Ripping Apart Einstein

Einsteinians and the Red Queen

Philip Ball and Lee Smolin are doing all the running they can do to get rid of the idiotic special relativistic time - a consequence of Einstein's 1905 false constant-speed-of-light postulate - and keep close to the postulate itself, to be able to worship it as ecstatically as possible:

Philip Ball: "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 [Lee] Smolin."

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.

'Well, in OUR country,' said Alice, still panting a little, 'you'd generally get to somewhere else - if you ran very fast for a long time, as we've been doing.' 'A slow sort of country!' said the Queen. 'Now, HERE, you see, it takes all the running YOU can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!'

It takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place.

Pentcho Valev

Eckard,

Miller did not agree your conclusion of no background frame. You assume it as some 'light carrying medium' but I point out that a simple dielectric particle system does the same job over the distances involved.

In a 1933 paper, The Aether-Drift Experiments and the Determination of the Absolute Motion of the Earth physicist Dayton C. Miller reviewed the evidence and concluded;

"The brief series of observations was sufficient to show that the effect did not have the anticipated magnitude. However, and this fact must be emphasized,the indicated effect was not zero; the sensitivity of the apparatus was such that the conclusion, published in 1887, stated that the observed relative motion of the earth and aether did not exceed one-fourth of the Earth's orbital velocity. This is quite different from a null effect now so frequently imputed to this experiment by the writers on Relativity."

Miller showed that there is a systematic effect in the original M-M data indicating a speed of the Earth relative to the Aether of 8.8 km/s for the noon observations and 8.0 km/s for the evening observations. He believed that the aether was entrained ("dragged along") by the earth.

After years of careful experimentation, Miller indeed found a systematic deviation from the null result predicted by special relativity, which greatly embarrassed Einstein and his followers. Einstein tried to explain it away as an artifact of temperature variation, but Miller had taken great care to avoid precisely that kind of error. Miller told the Cleveland Plain Dealer on January 27, 1926,

The trouble with Professor Einstein is that he knows nothing about my results. ... He ought to give me credit for knowing that temperature differences would affect the results. He wrote to me in November suggesting this. I am not so simple as to make no allowance for temperature."

But the enthusiasts of the geometric interpretation suppressed all discord, and logic was lost. Misunderstanding experimental evidence will ensure it remains so.

Peter

Peter,

I meant the vacuum "is no light-carrying medium relative to which something may move". Experiments by Miller and the theory by Cahill were certainly influenced by the atmosphere of earth.

Eckard

Eckard,

As an astronomer I can reassure you no 'perfect vacuum' exists out in space when considered at the large scales of space. It's full of particles. Maybe not the 10^14/cm^-3 near Earth, but certainly plenty enough to do the same job over a longer distance, so with gentler 'curvature'.

As an astronomer I can reassure you that there is a lot of 'longer distance' out there in the QV. There is no mystery. Each bunch of particles is in some LOCAL inertial rest frame K, and after a while all light passing through it is modulated to c in the local frame K.

That is all that's required for CSL. But when in motion K' we can't measure the 'approaching' wavelength to find speed, we measure the wavelength on arrival of the second wave peak. So as propagation is then at local c (c') in K' we have c' = f* lamba'. it's c and lambda that have changed ready for measurement.

Unfortunately that seems possibly to have perfect logic so is incompatible with current physics.

Hi Peter,

It's always good to hear the voice of reason.

Hey, I was thinking about the big bang, dark matter and the quantum vacuum. I was wondering if dark matter might offer some bosons and fermions that we don't know about? I was playing around with the idea that at a time very early in the big bang, perhaps 10^-37 seconds or less, could some kind of quantum entangled mesh have been created? I'm borrowing an idea from biology, the Endoplasmic Reticulum, which is a transport sytsem for cells. The idea is that we've never noticed it because it's made out of dark matter (invisible matter); it would have invisible fermions and bosons. I'm assuming that particles might become quantumly entangled at very high energies. At 10^-37 seconds after the big bang, the energies were incredibly high. Could some kind of quantum entanglement because a large number of dark matter particles have occured?

Jason,

"It's always good to hear the voice of reason." Seems a bit scarce at times! I agree the fermion bit, but not the big bang bit, none the less the big blast will produce a whole load of fermion pairs, many of the ones that don't extinguish each other evolve to protons. I see no theoretical bar to those as dark matter.

Have you seen the Majorana fermion?

best

Peter

Peter,

Majorana fermion: "A Majorana fermion, also referred to as a Majorana particle, is a fermion that is its own antiparticle. They were hypothesised by Ettore Majorana in 1937. The term is sometimes used in opposition to a Dirac fermion, which describes fermions that are not their own antiparticles. No elementary fermions are known to be their own antiparticle, though the nature of the neutrino is not settled and it might be a Majorana fermion. By contrast, it is common that bosons are their own antiparticle, such as the photon."

I don't think the photon is its own anti-particle. When a particle meets its anti-particle, they're supposed to annihilate one another (perhaps giving off photons). In the case of a photon, I would argue that a photon would annihilate with its own gravity field. Of course, this doesn't happen. If it did, the whole universe would just vanish. I don't know what prevents mass-energy from recombining with its graviational curvature.

O tempora o mores:

"Could Einstein's theory of relativity be wrong? That's among the burning questions being asked by theoretical physicists today. It's a startling claim and one that has received a lot of attention from other scientists. Researchers from UC Santa Barbara's Department of Physics and the Kavli Institute for Theretical Physics (KITP) have received a $1.32 million grant from the National Science Foundation to continue their work on finding an answer."

Einsteinians know no limits.

Pentcho Valev

Akinbo,

Your article mentions "Bradley's aberration .... supports advocates of light whose velocity can not be relative and which requires no medium for propagation" and "Some of the arguments can be found in [7] " Whittaker 1910. If you have the book at hand, could you please add some details? Do you refer to advocates of emission theory or to those like me who conjecture electromagnetic waves in empty space?

Eckard

Burning Questions in Divine Albert's World

University of California, Santa Barbara: "Could Einstein's theory of relativity be wrong? That's among the burning questions being asked by theoretical physicists today."

High priests in Einsteiniana know that, as long as Einstein's 1905 postulates are believed to be both true, Einstein simply cannot be proved wrong. Whatever errors he may have committed at later stages, they are insignificant - the groundbreaking miracles such as relativity of simultaneity, time dilation, length contraction, travel into the future etc. remain valid.

Hence the rallying cry in Einsteiniana:

"Brothers Einsteinians, "Einstein is wrong" is nice and profitable as long as you don't question the fundamental falsehood, Einstein's 1905 false constant-speed-of-light postulate!"

"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..."

Philip Ball: "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."

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

Space dynamics should read shape dynamics.

Eckard

Simple Refutation of Special Relativity

A stationary observer/receiver measures the frequency of the light pulses to be f=c/d, where d is the distance between subsequent pulses.

An observer/receiver moving with speed v (let v be small so that the relativistic corrections can be ignored) towards the light source measures the frequency of the light pulses to be f'=(c+v)/d.

From the formula f=c/d one infers that the speed of the light pulses relative to the stationary observer/receiver is c. From the formula f'=(c+v)/d one infers that the speed of the light pulses relative to the moving observer/receiver is c'=c+v. Einsteinians disagree.

Pentcho Valev

Tom,

The 'Paper of 2013' says 'space-time' is meaningless beyond separate physical 'duration' and 'distance', operationally, and is almost certainly quantized ('grainy').

Further it criticises attempts to dismiss the new boundaries and constraints proposed by models such as the DFM, and agrees that the description of Lorentz Invariance; "that the speed of massless particles (i.e. the speed of light) is the same independently of the chosen reference system in which the measurement is performed" is inadequate, being; "true and false at the same time." which is again a foundation of discrete field kinetics, where c is local Propagation speed, NOT some single 'Universal' speed!, so there are also arbitrary 'relative' speeds of 'non-local' phenomena.

You'll no doubt disagree, or perhaps search for some other 'interpretation', but, whether correct or not, it re-enforces the point I made that that your 'standard doctrine' definition of SR looks increasingly like the 'White Star' or 'Costa Line' version whose fate may be sealed.

The solution I propose steers it clear of the icebergs and rocks in it's path. There is no 'captain' on the bridge, but those at the wheel seem oblivious. It may soon be too late to save it. I can only keep ringing the warning bell. If anyone can help me get it back to navigable waters do volunteer.

And do give me your views on the highly regarded paper;

Scitech Daily article. Dec 2013.

2013 Paper of the year. Analysis of Space-Time irregularities.

Best seasonal wishes.

Peter

Simple Refutation of Special Relativity II

As the observer starts moving towards the light source with speed v (let v be small so that the relativistic corrections can be ignored), the speed of the light pulses relative to him shifts from c to c'=c+v (in violation of special relativity) and, as a result, the frequency the observer measures shifts from f=c/d to f'=(c+v)/d, where d is the distance between subsequent pulses.

As the observer starts moving away from the light source with speed v, the speed of the light pulses relative to him shifts from c to c'=c-v (in violation of special relativity) and, as a result, the frequency the observer measures shifts from f=c/d to f'=(c-v)/d.

The falsehood of Einstein's relativity is obvious to everybody nowadays - there is almost no one left on Einsteiniana's sinking ship. The only reason why the end of Einsteiniana is still not officially declared is because Einsteiniana's high priests fear an embarrassing question:

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

Thanks Peter for providing us a link to these interesting papers. You are certainly a devoted seeker after the truth, spending much time and energy to dig things out, even if we have areas of disagreement. I will enjoy the papers and comment later. Before this...

In the preamble I see "Is space time continuous or is it made up of very fine (10-35 meters on the "Planck scale") but discrete grains"; "Physicists have been wondering about the nature of space time for years. We've been asking ourselves whether it is continuous at all scales, as we perceive it in our daily experience, or whether at very small sizes it presents an irregular grain that we, in our direct experience, are unable to perceive", explains Liberati; "In a certain sense physicists have been trying to do something similar with space time: to find something that acts as a microscope to find out whether at very small length scales there is indeed some irregularity.."

QUESTION OR MATTERS ARISING:

What is the measure or S.I. unit of space time? Is it in length? Or is it metre-seconds? In view of the historical intrigues that we have been subjected to in Einsteiniana, it is wise to be wary of any magic ab initio, changing a geometric entity like space, which everybody can physically appreciate and measure into something that is more of a mathematical concept before confronting the issue of its graininess or not. Let mathematicians mind mathematics, while theoretical and experimental physicists and natural philosophers mind physics. These are my opening comments, till I go through the paper. The topic appears to merit a separate blog on its own!

Regards,

Akinbo

The 2013 paper fits into the guess of grained spacetime. I nonetheless begun looking in it and found on p. 4 something that is remarkable from my perspective: replacing the abstract notions of "time" and "space" with the physical notions of

"duration" (of a physical phenomenon as measured by a clock) and distance (e.g. of

a physical object as measured by a suitable rod).

Although I don't consider Einstein a reliable authority, I would like to remind of how he defined time: what the clock measures.

Neither negative duration nor negative distance can be measured.

Eckard

Eckard, et al.

The consequence is enlightening. You and six pals float at rest in space, detecting photons from a source 1 light year (lyr) away.

Your pal Vince then heads off towards the source at v. According to current theory (including yours Eckard) he then somehow magically changes the speed of all the 'yet to arrive' photons, whether already emitted or not but only those destined to interact with HIS lens, not yours or the others! So they then DON'T take one lyr to arrive! Or perhaps he warps the bit of space between him and the source, but only for him!? And of course he also has to contract in length. Now all those who believe that think those who think otherwise simply 'don't understand' or think the king has no clothes so are asylum inmates.

The simple option is that those photons Vince doesn't interact with carry on as they were, so at RELATIVE c+v, (but not detectable). The ones he 'detects' (an interactive 'sampling' process) are immediately modulated to c wrt his personal local rest frame ('discrete field') then measured (DFM).

Nothing else is needed. so Occam agrees with me, as does the above paper; identifying that the current description of LI is "both right and wrong," so c can be real and local, and is NOT also required to be 'apparent' elsewhere.

So I suggest it's not ME in the asylum. And when the mists clear the wall will be found encircling those who believe in the old mythical doctrines, magic, time travel, shrinking objects and invisible clothes.

This last gate is open, there may still be time to escape!

Can anyone find ANY fault or credible reason to doubt the simple DFM option?

Peter,

Did you mean the following? Seven objects are located one lyr apart from an emitter. One of them, called Vince, starts moving with a velocity v wrt the group toward the source.

As usual it was not at all enlightening what you wrote. I had to learn that a pal is a friend. To me "float at rest in space" sounds self-contradicting. I guess Vince is just a name. I didn't find the expression "to head off".

Let me comment on this picture. Vince's velocity doesn't directly matter at all. If Vince's position is not yet different from the position of the group then its distance from the source is still one lyr. If Vince is e.g. only 0.5 lyr away from the source then waves from the emitter may arrive at Vince 0.5 years earlier than at the group. Incidentally, I don't see the light destined to interact. Where is the problem unless we intend understanding warped spacetime?

Vince can of course not alter the propagation of light. In that I share your "simple opinion". However I identify your addendum "As RELATIVE c+v,(but not detectable) as at least not sufficiently explained but perhaps simply unfounded and as indicating your emission-theoretic guess.

Eckard

Eckard,

Not emission theory. And the scenario meets all observations and findings WITHOUT having to invoke influence into the future. The emitter may indeed also be moving, but was at a point in space 1 lyr away when emitting the photons/wave or whatever you prefer, which then takes 1 lyr to reach you. Lets be realistic and call it a wavefront light pulse constituted by many 'photons.'

Vince's velocity DOES of course matter because the whole problem is ALL about relative velocities. (You seem to have conveniently forgotten that fact for your own proposition).

Let us then consider that your friend Vince is the only one in motion, moving at v towards the source, but is LEVEL with you when the wavefront arrives. Now you and your 7 friends all do the calculation and find that the photons are propagating at c wrt yourselves.

But when Vince also detects the photons, and also does the calculation and finds them moving at c wrt HIM then you would call him a fool and have no logical explanation (nor does SR!)

In fact only one LOGICAL explanation can exist. It is that the photone which YOU detected were indeed doing relative c+v wrt Vince. Which means that the photons HE detected were also approaching him at relative c+v. It is then the calculation which assumes the wrong mathematical formula, because it ignores the fact that the photons we 'measure' have ALREADY interacted with our detectors, which we know from optical science to be true anyway!

The datum for defining c simply changes to the new inertial system rest frame.

I suggest that is logically irrefutable. (DFM). Happy a good new years eve.

Peter