode=related&search
Einsteinians trap long trains inside short tunnels
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/SR/barn_pole.html
"These are the props. You own a barn, 40m long, with automatic doors
at either end, that can be opened and closed simultaneously by a
switch. You also have a pole, 80m long, which of course won't fit in
the barn. Now someone takes the pole and tries to run (at nearly the
speed of light) through the barn with the pole horizontal. Special
Relativity (SR) says that a moving object is contracted in the
direction of motion: this is called the Lorentz Contraction. So, if
the pole is set in motion lengthwise, then it will contract in the
reference frame of a stationary observer.....So, as the pole passes
through the barn, there is an instant when it is completely within the
barn. At that instant, you close both doors simultaneously, with your
switch. Of course, you open them again pretty quickly, but at least
momentarily you had the contracted pole shut up in your barn. The
runner emerges from the far door unscathed.....If the doors are kept
shut the rod will obviously smash into the barn door at one end. If
the door withstands this the leading end of the rod will come to rest
in the frame of reference of the stationary observer. There can be no
such thing as a rigid rod in relativity so the trailing end will not
stop immediately and the rod will be compressed beyond the amount it
was Lorentz contracted. If it does not explode under the strain and it
is sufficiently elastic it will come to rest and start to spring back
to its natural shape but since it is too big for the barn the other
end is now going to crash into the back door and the rod will be
trapped IN A COMPRESSED STATE inside the barn."
http://master-p6.obspm.fr/relat/annee1011/relatTD1_1011.pdf
Université Pierre et Marie Curie
"La situation est la suivante : un perchiste se saisit d'une perche
mesurant 10 m, puis il s'élance en direction d'une grange mesurant 5 m
de profondeur et percée de deux portes A et B (cf fig. 0.1). On
suppose que le perchiste se déplace à une vitesse constante v telle
que gamma = 2. Le paradoxe est le suivant : le perchiste a une perche
de 10 m et voit une grange de longueur 5/gamma = 2,5 m, donc la perche
ne rentre pas. De son côté, la grange voit une perche de longueur 10/
gamma = 5 m, donc la perche rentre. Finalement, est-ce que la perche
rentre dans la grange ? Que se passe-t-il si on ferme la porte en B?
(...) ...lorsque le bout P atteint la porte fermée en B, l'autre bout
de la barre n'est pas encore au courant et la perche se contracte très
fortement, jusqu'à ce que l'information que B est fermée se propage,
via des ondes acoustiques, le long de la barre jusqu'en P."
http://www.quebecscience.qc.ca/Revolutions
"Cependant, si une fusée de 100 m passait devant nous à une vitesse
proche de celle de la lumière, elle pourrait sembler ne mesurer que 50
m, ou même moins. Bien sûr, la question qui vient tout de suite à
l'esprit est: «Cette contraction n'est-elle qu'une illusion?» Il
semble tout à fait incroyable que le simple mouvement puisse comprimer
un objet aussi rigide qu'une fusée. Et pourtant, la contraction est
réelle... mais SANS COMPRESSION physique de l'objet! Ainsi, une fusée
de 100 m passant à toute vitesse dans un tunnel de 60 m pourrait être
entièrement contenue dans ce tunnel pendant une fraction de seconde,
durant laquelle il serait possible de fermer des portes aux deux
bouts! La fusée est donc réellement plus courte. Pourtant, il n'y a
PAS DE COMPRESSION matérielle ou physique de l'engin. Comment est-ce
possible?"
http://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/teaching/HPS_0410/chapters/Reciprocity/index.html
John Norton: "That each finds the others clocks slowed and rods shrunk
is troubling. But it is not immediately obvious that there is a
serious problem. If I walk away from you, simple perspective effects
make it look to each of us that the other is getting smaller. That
perspectival effect should not worry anyone. The car in the garage
problem is an attempt to show that the relativistic effects are more
serious than this simple perspectival effect. There is, it tries to
show, a real contradiction; and we should not tolerate contradictions
in a physical theory. Here is how we might try to get a contradiction
out of the relativistic effect of each observer judging the other to
have shrunk. Imagine a car that fits perfectly into a garage. The
garage is a small free standing shed that is just as long as the car.
There is a door at the right and a door at the left of the garage. The
car fits exactly - as long as it is at rest. Now image that we drive
the car at 86.6% speed of light through the garage from right to left.
The doors have been opened at the right and the left of the garage to
allow passage of the car. There is a garage attendant, who stands at
rest with respect to the garage. Can the garage attendant close both
doors so that, at least for a few brief moments, the car is fully
enclosed within the garage? According to the garage attendant, there
is no problem achieving this. At 86.6% the speed of light, the car has
shrunk to half of its length at rest. It fits in the garage handily.
The garage attendant can close both doors and trap the car inside."
http://alcor.concordia.ca/~scol/seminars/conference/abstracts/Durand.html
"La contraction une longueur est un phénomène à la fois réel mais sans
déformation structurelle. C'est un phénomène réel (et non pas une
illusion) car, par exemple, une perche dont la longueur au repos est
plus grande que la longueur au repos d'une grange peut réellement être
contenue dans cette dernière si elle se déplace assez rapidement. Par
contre, il ne peut y avoir de contraction structurelle de la perche,
i.e de déformation matérielle de l'objet, car la contraction de sa
longueur aurait aussi lieu si c'était plutôt l'observateur qui se
mettait en mouvement sans changer l'état de mouvement de la perche.
Autrement dit, sans changer l'état de la perche, en se mettant soi-
même en mouvement, on change sa longueur: ce n'est donc clairement pas
une contraction matérielle (l'état de la perche est le même dans les
deux cas)."
Pentcho Valev
pva...@yahoo.com