Video Article: The Destiny of the Universe

Speaking of the next Great Revolution in science will be understood as attribution of Great Revolutions perhaps to G. Cantor and also to Einstein. Even B. Russell praised Cantor's set theory: "The solution of the difficulties which formerly surrounded the mathematical infinite is presumably the greatest achievement of which our age has to boast!"

When Wilhelmus wrote "incredible interesting subject" I see him in company with the many who are potential readers of most sensational stories.

I am not sure whether I understand you Pentcho correctly. Do you support the idea that c is not the maximal speed of light? FQXi and in particular Paul Davies seem to be open for dealing seriously with almost any deviation from mainstream physics on certain conditions. Shouldn't we highly appreciate this attitude?

The 2nd FQXi contest asked what is ultimately possible in physics. My credo was: There are very few indispensable preconditions for successful science. Perhaps the foremost important one is to assume objective reality and causal relations no matter whether or not we may completely reveal it. In other words, there is no room for mysticism and mere speculations in science.

Wasn't the Aharonov-effect called the seventh world wonder of quantum physics?

While I agree on that funding is fundamental to researchers who benefit from it, I do not see physics based on axioms. I am suggesting to look for logical flaws in deductive science. Isn't this a necessary and comparatively cheap activity?

Eckard

Hi Eckard,

The most sensational stories in science (I hope you meant that) are happening every day, see the "possible" and "impossible" results of the LHC (great great funding !!!), it is every day that we are on the treshold of new discoveries that may be able to develop further our consciousness.

You can always wonder why a project is funded, but perhaps this funding was step 1, andd then...

keep on thinking free

Wilhelmus

As Eeckard suggests, it need not cost anything more than time to look for logical flaws in deductive science. Likewise I agree that physics should not be based axioms, particularly if derived from mathematics without regard to causes.

Mathematical constants are ratios between idealised values, most often stated in irrational numbers, whereas physics deals in ratios between quantities with integral values which seldom coincide with idealised constants. The result is a battle between opposing forces creating instability as the standard condition, though fortunately there is a self-regulating tendency among all interacting forces to keep chaos within bounds to allow steady development.

Because of this equations in physics can have no universal validity in numeric terms. They can only express dimensional equivalence which tells a very different story from standard theory.

John Sulman wrote: "As Eeckard suggests, it need not cost anything more than time to look for logical flaws in deductive science."

We can start right now (the procedure is called REDUCTIO AD ABSURDUM).

Premise: The speed of light is independent of the speed of the light source (Einstein's 1905 light postulate).

Conclusion 1: Arbitrarily long objects can be trapped inside arbitrarily short containers:

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."

Conclusion 2: A bug can be both dead and alive:

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."

If the conclusions are absurd, then the premise is false.

Pentcho Valev pvalev@yahoo.com

My apologies to Eckard Blumschein for the excess of 'e's in spelling his name. My fingers go at different speeds when using the shift key!

In picking up my approval of the economy in seeking logical flaws, Pentcho Valev demonstrates the flaw in using mathematical theory to resolve a physical problem rather than examining physical causes.

Only waves travel at speeds relative to the background around that of radiation, particles of matter can only vibrate at a comparable speed which is regulated by the ratio of locally available energy to mass at any point constituting a photon. Sufficient energy to accelerate a solid object to such speed could induce a change of phase shrinking it to small fraction of its former size, rather more than the Lorentz Contraction!

I read an article from Yonatan Sivan and John Pendry " Time Reversal in Dynamically Tuned Zeo-Gap Periodic Systems (Physical Review letters 106, 193902 (2011), it is about to efficiently time-reverse ultrashort electromagnetic pulses, time reversal eliminates any distortions or scattering that occored at earlier times, regardless of the medium the pulse has propagated through. Are we talking about the same object ? is it not quite sensational Eckard?

keep on thinking free

Wilhelmus

A time-reversed pulse evolves as if time runs backwards: as if! They used a switchable crystal mirror. This is an old hut to those who are familiar with waves.

Eckard

Why did experiments fail to refute Einstein's 1905 false constant-speed-of-light postulate? Imre Lakatos has given the answer:

http://bertie.ccsu.edu/naturesci/PhilSci/Lakatos.html

"Lakatos distinguished between two parts of a scientific theory: its "hard core" which contains its basic assumptions (or axioms, when set out formally and explicitly), and its "protective belt", a surrounding defensive set of "ad hoc" (produced for the occasion) hypotheses. (...) In Lakatos' model, we have to explicitly take into account the "ad hoc hypotheses" which serve as the protective belt. The protective belt serves to deflect "refuting" propositions from the core assumptions..."

In the absence of any protective belt, the null result of the Michelson-Morley experiment UNEQUIVOCALLY refutes the hard core of Einstein's special relativity and confirms the hard core of Newton's emission theory of light. Already the first element of the protective belt - the ad hoc length-contraction hypothesis advanced by Fitzgerald and Lorentz - reversed the situation: the Michelson-Morley experiment started to support the assumption that the speed of light is independent of the speed of the light source.

Pentcho Valev pvalev@yahoo.com

In the presence of a gravitational field, the protective belt is called "gravitational time dilation". However the VARIABLE speed of light predicted by Newton's emission theory of light cannot be camouflaged so efficiently as in the field-free situation:

A light source on top of a tower of height h emits light with frequency f and speed c (relative to the source). The light reaches an observer on the ground with frequency f' and speed c' (relative to the observer).

Equivalently, a light source at the front end of an accelerating rocket of length h and accelaration g emits light with frequency f and speed c (relative to the source). The light reaches an observer at the back end with frequency f' and speed c' (relative to the observer).

Consider equations (13.2) on p. 3 in David Morin's text:

http://student.fizika.org/~jsisko/Knjige/Klasicna%20Mehanika/David%20Morin/CH13.PDF

f' = f(1 plus v/c) = f(1 plus gh/c^2) (13.2)

where v is the relative speed of the light source (at the moment of emission) and the observer (at the moment of reception) in the rocket scenario. By combining these equations with:

(frequency) = (speed of light)/(wavelength)

we obtain THE FUNDAMENTAL EQUATIONS OF NEWTON'S EMISSION THEORY OF LIGHT:

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

which CONTRADICT EINSTEIN'S 1905 FALSE CONSTANT-SPEED-OF-LIGHT POSTULATE. The fundamental equations of the emission theory can also be obtained from Paul Fendley's text:

http://rockpile.phys.virginia.edu/mod04/mod34.pdf

Paul Fendley: "An experiment to test this idea was done in the early '60s by Pound and Rebka in a tower 20 feet from where my office was as a graduate student. First consider light shined downward in a freely falling elevator of height h. Inside the elevator, we're a happy inertial frame. We say it takes time t=h/c to hit the bottom. We also say that there's no Doppler shift of the frequency of the light. But how does this look from the ground? Say the light beam was emitted just as the elevator was released into free fall (i.e. at zero velocity). By the time the light hits the bottom of the elevator, it is accelerated to some velocity v. Since light travels so fast, the elevator isn't traveling very fast when the light hits the bottom, so v is pretty small, and we can use non-relativistic formulas for this (but not the light!). We thus simply have v=gt=gh/c. Now let's see what this does to the frequency of the light. We know that even without special relativity, observers moving at different velocities measure different frequencies. (This is the reason the pitch of an ambulance changes as it passes you it doesn't change if you're on the ambulance). This is called the Doppler shift, and for small relative velocity v it is easy to show that the frequency shifts from f to f(1 plus v/c) (it goes up heading toward you, down away from you). There are relativistic corrections, but these are negligible here. Now back to our experiment. In the freely-falling elevator, we're inertial and measure the same frequency f at top and bottom. Now to the earth frame. When the light beam is emitted, the elevator is at rest, so earth and elevator agree the frequency is f. But when it hits the bottom, the elevator is moving at velocity v=gh/c with respect to the earth, so earth and elevator must measure different frequencies. In the elevator, we know that the frequency is still f, so on the ground the frequency

f' = f(1 plus v/c) = f(1 plus gh/c^2)

On the earth, we interpret this as meaning that not only does gravity bend light, but changes its frequency as well."

By combining the above equations with the formula:

(frequency) = (speed of light)/(wavelength)

one obtains THE FUNDAMENTAL EQUATIONS OF NEWTON'S EMISSION THEORY OF LIGHT:

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

which CONTRADICT EINSTEIN'S 1905 FALSE CONSTANT-SPEED-OF-LIGHT POSTULATE.

The Pound-Rebka experiment, just like the Michelson-Morley experiment in the absence of a protective belt, UNEQUIVOCALLY confirms THE FUNDAMENTAL EQUATIONS OF NEWTON'S EMISSION THEORY OF LIGHT and refutes EINSTEIN'S 1905 FALSE CONSTANT-SPEED-OF-LIGHT POSTULATE:

http://student.fizika.org/~jsisko/Knjige/Klasicna%20Mehanika/David%20Morin/CH13.PDF

David Morin (p. 4): "This GR time-dilation effect was first measured at Harvard by Pound and Rebka in 1960. They sent gamma rays up a 20m tower and measured the redshift (that is, the decrease in frequency) at the top. This was a notable feat indeed, considering that they were able to measure a frequency shift of gh/c^2 (which is only a few parts in 10^15) to within 1% accuracy."

David Morin's text referred to above reappears as Chapter 14 in:

http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~djmorin/book.html

Introduction to Classical Mechanics With Problems and Solutions, David Morin, Cambridge University Press

Pentcho Valev pvalev@yahoo.com

Thanks Eckard

Dear Pentcho,

I did not find your name among those who signed the petition of NPA at http://twinparadox.net/ while you wrote fqxi-against-einstein.html

Regards,

Eckard

Eckard Blumschein wrote: "Dear Pentcho, I did not find your name among those who signed the petition of NPA at http://twinparadox.net/ while you wrote fqxi-against-einstein.html"

They are etherists, most of them. But let me explain. I only disagree with them when they claim, explicitly or implicitly, that the speed of light only varies with the speed of the observer but is independent of the speed of the light source (the original prediction of Maxwell's electromagnetic theory). This is incompatible with the Michelson-Morley experiment or, if one wants it to become compatible, one has to procrusteanize Nature the way FitzGerald and Lorentz did (by making lengths contract along the direction of mouvement).

Pentcho Valev pvalev@yahoo.com

Dear Pentcho,

My dictionaries do not know the word "procrusteanize", just procrastinate in the sense of hesitate.

While I did not deal with the experiment of concern, my distrust in SR is mainly based on its neglect of the distinction between past and future. Also, I realized that Lorentz contraction, while never experimentally confirmed, is the same for motion towards and away because it depends on v^2.

Didn't you point me to Gift who commented on measurements which clearly indicate that something like a medium of electromagnetic waves might move with the earth as also does its gravity field?

Admittedly, I cannot imagine how to define a velocity without prior having defined a distance according to a chosen medium of reference in space.

As an engineer, I do not doubt that c is the maximal possible front-speed of electromagnetic waves in free space.

Regards,

Eckard

Eckard Blumschein wrote: "As an engineer, I do not doubt that c is the maximal possible front-speed of electromagnetic waves in free space."

This is what special relativity says. Both Maxwell's theory and Newton's emission theory of light say that the speed of light varies with the speed of the observer. That is, if the light has been reaching the observer with speed c but now the observer starts moving towards the light source with speed v, from now on the light will reach him with speed c according to special relativity and (c plus v) according to both Maxwell's theory and Newton's emission theory. The emission theory is correct, Maxwell's theory is wrong (it wrongly says that the speed of light is independent of the speed of the light source) but both HAVE PHYSICAL MEANING. Special relativity HAS NO PHYSICAL MEANING.

Pentcho Valev pvalev@yahoo.com

Dear Pentcho,

You wrote:"Both Maxwell's theory and Newton's emission theory of light say that the speed of light varies with the speed of the observer." Really? Is speed something physical real or is it an observation? In my understanding, an observer may have any arbitrarily chosen relation to what propagates within a medium. Let's discuss a sound signal inside a vehicle. Does it matter at all in what direction and how fast the vehicle moves? With reference to the vehicle the sound propagates with about 330 m/s.

I am not sure. Was it Einstein who caused confusion by introducing an unspecified observer into consideration?

Regards,

Eckard

Perhaps your sound-signal-inside-a-vehicle example is not quite to the point. The fact that, according to Maxwell's electromagnetic theory, the speed of light varies with the speed of the observer has a simple and convincing PHYSICAL explanation and is accepted even by some Einsteinians (although most of them teach the opposite):

http://culturesciencesphysique.ens-lyon.fr/XML/db/csphysique/metadata/LOM_CSP_relat.xml

Gabrielle Bonnet, École Normale Supérieure de Lyon: "Les équations de Maxwell font en particulier intervenir une constante, c, qui est la vitesse de la lumière dans le vide. Par un changement de référentiel classique, si c est la vitesse de la lumière dans le vide dans un premier référentiel, et si on se place désormais dans un nouveau référentiel en translation par rapport au premier à la vitesse constante v, la lumière devrait désormais aller à la vitesse c-v si elle se déplace dans la direction et le sens de v, et à la vitesse c+v si elle se déplace dans le sens contraire."

http://www.amazon.com/Brief-History-Time-Stephen-Hawking/dp/0553380168

Stephen Hawking: "Maxwell's theory predicted that radio or light waves should travel at a certain fixed speed. But Newton's theory had got rid of the idea of absolute rest, so if light was supposed to travel at a fixed speed, one would have to say what that fixed speed was to be measured relative to. It was therefore suggested that there was a substance called the "ether" that was present everywhere, even in "empty" space. Light waves should travel through the ether as sound waves travel through air, and their speed should therefore be relative to the ether. Different observers, moving relative to the ether, would see light coming toward them at different speeds, but light's speed relative to the ether would remain fixed."

http://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/papers/Chasing.pdf

John Norton: "Finally, in an apparent eagerness to provide a seamless account, an author may end up misstating the physics. Kaku (2004, p. 45) relates how Einstein found that his aversion to frozen light was vindicated when he later learned Maxwell's theory:

Kaku: "When Einstein finally learned Maxwell's equations, he could answer the question that was continually on his mind. As he suspected, he found that there were no solutions of Maxwell's equations in which light was frozen in time. But then he discovered more. To his surprise, he found that in Maxwell's theory, light beams always traveled at the same velocity, no matter how fast you moved."

This is supposedly what Einstein learned as a student at the Zurich Polytechnic, where he completed his studies in 1900, well before the formulation of the special theory of relativity. Yet the results described are precisely what is not to be found in the ether based Maxwell theory Einstein would then have learned. That theory allows light to slow and be frozen in the frame of reference of a sufficiently rapidly moving observer."

_______________________________________________

[end of quotations]

Yes Einstein did cause confusion by creating a centaur having an "emission" body (the principle of relativity) and an "ether" head (the principle of constancy of the speed of light). In my view, the centaur then KILLED theoretical physics.

Pentcho Valev pvalev@yahoo.com

Dear Pentcho,

Let me replace light by sound, see by hear and ether by air in what Stephen Hawking wrote: "Different observers, moving relative to the air, would hear sound coming toward them at different speeds, but sound's speed relative to the air would remain fixed." Well this is called Doppler effect and not disproved by the Michelson-Morley experiment if one accepts the possibility of a earth bound ether, cf. Gift.

Any wave propagates relative to the medium in which it propagates. It does not directly depend on the motion of emitter or receiver. The wave equation puts a theoretical limit to that velocity. Waves of the same kind e.g. sound waves in air do not add their velocities but superimpose intensities.

For instance one must not add the velocity of a sound wave to the velocity of a rocket:

v_rocket c_air does not hold for the audibility of a rocket that travels with v_rocket faster than c_air. One cannot hear the rocket before it hits.

The velocity of a solid body depends on and refers to motions of its emitter and its receiver. The velocity of a bulled must be added to the speed of the gun it was fired from.

What about "sufficiently rapidly moving observer", lets render it pointless by assuming two such frames of reference A and B moving with 2c/3 each in opposite direction.

My arguments: Observers are not at all necessarily involved in the motion of an object. Arbiters need to be in symmetrical position.

I agree with equating c with ether, and I question the seemingly appealing generalization of Galilei's principle of relativity to electromagnetism.

Maybe someone else can confirm or refute my suspicion that it was Einstein who introduced the confusing third party observer.

Regards,

Eckard

Eckard Blumschein wrote: "Any wave propagates relative to the medium in which it propagates. It does not directly depend on the motion of emitter or receiver. (...) My arguments: Observers are not at all necessarily involved in the motion of an object. (...) Maybe someone else can confirm or refute my suspicion that it was Einstein who introduced the confusing third party observer."

The question: "What is the speed of light relative to the observer or receiver?" is essential in Einstein's theory and in any other theory. Einstein's 1905 light postulate:

http://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/einstein/specrel/www/ "...light is always propagated in empty space with a definite velocity c which is independent of the state of motion of the emitting body."

can be given the following EQUIVALENT formulation:

"...light is always propagated in empty space with a definite velocity c (RELATIVE TO THE OBSERVER) which is independent of the state of motion of the emitting body."

So I cannot imagine a reasonable discussion if "observers are not at all necessarily involved".

Pentcho Valev pvalev@yahoo.com

Pentcho Valev wrote "velocity c" is EQUIVALENT to "velocity c (RELATIVE TO THE OBSERVER)".

This is definitely a generalization without justification in case of waves that belong to a carrier, e.g. sound waves.

Einstein called and rejected using the carrier as "absolut ruhender Raum". This guess is unjustified not just in case of sound in air. The carrier may move relative to something else.

We do not need an observer at all. If a wave propagates from A to B then this must not depend on what observer C was chosen unless C is identical with A or B. We can safely calculate the duration of propagation if we know the velocity and the distance of performed motion, i.e. the difference between position A relative to the carrier at the beginning of propagation and B also relative to the carrier at the end of considered propagation.

By the way, Einstein did not attribute a vector of velocity to a particular position.

I agree with Penchto Valev on that SR is flawed because it is based on a wrong postulate, however I consider not the second but the first one untenable.

Eckard Blumschein