Ripping Apart Einstein

"It is problem for physics to not know what mass is. Yes I have explained why."

And your explanation is that theoretical mass differs from what mass is. And you expect a theoretical physicist to agree? -- heck, James, we don't know what anything "is" apart from the theory that explains it.

""It is problem for physics to not know what mass is. Yes I have explained why.""

"And your explanation is that theoretical mass differs from what mass is."

Your statement is irrelevant again. It doesn't matter what I say about mass. What matters is that physicists do not know what mass is and that is a problem for physics. Yes I have explained why and it does not involve my definition of mass. Repeating the statement:

It is a problem for physics to not know what mass is.

James Putnam

"It doesn't matter what I say about mass. What matters is that physicists do not know what mass is and that is a problem for physics."

Why? Theologians don't know what God is. Is that a problem for religion?

""It doesn't matter what I say about mass. What matters is that physicists do not know what mass is and that is a problem for physics.""

"Why? Theologians don't know what God is. Is that a problem for religion?"

Good. It is settled. You do not agree that it is a problem for physicists to not know what mass is. I say it is, and, I move forward without your agreement.

James Putnam

The Essence of Special Relativity II

Tony Harker, University College London: "The Doppler Effect: Moving sources and receivers. The phenomena which occur when a source of sound is in motion are well known. The example which is usually cited is the change in pitch of the engine of a moving vehicle as it approaches. In our treatment we shall not specify the type of wave motion involved, and our results will be applicable to sound or to light. (...) Now suppose that the observer is moving with a velocity Vo away from the source. (....) If the observer moves with a speed Vo away from the source (...), then in a time t the number of waves which reach the observer are those in a distance (c-Vo)t, so the number of waves observed is (c-Vo)t/lambda, giving an observed frequency f'=f(1-Vo/c) when the observer is moving away from the source at a speed Vo."

If in a time t the number of waves which reach the observer are those in a distance (c-Vo)t, then, according to special relativity, the speed of the waves relative to the observer is:

c' = (c - Vo)t/t = c - Vo = c

The calculation c - Vo = c is the essence of special relativity.

Pentcho Valev

The Essence of Special Relativity III

Albert Einstein Institute: "The frequency of a wave-like signal - such as sound or light - depends on the movement of the sender and of the receiver. This is known as the Doppler effect. (...) In the above paragraphs, we have only considered moving sources. In fact, a closer look at cases where it is the receiver that is in motion will show that this kind of motion leads to a very similar kind of Doppler effect. Here is an animation of the receiver moving towards the source: (...) By observing the two indicator lights, you can see for yourself that, once more, there is a blue-shift - the pulse frequency measured at the receiver is somewhat higher than the frequency with which the pulses are sent out. This time, THE DISTANCES BETWEEN SUBSEQUENT PULSES ARE NOT AFFECTED, but still there is a frequency shift: As the receiver moves towards each pulse, the time until pulse and receiver meet up is shortened. In this particular animation, which has the receiver moving towards the source at one third the speed of the pulses themselves, four pulses are received in the time it takes the source to emit three pulses."

"Four pulses are received in the time it takes the source to emit three pulses" means that the speed of the pulses relative to a stationary (with respect to the source) receiver is c=3D/t while the speed of the pulses relative to the moving receiver is c'=4D/t, where D is the distance between subsequent pulses and t is "the time it takes the source to emit three pulses". According to special relativity, the speed of the pulses relative to the moving receiver is:

c' = 4D/t = c D/t = c

Needless to say, the calculation c D/t = c is equivalent to 6 - 3 = 6, the fundamental calculation of special relativity.

Pentcho Valev

Pentcho,

ﾂ'While you wrote "the speed of the waves relative to the observer" I didn't find this in the lesson you criticized. Does it have any relevance how large we observe sun and moon?

I can only blame almost everybody including Harker and you for misusing the word relativity as if relativity was identical with Einstein's Lorentz covariance.

Eckard

Eckard,

"While you wrote "the speed of the waves relative to the observer" I didn't find this in the lesson you criticized."

The reason is that "relative to the observer" is too trivial and universally agreed upon to be mentioned. I am constantly repeating it here because you constantly reject it, for unknown reasons.

Pentcho Valev

The Essence of Special Relativity IV

Professor Sidney Redner: "The Doppler effect is the shift in frequency of a wave that occurs when the wave source, or the detector of the wave, is moving. Applications of the Doppler effect range from medical tests using ultrasound to radar detectors and astronomy (with electromagnetic waves). (...) We will focus on sound waves in describing the Doppler effect, but it works for other waves too. (...) Let's say you, the observer, now move toward the source with velocity vO. You encounter more waves per unit time than you did before. Relative to you, the waves travel at a higher speed: v'=v+vO. The frequency of the waves you detect is higher, and is given by: f'=v'/(lambda)=(v+vO)/(lambda)."

"Relative to you, the waves travel at a higher speed: v'=v+vO." In Divine Albert's world, this could only be true for waves other than light waves. For light waves (v is replaced by c) Einsteinians apply the fundamental calculation of special relativity and the waves always travel at the same speed c relative to the moving observer:

c' = c + vO = c

Pentcho Valev

Pentcho,

Redner referred to sound when he wrote "Relative to you, the waves travel at a higher speed". In this case the receiver is moving relative to the medium air and Redner is correct.

You are wrong when writing "For light waves (v is replaced by c)...

You must not replace Redner's v that relates to the medium by c.

The speed of light does not at all refer to emitter or receiver but to the DIFFERENCE between the positions of ...

I don't defend Einstein. I merely criticize your unjustified criticism and your attempt to justify emission theory.

Eckard

Eckard,

"Redner referred to sound when he wrote "Relative to you, the waves travel at a higher speed"."

You snipped the equation - Redner wrote:

"Relative to you, the waves travel at a higher speed: v'=v+vO."

Redner then uses this equation, v'=v+vO, in the derivarion of the frequency shift:

"The frequency of the waves you detect is higher, and is given by: f'=v'/(lambda)=(v+vO)/(lambda)."

The frequency shift f'=v'/(lambda)=(v+vO)/(lambda) is valid for light isn't it? How can the wrong (according to you) equation v'=v+vO produce the correct result f'=v'/(lambda)=(v+vO)/(lambda)?

Pentcho Valev

Pentcho,

Please distinguish relativity of position and therefore of motion too from Einstein's relativity of time. Michelson's null result showed that the speed of light does not depend on a medium, only on the relative motion between emitter and receiver.

What did Redner call vO in case the observer moves towards the source? It is the speed of the observer relative to the medium. In case of light there is no medium to refer to. The motion between observer (receiver) and source (emitter) is in this case a relative one. Therefore I defined the speed of light as DIFFERENCE between the positions ...

The receiver can directly only measure frequency but neither speed nor wavelength lambda.

May I remind you of my question concerning Pound and Rebka?

Eckard

Eckard,

You said, "Michelson's null result showed that the speed of light does not depend on a medium, only on the relative motion between emitter and receiver". Take a look at this article about the possible earth-bound medium.

Akinbo

(The article needs to be updated).

Eckard,

"What did Redner call vO in case the observer moves towards the source? It is the speed of the observer relative to the medium."

Redner wrote: "Let's say you, the observer, now move toward the source with velocity vO."

This means that the observer moves with velocity vO RELATIVE TO THE SOURCE. And yes, if the source is at rest relative to the medium, the observer moves with velocity vO RELATIVE TO THE MEDIUM as well.

Eckard, these are trivial matters - we cannot discuss them endlessly.

Pentcho Valev

Pentcho,

As we may conclude from Michelson's null result, there is no light-carrying medium relative to which something may move. Do not ignore this endlessly.

Eckard

Akinbo,

There is no preferred point in universe except for the actual now. This implies that there are only relative measures and velocities in space. I consider your "Speculations on dark matter as a luminiferous medium" merely an unnecessary variant of the hypothesis of locally fully dragged aether.

Well, Einstein's theory of "relativity" is silly. However, do not equate it with relativity in its original meaning.

Eckard

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