Special Relativity's Days Are Numbered Aren't They?

[Pentcho Valev]

A decade ago Joao Magueijo and Lee Smolin discovered that Einstein's special relativity is "the root of all the evil" in physics and that the ultimate culprit is Einstein's 1905 false light postulate:

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://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."

Smolin is still fighting special relativity but apparently without questioning the postulates anymore. He has restored the sane Newtonian concept of time at the expense of spoiling the concept of space - at least the article quoted below suggests so:

http://bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/03/02/physicist-seeks-new-way-sort-time-from-space/mOiSd71YSK6zBR6GiXh3fP/story.html
"Time doesn't exist? Across great distances, there is no such thing as innately simul­taneous events, such as turning off the stars at once, ­except as events communicate with each other slowly across space, at the speed of light. Moreover, different observers experience things happening in different time order, depending on the observer's own velocity. Time itself proved to depend on your viewpoint. It was a hard idea to swallow. A lot of people in the early 1900s thought that relativity would spell the death of certainty, science, morals, and every­thing else. Worse was to come. In discovering the interrelationship of space with time, Einstein found no place left for the queer, indefinable thing called "the present." He was stuck with a picture of the universe as a permanent, eternal, changeless block of four-dimensional "spacetime," with past, present, and future all there at once, in a static, changeless whole. Picture a book, in which the story is all there at once from start to finish. Or a DVD sitting on a shelf, containing the whole movie. This is for real. Modern physics can locate no such thing as "the present." The book of time is not open to a particular page that some unseen mechanism is turning. The DVD on the shelf is just a DVD; it has no laser readout gizmo playing a particular part of the movie right now. No readout device exists. So science is utterly stymied by a simple question: Why do we think it's March 2013 right now, instead of, say, August 2005? What makes one of those two feel immediate to us, and the other not? Some physicists have decided that they must accept the block-universe picture at face value; that the flowing present is some kind of illusion of the human brain, and that all cosmic history exists at once, eternal. Einstein saw no way around it. He urged friends to find comfort in this realization when their loved ones died. Now this idea is coming ­under a serious challenge from today's physics frontier. Theorist Lee Smolin at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics argues, in a book to be published next month titled Time Reborn, that the passage of time is the actual fundamental reality, and that physics' picture of invariant space is the thing that needs to turn weird ­instead."

Note that special relativity's absurd concept of time "is coming ­under a serious challenge from today's physics frontier". Special relativity's days are numbered aren't they?

Pentcho Valev

[Pentcho Valev]

From now on, the most embarrassing question will be:

Why has the absurdity of special relativity not been noticed earler?

http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a909857880
Peter Hayes "The Ideology of Relativity: The Case of the Clock Paradox" : Social Epistemology, Volume 23, Issue 1 January 2009, pages 57-78: "The gatekeepers of professional physics in the universities and research institutes are disinclined to support or employ anyone who raises problems over the elementary inconsistencies of relativity. A winnowing out process has made it very difficult for critics of Einstein to achieve or maintain professional status. Relativists are then able to use the argument of authority to discredit these critics. Were relativists to admit that Einstein may have made a series of elementary logical errors, they would be faced with the embarrassing question of why this had not been noticed earlier. Under these circumstances the marginalisation of antirelativists, unjustified on scientific grounds, is eminently justifiable on grounds of realpolitik. Supporters of relativity theory have protected both the theory and their own reputations by shutting their opponents out of professional discourse."

Pentcho Valev

[gyans...@gmail.com]

idiot! Proven many times with atomic clocks flown on planes.

[G=EMC^2]

On Mar 2, 2:45 am, Pentcho Valev <pva...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> A decade ago Joao Magueijo and Lee Smolin discovered that Einstein's special relativity is "the root of all the evil" in physics and that the ultimate culprit is Einstein's 1905 false light postulate:
>
> 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://www.amazon.com/Trouble-Physics-String-Theory-Science/dp/061855...

> 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."
>
> Smolin is still fighting special relativity but apparently without questioning the postulates anymore. He has restored the sane Newtonian concept of time at the expense of spoiling the concept of space - at least the article quoted below suggests so:
>

> http://bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/03/02/physicist-seeks-new-way-sort-...

> "Time doesn't exist? Across great distances, there is no such thing as innately simul­taneous events, such as turning off the stars at once, ­except as events communicate with each other slowly across space, at the speed of light. Moreover, different observers experience things happening in different time order, depending on the observer's own velocity. Time itself proved to depend on your viewpoint. It was a hard idea to swallow. A lot of people in the early 1900s thought that relativity would spell the death of certainty, science, morals, and every­thing else. Worse was to come. In discovering the interrelationship of space with time, Einstein found no place left for the queer, indefinable thing called "the present." He was stuck with a picture of the universe as a permanent, eternal, changeless block of four-dimensional "spacetime," with past, present, and future all there at once, in a static, changeless whole. Picture a book, in which the story is all there at once from start to finish. Or a DVD sitting on a shelf, containing the whole movie. This is for real. Modern physics can locate no such thing as "the present." The book of time is not open to a particular page that some unseen mechanism is turning. The DVD on the shelf is just a DVD; it has no laser readout gizmo playing a particular part of the movie right now. No readout device exists. So science is utterly stymied by a simple question: Why do we think it's March 2013 right now, instead of, say, August 2005? What makes one of those two feel immediate to us, and the other not? Some physicists have decided that they must accept the block-universe picture at face value; that the flowing present is some kind of illusion of the human brain, and that all cosmic history exists at once, eternal. Einstein saw no way around it. He urged friends to find comfort in this realization when their loved ones died. Now this idea is coming ­under a serious challenge from today's physics frontier. Theorist Lee Smolin at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics argues, in a book to be published next month titled Time Reborn, that the passage of time is the actual fundamental reality, and that physics' picture of invariant space is the thing that needs to turn weird ­instead."
>
> Note that special relativity's absurd concept of time "is coming ­under a serious challenge from today's physics frontier". Special relativity's days are numbered aren't they?
>
> Pentcho Valev

Low wits must be doing the counting. O ya TreBert

[Pentcho Valev]

Einstein had convinced himself special relativity was wrong within two years of publishing it:

http://discovermagazine.com/2004/sep/einsteins-lonely-path
Lee Smolin: "Quantum mechanics was not the only theory that bothered Einstein. Few people have appreciated how dissatisfied he was with his own theories of relativity. Special relativity grew out of Einstein's insight that the laws of electromagnetism cannot depend on relative motion and that the speed of light therefore must always be the same, no matter how the source or the observer moves. Among the consequences of that theory are that energy and mass are equivalent (the now-legendary relationship E = mc2) and that time and distance are relative, not absolute. 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. He rejected his own theory, even before most physicists had come to accept it, for reasons that only he cared about. For another 10 years, as others in the world of physics slowly absorbed special relativity, Einstein pursued a lonely path away from it."

"Within two years of publishing" special relativity Einstein realized the speed of light varies with the gravitational potential:

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."

It is easy to show that, if the speed of light varies with the gravitational potential, then, relative to the observer, it varies with the speed of the observer:

The top of a tower of height h shoots a bullet downwards with initial speed u. As the bullet reaches the ground, its speed (relative to the ground) is:

u' = u(1 + gh/u^2)

The top of a tower of height h emits a light pulse downwards with initial speed c. As the pulse reaches the ground, its speed (relative to the ground) is:

c' = c(1 + gh/c^2)

Einsteinians admit the validity of and sometimes even deduce the above result:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixhczNygcWo
"The light is perceived to be falling in a gravitational field just like a mechanical object would. (...) The change in speed of light with change in height is dc/dh=g/c."

Integrating dc/dh=g/c gives:

c' = c(1 + gh/c^2)

Equivalently, in gravitation-free space where a rocket of length h accelerates with acceleration g, a light signal emitted by the front end will be perceived by an observer at the back end to have a speed:

c' = c(1 + gh/c^2) = c + v

where v is the speed the observer has at the moment of reception of the light relative to the emitter at the moment of emission. Clearly, the speed of light varies with the speed of the observer, in violation of special relativity.

Pentcho Valev

[Pentcho Valev]

The crucial dilemma in today's physics:

1. Scientists continue to claim (although very few of them believe it) that the speed of light is independent of the speed of the light source. As a result, physics is getting more and more schizophrenic and dignitaries continue to leave the sinking ship:

http://www.edge.org/q2008/q08_5.html
John Baez: "Should I be thinking about quantum gravity? One of the big problems in physics - perhaps the biggest! - is figuring out how our two current best theories fit together. On the one hand we have the Standard Model, which tries to explain all the forces except gravity, and takes quantum mechanics into account. On the other hand we have General Relativity, which tries to explain gravity, and does not take quantum mechanics into account. Both theories seem to be more or less on the right track but until we somehow fit them together, or completely discard one or both, OUR PICTURE OF THE WORLD WILL BE DEEPLY SCHIZOPHRENIC. (...) So, I eventually decided to quit working on quantum gravity."

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_45GnkHLOfyA/TClEb8j-yAI/AAAAAAAAA48/Sz82Y_ZwGvs/s1600/Ratosdenavio.png

2. Scientists admit that the speed of light does depend on the speed of the light source. Then a new foundation of physics will have to be constructed by taking into account the end of the 18th century's development of the Newtonian theory of light propagation and the (unfinished) theory of Walther Ritz:

http://www.springerlink.com/content/l720v8hv51p290gt/
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). (...) A relativistic optics of moving bodies: a corpuscle of light is subject to Galilean kinematics, and thus to its principle of relativity as well as to the corresponding theorem of the addition of velocities. (...) 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."

https://webspace.utexas.edu/aam829/1/m/Relativity.html
Alberto Martinez: "Does the speed of light depend on the speed of its source? Before formulating his theory of special relativity, Albert Einstein spent a few years trying to formulate a theory in which the speed of light depends on its source, just like all material projectiles. Likewise, Walter Ritz outlined such a theory, where none of the peculiar effects of Einstein's relativity would hold. By 1913 most physicists abandoned such efforts, accepting the postulate of the constancy of the speed of light. Yet five decades later all the evidence that had been said to prove that the speed of light is independent of its source had been found to be defective."

https://webspace.utexas.edu/aam829/1/m/Relativity_files/RitzEinstein.pdf
Alberto Martinez: "In sum, Einstein rejected the emission hypothesis prior to 1905 not because of any direct empirical evidence against it, but because it seemed to involve too many theoretical and mathematical complications. By contrast, Ritz was impressed by the lack of empirical evidence against the emission hypothesis, and he was not deterred by the mathematical difficulties it involved. It seemed to Ritz far more reasonable to assume, in the interest of the "economy" of scientific concepts, that the speed of light depends on the speed of its source, like any other projectile, rather than to assume or believe, with Einstein, that its speed is independent of the motion of its source even though it is not a wave in a medium; that nothing can go faster than light; that the length and mass of any body varies with its velocity; that there exist no rigid bodies; that duration and simultaneity are relative concepts; that the basic parallelogram law for the addition of velocities is not exactly valid; and so forth. Ritz commented that "it is a curious thing, worthy of remark, that only a few years ago one would have thought it sufficient to refute a theory to show that it entails even one or another of these consequences...."

Pentcho Valev

[Pentcho Valev]

The validity of the following argument can rigorously be proved:

PREMISE: The speed of light varies with the gravitational potential just as the speed of ordinary material bodies does.

CONCLUSION: If the observer moves towards the light source with speed v (in the absence of a gravitational field), then the speed of light relative to the observer is c'=c+v, in violation of special relativity.

That is, special relativity is false or true in virtue of whether or not the speed of light varies with the gravitational potential:

http://membres.multimania.fr/juvastro/calculs/einstein.pdf
"Le principe d'équivalence, un des fondements de base de la relativité générale prédit que dans un champ gravitationnel, la lumière tombe comme tout corps matériel selon l'acceleration de la pesanteur."

http://sethi.lamar.edu/bahrim-cristian/Courses/PHYS4480/4480-PROBLEMS/optics-gravit-lens_PPT.pdf
Dr. Cristian Bahrim: "If we accept the principle of equivalence, we must also accept that light falls in a gravitational field with the same acceleration as material bodies."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixhczNygcWo
"The light is perceived to be falling in a gravitational field just like a mechanical object would. (...) The change in speed of light with change in height is dc/dh=g/c."

http://www.einstein-online.info/spotlights/redshift_white_dwarfs
Albert Einstein Institute: "...you do not need general relativity to derive the correct prediction for the gravitational redshift. A combination of Newtonian gravity, a particle theory of light, and the weak equivalence principle (gravitating mass equals inertial mass) suffices. (...) The gravitational redshift was first measured on earth in 1960-65 by Pound, Rebka, and Snider at Harvard University..."

Pentcho Valev

[Pentcho Valev]

http://www.homevalley.co.za/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=135:its-likely-that-times-are-changing&catid=41:quantec-articles&Itemid=68
"Einstein introduced a new notion of time, more radical than even he at first realized. In fact, the view of time that Einstein adopted was first articulated by his onetime math teacher in a famous lecture delivered one century ago. That lecture, by the German mathematician Hermann Minkowski, established a new arena for the presentation of physics, a new vision of the nature of reality redefining the mathematics of existence. The lecture was titled Space and Time, and it introduced to the world the marriage of the two, now known as spacetime. It was a good marriage, but lately physicists passion for spacetime has begun to diminish. And some are starting to whisper about possible grounds for divorce. (...) Physicists of the 21st century therefore face the task of finding the true reality obscured by the spacetime mirage."

The problem is that Minkowski's spacetime is a direct consequence of Einstein's 1905 false light postulate (the speed of light is independent of the speed of the light source) and the only alternative to the falsehood is the truth given by Newton's emission theory of light (the speed of light does depend on the speed of the light source):

http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/1743/2/Norton.pdf
John Norton: "The Michelson-Morley experiment is fully compatible with an emission theory of light that CONTRADICTS THE LIGHT POSTULATE."

http://www.amazon.com/Relativity-Its-Roots-Banesh-Hoffmann/dp/0486406768
"Relativity and Its Roots" By Banesh Hoffmann: "Moreover, if light consists of particles, as Einstein had suggested in his paper submitted just thirteen weeks before this one, the second principle seems absurd: A stone thrown from a speeding train can do far more damage than one thrown from a train at rest; the speed of the particle is not independent of the motion of the object emitting it. And if we take light to consist of particles and assume that these particles obey Newton's laws, they will conform to Newtonian relativity and thus automatically account for the null result of the Michelson-Morley experiment without recourse to contracting lengths, local time, or Lorentz transformations. Yet, as we have seen, Einstein resisted the temptation to account for the null result in terms of particles of light and simple, familiar Newtonian ideas, and introduced as his second postulate something that was more or less obvious when thought of in terms of waves in an ether."

Pentcho Valev