Marginal Revolution: The Trouble with Physics

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The Trouble with Physics

That is the new book by Lee Smolin. It is a fascinating take on theories of physics which have not worked out, including but not only string theory. The author explains why progress in particle physics is tough, opposes the anthropic principle and multiverses, explains string theory better than its popular science proponents, and sees a future in "loop quantum gravity." He stresses how differing views on "frame of reference dependence" underlie differences in fundamental approaches. Highly recommended, and yes it does go beyond other popular science books on similar topics. Excerpt:

As I reflect on the scientific careers of the people I have known these last thirty years, it seems to me more and more that these career decisions hinge on character. Some people will happily jump on the next big thing, give it all they've got, and in this way make important contributions to fast-moving fields. Others just don't have the temperament to do this. Some people need to think through everything very carefully, and this takes time, as they get easily confused. It's not hard to feel superior to such people, until you remember that Einstein was one of them. In my experience, the truly shocking new ideas and innovations tend to come from such people.

Posted by Tyler Cowen on September 9, 2006 at 04:53 PM in Books, Science | Permalink

Comments

It seems that the critics of string theory have been
out and about a lot recently. While still flying pretty
high, some air seems to be leaking from its balloon...

Posted by: Barkley Rosser at Sep 9, 2006 4:54:26 PM

I worry about the damage string theory will end up doing to physics research. People spending money on it won't spend on the next thing.

Posted by: bhauth at Sep 9, 2006 8:40:23 PM

This is a very good book. His underlying views seem to be very theistic though; that's not a bad thing as it shows the humilty to not presume away the unknown too easily, but I wonder how many other readers will recognize it for what it is.

Posted by: Daniel313 at Sep 9, 2006 9:04:29 PM

"I worry about the damage string theory will end up doing to physics research. People spending money on it won't spend on the next thing."
It is not really a problem. There are no jobs doing string theory outside universities, and they are paid to teach. Their graduate students by in large have to work outside the field after they graduate.

Posted by: joan at Sep 9, 2006 9:21:31 PM

Featured in current Forbes (p.48, September, 18, 2006):
..."Science is like climbing a mountain through a fog that prevents us from knowing how to reach the summit. To get there, we need both hill climbers, who can quickly scale the highest peaks, and valley crossers, who possess intuition, an appreciation for serendipity and the ability to find new terrain. The more foundational and risky a problem, the more the balance needs to be shifted toward valley crossers..."

Posted by: mike at Sep 9, 2006 10:45:21 PM

Disclosure from Wikipedia link above:

Lee Smolin, one of the fathers of LQG, has explored the possibility that string theory and LQG are two different approximations to the same ultimate theory.

Posted by: A Tykhyy at Sep 9, 2006 11:48:47 PM

For a criticism of the criticism, check out the long Amazon review by a Harvard string theorist.

Posted by: Jin at Sep 10, 2006 12:11:26 AM

If you asked an "average" American to name some famous living American scientists...could they even come up with one name?

I think these "theoretical" guys are just treading water until the next Einstein comes along...and comes up with something of actual value for humanity.

Posted by: monkyboy at Sep 10, 2006 1:38:00 AM

This guy, apparently a Harvard string theorist, thinks Smolin is a crank.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/pdp/profile/A1ZDPQA6FLY8XM/ref=cm_cr_auth/104-3899503-0537540?ie=UTF8

Posted by: bjkl at Sep 10, 2006 3:46:03 AM

Theoretical physics has made huge progress since Einstein. Indeed the problem with string theory is that the theory
it is supposed to be replacing, quantum field theory, has passed every experiment since the 70s when it was invented.

Posted by: Johan Richter at Sep 10, 2006 5:04:49 AM

I think these "theoretical" guys are just treading water until the next Einstein comes along...and comes up with something of actual value for humanity.

Yes, definitely. I'd prefer reasonably practical stellar flight, such that human transportation is ok but bulk trade is not. Then we can establish colonies with different types of government, economy etc. and finally have controlled experiment settings.

Posted by: A Tykhyy at Sep 10, 2006 6:38:12 AM

Isn't it obvious that the chaps who mount the bandwagon are necessarily not those who got it going? Of course, if you're good enough, you can both get a bandwagon going (Einstein's two relativities) and mount someone else's (Einstein using Planck's quantum idea). But since most physicists seem to reckon Einstein the second-best physicist ever, that does set the bar high.

Posted by: dearieme at Sep 10, 2006 7:07:57 AM

This is all well and good but why aren't these scientists working on any thing useful. Like the personal flying space-cars we were promised in the sixties...

Posted by: Stuart at Sep 10, 2006 8:07:20 AM

Before you place too much credence in the criticisms of Smolin, read Peter Woit's blog, Not Even Wrong. In particular, you might want to take a look at this entry. I have no idea who is right, but the controversy makes for exciting reading.

I have been following Woit's blog for about a year and have mentioned it several times on my own blog. He, too, has a book which is critical of string theory.

Coincidentally, I ordered Smolin's book about 15 minutes before reading this piece here at MR.

Posted by: EclectEcon at Sep 10, 2006 8:16:28 AM

It is true that string theory is supposed to replace
quantum field theory. But that qft holds up does not
disprove string theory. The problem with qft is its
inability to encompass general relativity. This has
been the big question all along. There have been some
vague opportunities for string theory to show something
empirically, nothing definitive, but it has not come
through anywhere for any of those so far.

There are several other alternatives besides quantum
loop, some of which look more appealing to me. For
example, check out the work of Rafael Sorkin.

Posted by: Barkley Rosser at Sep 10, 2006 3:04:04 PM

THE ASSUMPTION THAT DESTROYED PHYSICS

In "Beyond String Theory" in his book "The Trouble With Physics: The Rise of String Thory, the Fall of a Science, And What Comes Next" Lee Smolin asks:

". . . I believe there is something basic we are all missing, some wrong assumption we are all making. If this is so, then we need to isolate the wrong assumption and replace it with a new idea. What could this wrong assumption be?"

The answer:

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."

See also the discussion in

http://blogs.nature.com/news/blog/2006/02/testing_times_for_einsteins_th.html

Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com

Posted by: Pentcho Valev at Sep 13, 2006 2:15:33 AM

EINSTEIN: THE GENIUS AMONG GENIUSES WHO KILLED PHYSICS

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/einstein/genius/
"Genius Among Geniuses" by Thomas Levenson
"And then, in June, Einstein completes special relativity, which adds a twist to the story: Einstein's March paper treated light as particles, but special relativity sees light as a continuous field of waves. Alice's Red Queen can accept many impossible things before breakfast, but it takes a supremely confident mind to do so. Einstein, age 26, sees light as wave and particle, picking the attribute he needs to confront each problem in turn. Now that's tough."

The genius among geniuses at the end of his career:
"I consider it quite possible that physics cannot be based on the field concept,i.e., on continuous structures. In that case, nothing remains of my entire castle in the air, gravitation theory included, [and of] the rest of modern physics."

Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com

Posted by: Pentcho Valev at Sep 17, 2006 2:57:54 AM

THE ULTIMATE TROUBLE WITH PHYSICS

Concerning the importance of his second postulate Einstein was quite clear:

"If the speed of light is the least bit affected by the speed of the light source, then my whole theory of relativity and theory of gravity is false."

It seems there can be no further ambiguity: shatter this postulate and Einstein's world becomes Newton's world again. Not if Newton's world has been converted into Einstein's ZOMBIE world - the vitality of this malformation is independent of Einstein's second postulate:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_speed_of_light
http://www.worldscibooks.com/physics/4114.html
http://www.courses.fas.harvard.edu/~phys16/Textbook/ch10.pdf p.35 ("Relativity without c")

Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com

Posted by: Pentcho Valev at Sep 23, 2006 3:18:05 AM

SUBTLETY AND BEAUTY IN EINSTEIN'S CRIMINAL CULT

http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/Walsworth/pdf/Science_relativity.pdf
SCIENCE VOL 307 "Special Relativity Reconsidered":

"Now, however, some physicists wonder whether special relativity might be subtly - and perhaps beautifully - wrong."

Einstein has clearly explained where the subtlety and the beauty come from:

Einstein: "If the speed of light is the least bit affected by the speed of the light source, then my whole theory of relativity and theory of gravity is false."

Einstein again: "I consider it quite possible that physics cannot be based on the field concept,i.e., on continuous structures. In that case, nothing remains of my entire castle in the air, gravitation theory included, [and of] the rest of modern physics."

Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com

Posted by: Pentcho Valev at Sep 24, 2006 7:22:28 AM

VARIABLE SPEED OF LIGHT

The main concern of Einstein's hypnotists is to camouflage the fact that the speed of light does depend on the speed of the light source and therefore Einstein's theory (and modern physics in general) is just a farce. The camouflage involves even simulated fights among hypnotists:

http://chronicle.com/free/v49/i23/23a01401.htm

It is easy to see that hypnotists always discuss the idea of variability of the speed of light in a way that has nothing to do with Einstein's original definition of constancy (the speed of light is independent of the speed of the light source). In fact, in 1911 Einstein showed that in a gravitational field the speed of light is VARIABLE:

http://www.physlink.com/Education/AskExperts/ae13.cfm
"So, it is absolutely true that the speed of light is _not_ constant in a gravitational field [which, by the equivalence principle, applies as well to accelerating (non-inertial) frames of reference]. If this were not so, there would be no bending of light by the gravitational field of stars. One can do a simple Huyghens reconstruction of a wave front, taking into account the different speed of advance of the wavefront at different distances from the star (variation of speed of light), to derive the deflection of the light by the star.
Indeed, this is exactly how Einstein did the calculation in:
"On the Influence of Gravitation on the Propagation of Light," Annalen der Physik, 35, 1911.
which predated the full formal development of general relativity by about four years. This paper is widely available in English. You can find a copy beginning on page 99 of the Dover book "The Principle of Relativity." You will find in section 3 of that paper, Einstein's derivation of the (variable) speed of light in a gravitational potential, eqn (3). The result is,
c' = c0 ( 1 + V / c2 )
where V is the gravitational potential relative to the point where the speed of light c0 is measured."

By applying the equivalence principle one could easily convert Einstein's formula into

c' = c + v

valid in the absence of a gravitational field, where c is the speed of photons relative to the light source and v is the relative speed of the light source and the observer. Then one could remember Einstein's words:

"If the speed of light is the least bit affected by the speed of the light source, then my whole theory of relativity and theory of gravity is false."

Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com

Posted by: Pentcho Valev at Sep 26, 2006 3:35:39 AM

THE ROYAL SOCIETY AND EINSTEIN'S CRIMINAL CULT

The Royal Society: Science is dying!

http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/news.asp?id=5215
http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/discussion.asp?id=2645

Einstein's criminal cult: Divine Einstein!

http://www.haverford.edu/physics-astro/songs/divine.htm
http://video.google.it/videoplay?docid=-3937213533481268060

Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com

Posted by: Pentcho Valev at Sep 27, 2006 10:08:34 AM

EINSTEIN'S SYCOPHANTS AND THE NOBEL PRIZE

You would not win the Nobel prize in physics unless you worship Divine Albert in the right way. Here is a list of candidates:

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/my_einstein06/my_einstein06_index.html

Note that the present winner George Smoot had to change his dithyramb in the right way recently (otherwise someone else from the list would have taken the money):

"Aesthetic arguments, while useful as development tools, especially when there are no observations to guide the effort, made me uneasy—seemed a throwback to Greek reasoning about the celestial spheres. MORE RECENTLY, I CAME TO REALIZE that Einstein based special relativity not on pure thought alone but....."

Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com

Posted by: Pentcho Valev at Oct 4, 2006 4:12:16 AM

EINSTEINIANS WILL UNDERSTAND EINSTEIN'S THEORIES

http://universe.nasa.gov/
"Astonishingly, all of these wild ideas are now known to be true. But now we must work toward the next step in our understanding. Einstein's legacy is incomplete - we do not understand the underlying physics of the very phenomena that came out of his theories."

Einsteinians will try to understand Einstein's theories by interpreting them in terms of Newton's particle model of light (that is, in terms of discontinuous structures confirmed by Einstein himself). Einstein has hinted at the final result:

Einstein: "I consider it quite possible that physics cannot be based on the field concept,i.e., on continuous structures. In that case, nothing remains of my entire castle in the air, gravitation theory included, [and of] the rest of modern physics."

Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com

Posted by: Pentcho Valev at Oct 8, 2006 1:25:39 AM

HOW MANY GENERATIONS OF SCIENTISTS HAVE BEEN LOST?

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1890340,00.html
"Part of the problem, say critics, is that, in the Eighties, talented young physicists were encouraged by professors to take up string theory because of its immense promise. Now they are middle-aged department heads who have committed their lives to the subject and cannot see it is bogus. It is the scientific equivalent of the emperor's new clothes."

I think the campaign started much earlier - it is near completion now:

http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/news.asp?id=5215
"Next generation of scientists could be lost say key science organisations"

Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com

Posted by: Pentcho Valev at Oct 8, 2006 2:17:26 AM

THE BEAUTY OF EINSTEIN'S RELATIVITY

http://www.newyorker.com/critics/atlarge/ :
"The gold standard for beauty in physics is Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity. What makes it beautiful?"

The fact that it is an artefact based on the concept of light as a continuous field. If Einstein had used the concept of light as discontinuous particles (photons), the theory would be uglier. However the beauty is fatal: at the end of his career (in 1954) Einstein predicts the death of physics:

"I consider it quite possible that physics cannot be based on the field concept,i.e., on continuous structures. In that case, nothing remains of my entire castle in the air, gravitation theory included, [and of] the rest of modern physics."

The choice Einstein had to make between the concept of light as a continuous field and the concept of light as discontinuous particles (photons) is rarely mentioned in the literature but still there are eloquent quotations:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/einstein/genius/ :
"Genius Among Geniuses" by Thomas Levenson
"And then, in June, Einstein completes special relativity, which adds a twist to the story: Einstein's March paper treated light as particles, but special relativity sees light as a continuous field of waves. Alice's Red Queen can accept many impossible things before breakfast, but it takes a supremely confident mind to do so. Einstein, age 26, sees light as wave and particle, picking the attribute he needs to confront each problem in turn. Now that's tough."

It is the fatality of Einstein's wrong choice that prevents relativity hypnotists from declaring the end of Einstein's era - they would all lose everything. So hypnotists will continue to worship Einstein's beauty and camouflage Einstein's idiocies forever.

Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com

Posted by: Pentcho Valev at Oct 10, 2006 7:50:05 AM

WHY EINSTEIN'S CULT IS CRIMINAL

Consider the introduction of gravitational time dilation by Einstein's hypnotists:

http://www.courses.fas.harvard.edu/~phys16/Textbook/ch13.pdf pp.2-4

If the speed of the light pulses in the gravitational field is VARIABLE, then the frequency shift measured by Pound and Rebka is a direct consequence of this variability and there is no gravitational time dilation. Also, the speed of the light pulses is VARIABLE in the absence of a gravitational field as well and obeys the formula c'=c+v, where c is the initial speed of the pulses relative to the light source and v is the relative speed of the light source and the receiver (observer).

However Einstein's hypnotists do not discuss the variability of the speed of light when the discussion is dangerous. They discuss the variability when the discussion is not dangerous:

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/SpeedOfLight/speed_of_light.html
"Einstein went on to discover a more general theory of relativity which explained gravity in terms of curved spacetime, and he talked about the speed of light changing in this new theory. In the 1920 book "Relativity: the special and general theory" he wrote: . . . according to the general theory of relativity, the law of the constancy of the velocity of light in vacuo, which constitutes one of the two fundamental assumptions in the special theory of relativity [. . .] cannot claim any unlimited validity. A curvature of rays of light can only take place when the velocity of propagation of light varies with position. Since Einstein talks of velocity (a vector quantity: speed with direction) rather than speed alone, it is not clear that he meant the speed will change, but the reference to special relativity suggests that he did mean so."

Finally, Einstein's hypnotists have destroyed the rationality of generations of scientists so that, in Einstein's zombie world, the idea of combining dangerous and non-dangerous discussions can never emerge. Zombies just learn by rote contradictory texts and then go fighting heretics.

Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com

Posted by: Pentcho Valev at Oct 12, 2006 3:41:32 AM

EINSTEIN'S ZOMBIES WRITE TEXTBOOKS

Sometimes relativity textbooks are written by Einstein's zombies, not by Einstein's hypnotists, and in such cases one can find unforgettable texts. For instance, Einstein's hypnotists often confuse the reader by introducing a light source that emits flashes at time intervals T and then calling the quantity 1/T "frequency", in the hope that the reader will confuse this frequency with the wave frequency (in Einstein's zombie world the reader always confuses the two frequencies). However hypnotists never go so far as to call the distance between the flashes "wavelength" - see, for instance:

http://www.courses.fas.harvard.edu/~phys16/Textbook/ch13.pdf pp.2-4

Zombies' reasoning is bolder - they somehow know that there can be no frequency without wavelength:

Murat Boratav, Ryszard Kerner
Professeurs a l'Universite Pierre-et-Marie Curie, Paris VI
"RELATIVITE", 1991, p. 74:
"La source O emet deux signaux successifs separes dans l'espace par une distance lambda_0 et dans le temps par un temps T_0, qu'on peut appeler "longueur d'onde propre" ou "periode propre" en ce sens que ces grandeurs sont caracteristiques du referentiel ou la source emettrice est au repos."

Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com

Posted by: Pentcho Valev at Oct 13, 2006 2:43:54 AM

TWO FATALITIES IN PHYSICS

1. The dependence of the speed of light on the speed of the light source.

2. Einstein's choice of the field concept of light.

See

http://blogs.physicstoday.org/newspicks/2006/04/physics_in_america_at_crossroa.html

Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com

Posted by: Pentcho Valev at Oct 13, 2006 4:10:26 AM

INEVITABILITY IN EINSTEIN'S ZOMBIE WORLD

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/10/12/physics_protest/ :

"Reading University's department is unlikely to be the only one in the UK that has "dropped below the level of viability". The trouble is, departments can't advertise their vulnerability for fear of losing talented research staff and scaring off prospective students.
"This is why we don't hear about it until it is too late," says Diamond."

Pentcho Valev

Posted by: Pentcho Valev at Oct 14, 2006 3:08:09 AM

THE LAST SEANCE IN EINSTEIN'S ZOMBIE WORLD

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-2404678,00.html :

"PROFESSOR Stephen Hawking, Britain's world-renowned physicist, is to switch from theories of multidimensional space to the three dimensions of the Imax cinema by starring in a film that sets out his ideas on the origins and fate of the universe.....His aim is to popularise science, but for many the appeal could also lie in the ability of an Imax 3D film to make Hawking and his wheelchair appear to come right out of the screen into the audience....Hawking has become a scientific icon, playing himself in episodes of The Simpsons and Star Trek....He is approached by Olivia, a reporter covering religious affairs for The Times, sister paper of The Sunday Times. She is writing a story about cosmology and the meaning of existence to commemorate the work of Albert Einstein and his special theory of relativity.... Mlodinow said that it would also include dramatised interviews with Einstein and other famous physicists such as Richard Feynman. "It will be like Groundhog Day meets Star Trek," he said....One aim of the film will be to silence the critics who point out that although A Brief History of Time sold millions of copies, few people actually get beyond the first few pages."

Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com

Posted by: Pentcho Valev at Oct 15, 2006 2:46:18 AM

EINSTEIN MAKES FUN OF THE ZOMBIE WORLD

Einstein knew all along that the speed of light in a gravitational field is variable and obeys the formula c'=c(1+V/c^2), and that the gravitational redshift f'=f(1+V/c^2) is a direct consequence of this variability. However Einstein was looking for fun and performed an experiment. He offered two questions and two answers to the zombie world:

Question 1: Is there any relation between the variable speed of light c'=c(1+V/c^2) and the gravitational redshift f'=f(1+V/c^2)?

Question 2: The gravitational redshift f'=f(1+V/c^2) is a direct consequence of what?

Answer 1: Who cares.

Answer 2: Gravitational time dilation.

The zombie world had to find an answer for either question. It did it successfully and Einstein had a lot of fun.

Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com

Posted by: Pentcho Valev at Oct 16, 2006 1:53:09 AM

EINSTEIN'S HYPNOTISTS PROVE 5=4

One of Einstein's crucial discoveries is the fact that, if the quantity

1/gamma = (1-v^2/c^2)^(1/2)

is replaced by its Taylor approximation 1-v^2/2c^2, Einstein's lies about gravitational time dilation can be camouflaged to some extent. If Einstein had not made this discovery, that is, if the original quantity (1-v^2/c^2)^(1/2) had remained unchanged, the malignancy called relativity theory would not have killed theoretical science (perhaps).

Einstein's hypnotists do know about the crucial discovery and always replace (1-v^2/c^2)^(1/2) with 1-v^2/2c^2. Consider Problem 3 "Circular motion", (a) and (b), on p. 15, solution on p. 19, in

http://www.courses.fas.harvard.edu/~phys16/Textbook/ch13.pdf

From the solution on p. 19 we have

(a) t_B = t_A (1-v^2/c^2)^(1/2)

(b) t_A = t_B (1-v^2/c^2)^(1/2) (1+v^2/c^2)

Accordingly

t_A = t_A (1-v^4/c^4)

In other words, Einstein's theory can only be true if 5=4.

Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com

Posted by: Pentcho Valev at Oct 17, 2006 2:44:49 AM

EINSTEIN'S ZOMBIE WORLD: BIOLOGISTS WILL TEACH PHYSICS

http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/news/story/0,,1881487,00.html

"[We will look at] whether we should be training biology teachers, so that they can become specialist teachers in chemistry and physics."

Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com

Posted by: Pentcho Valev at Oct 19, 2006 3:14:29 AM

FATAL MISTAKE OF EINSTEINIANS

Einstein's criminal cult, like any similar organization, obeys strict rules imposed by the founder. Violation of these rules would be fatal. Here is one of them:

The zombie world should constantly be forced to deal with reciprocal time dilation and its immediate negation (I measure your clock to be SLOWER than mine and you measure mine to be SLOWER than yours but if you go and return you will find mine to be FASTER than yours) until any remnants of human rationality disappear. However the expression "The clock at rest runs slow by a factor 1/gamma" is forbidden: any calculations based on this phrase would expose the idiocy of relativity and destroy the cult in the end.

For almost 100 years the rule has been obeyed but recently a careless hypnotist did produce the fatal phrase: see the solution to Problem 3 "Circular motion", (b), p. 19, in

http://www.courses.fas.harvard.edu/~phys16/Textbook/ch13.pdf

Nothing can save Einstein's criminal cult now. Yet panic should be avoided: the zombie world is inert and relativity activists will have enough time to start another criminal business.

Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com

Posted by: Pentcho Valev at Oct 20, 2006 10:33:22 AM

RELATIVITY AND SELF-DESTRUCTION

Photons move in a gravitational field and either undergo acceleration (e.g. their speed becomes c'>c=300000km/s) or do not undergo acceleration (that is, their speed remains c=300000km/s). If they undergo acceleration the frequency shift detected by the receiver is due to the variable speed of light, in accordance with the formula c'=Lf', where L is wavelength and f is frequency. If the photons do not undergo acceleration the frequency shift detected by the receiver is due to gravitational time dilation and variable wavelength, in accordance with the formula c=L'f'. It is easy to see that c'=Lf' and c=L'f' are the only possibilities. Roughly speaking, either variable speed of light and no gravitational time dilation, or gravitational time dilation and constant speed of light.

Initially Einstein chose c'=Lf':
http://www.physlink.com/Education/AskExperts/ae13.cfm :
"So, it is absolutely true that the speed of light is _not_ constant in a gravitational field [which, by the equivalence principle, applies as well to accelerating (non-inertial) frames of reference]. If this were not so, there would be no bending of light by the gravitational field of stars. One can do a simple Huyghens reconstruction of a wave front, taking into account the different speed of advance of the wavefront at different distances from the star (variation of speed of light), to derive the deflection of the light by the star.
Indeed, this is exactly how Einstein did the calculation in:
"On the Influence of Gravitation on the Propagation of Light," Annalen der Physik, 35, 1911.
which predated the full formal development of general relativity by about four years. This paper is widely available in English. You can find a copy beginning on page 99 of the Dover book "The Principle of Relativity." You will find in section 3 of that paper, Einstein's derivation of the (variable) speed of light in a gravitational potential, eqn (3). The result is,
c' = c0 ( 1 + V / c2 )
where V is the gravitational potential relative to the point where the speed of light c0 is measured."

However later Einstein had to camouflage the fact that the frequency shift is due to variable speed of light and introduced gravitational time dilation - a concept extremely dangerous for human rationality. Two identical clocks in identical conditions (identical gravitational fields) allegedly have different rates. Rationality is immediately destroyed and the victim starts worshipping both the miracle and its creator.

Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com

Posted by: Pentcho Valev at Oct 21, 2006 2:20:38 AM

MASS OF THE PHOTON AND EINSTEIN'S SECOND POSTULATE

http://o.castera.free.fr/pdf/Whatif%20EinsteinLevyLeblond.pdf :
Jean-Marc Levy-Leblond "What if Einstein had not been there? A Gedankenexperiment in Science History":
"In modern terms, think of the situation if the photon finally had a nonzero mass, however small; light would not travel with the invariant velocity..."

Wolfgang Pauli (1954) "Matter". In: Muschel, H. (ed.), Man’s Right to Knowledge. New York:
"Matter has always been and will always be one of the main objects of physics.....even light has become matter now, due to Einstein’s discoveries. It has mass and also weight; it is not different from ordinary matter."

Note that, as far as Einstein's second postulate is concerned, "Does the photon have a mass?" can be replaced by "Do photons accelerate in a gravitational field?".

Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com

Posted by: Pentcho Valev at Oct 26, 2006 5:35:23 AM

EINSTEINIANS WILL UNMASK EINSTEIN

In Appendix 3 in his "Relativity" Einstein starts from the time dilation factor

1/gamma = (1-v^2/c^2)^(1/2)

and eventually deduces the frequency shift factor

1+V/c^2

where V is the gravitational potential. In the process Einstein replaces the time dilation factor 1/gamma with its Taylor approximation

1-v^2/2c^2

and for almost 100 years Einsteinians have been absolutely sure that this replacement can only be due to Einstein's genial intuition and sense of harmony. However lately Einsteinians with powerful intellects have been haunted by a difficult question: Why should the approximation 1-v^2/2c^2 be more suitable than the exact quantity 1/gamma? The inquiry is going to turn into a panic since the frequency shift factor 1+V/c^2 can be rigorously deduced from the principle of variability of the speed of light and this alternative deduction involves no suspicious approximations at all:

http://www.physlink.com/Education/AskExperts/ae13.cfm :
"So, it is absolutely true that the speed of light is _not_ constant in a gravitational field [which, by the equivalence principle, applies as well to accelerating (non-inertial) frames of reference]. If this were not so, there would be no bending of light by the gravitational field of stars. One can do a simple Huyghens reconstruction of a wave front, taking into account the different speed of advance of the wavefront at different distances from the star (variation of speed of light), to derive the deflection of the light by the star.
Indeed, this is exactly how Einstein did the calculation in:
"On the Influence of Gravitation on the Propagation of Light," Annalen der Physik, 35, 1911.
which predated the full formal development of general relativity by about four years. This paper is widely available in English. You can find a copy beginning on page 99 of the Dover book "The Principle of Relativity." You will find in section 3 of that paper, Einstein's derivation of the (variable) speed of light in a gravitational potential, eqn (3). The result is,
c' = c0 ( 1 + V / c^2 )
where V is the gravitational potential relative to the point where the speed of light c0 is measured."

Einsteinians love Einstein passionately but, on the other hand, their honest hearts would not tolerate any trickery. As soon as they manage to understand why Einstein hid the obviously correct deduction

VARIABLE SPEED OF LIGHT -> FREQUENCY SHIFT

and replaced it with the trumped-up deduction

TIME DILATION -> FREQUENCY SHIFT

they will unmask him. There can be no doubt about that.

Pentcho Valev

Posted by: Pentcho Valev at Oct 29, 2006 2:06:38 AM

WHY EINSTEIN'S THEORY OF RELATIVITY IS INCOMPARABLE

In Chapter 22 in his "Relativity" Einstein claims that, in a gravitational field, the speed of light "varies with position". This means that photons can have speed 300000km/s in position 0, 300001km/s in position 1, 300002km/s in position 2 etc. Even without any analysis the expression "varies with position" should cause some embarrassment in Einstein's world. It does not. The inhabitants of Einstein's world do not care.

One of the reasons is that, according to the English translation of Einstein's book, it is "velocity", not "speed", that "varies with position". So Einsteinians raise an argument: "Velocity varies but speed does not. Where is the problem? You don't understand the difference between velocity and speed?"

Then, at the height of their triumph, Einsteinians admit it is speed that varies and so the situation of heretics who don't understand the difference between velocity and speed becomes even graver:

Of course, the velocity/speed trick is a low level one, designed to influence relatively weak intellects in Einstein's world. For relatively stronger intellects Einsteinians have prepared relatively stronger arguments, e.g. the speed of light is variable in general relativity but constant in special relativity, the speed of light is variable globally but constant locally etc.

Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com

Posted by: Pentcho Valev at Nov 4, 2006 2:23:10 AM

LORDS: BAD TEACHING OF SCIENCE IN EINSTEIN'S WORLD

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/publicservices/story/0,,1940024,00.html
"Science teaching is in a dangerous decline that is putting Britain's technological future at risk. Only a complete overhaul of education policy can rescue the situation, a high-powered House of Lords committee warns today."

I suspect some Lord bumped into the wisdom "I measure your clock to be slower than mine and you measure mine to be slower than yours but if you go and return you will find mine to be faster than yours" that freshmen should learn by rote very diligently.

Another Lord found a famous textbook where freshmen are taught how to see through opaque bodies:

http://www.courses.fas.harvard.edu/~phys16/Textbook/ch10.pdf
Problem 7, "Seeing behind the stick", p. 47 (solution on p. 54).

Then the Lords asked: "What remains of students' rationality after such teaching?" and immediately answered: "Nothing". Hence the conclusion that teaching of science in Einstein's world is bad.

Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com

Posted by: Pentcho Valev at Nov 5, 2006 5:04:12 AM

MUONS AND RELATIVITY FRAUD

http://abyss.uoregon.edu/~js/glossary/cosmic_rays.html
"Some secondary muons have such high energies that they are able to penetrate the Earth to depths of more than 3.2 km (2 miles)."

http://www.physics.ox.ac.uk/Neutrino/HAMF/ADLER%20Home%20Page.htm
"The energy loss of a muon in the atmosphere is about 2 GeV and therefore the muons which contribute to the low energy neutrino flux do not reach the ground."

Relativists' confessions (on sci.physics.relativity):
"Yes indeed: a low energy muon incident on the top of the earth's atmosphere will lose energy quickly due to interactions with the air, will penetrate the atmosphere only a small distance, and will live only a short time. A high energy muon will lose some of its energy due to interactions with the air, but will still have a considerable energy when it reaches the ground, and it will penetrate the ground (perhaps several kilometers); on average it will live a much longer time than the low energy muon. Yes, the low energy muon had a shorter "lifetime" than the high energy muon (both measured by an observer at rest wrt the earth). Yes, this is NOT due to time dilation."

Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com

Posted by: Pentcho Valev at Nov 9, 2006 3:18:36 AM

THE MOST DANGEROUS QUESTIONS IN PHYSICS

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,228411,00.html :
"So was Newton right? Light is a particle, not a wave? The answer is yes and no. Light acts like a wave when you do an experiment looking for a wave property (like scattering through a pinhole). It behaves like a particle if you test for a particle property (like colliding with electrons)."

Light acts like what in a gravitational field when it accelerates and its speed becomes greater than c=300000km/s? Light acts like what when you apply the equivalence principle and find that, if it accelerates in a gravitational field, its speed in the absence of a gravitational field is c'=c+v, where c is the initial speed of the photons relative to the light source and v is the relative speed of the light source and the observer? Light acts like what when c'=c+v satisfies the negative result of Michelson-Morley experiment whereas c'=c (Einstein's postulate of constancy of the speed of light) can only be satisfactory if you additionally introduce miracles (time dilation, length contration etc.)?

These have been the most dangerous questions in physics for the last 100 years.

Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com

Posted by: Pentcho Valev at Nov 10, 2006 3:55:48 AM

CLEVEREST EINSTEINIANS

Consider:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1868661388454830893
"EINSTEIN'S BIGGEST BLUNDER"

Cleverest Einsteinians know that worshipping is not enough. If you just sing in the grandiose choir organized by Einstein's criminal cult your profit will be small. So from time to time cleverest Einsteinians are allowed to leave the choir and "demolish the foundations of 20th century physics". "If they are right, Einstein was wrong" and that's it. Then the profit is exorbitant.

However demolishing the foundations of 20th century physics can only be temporary. In the end cleverest Einsteinians should return to the headquarters and humbly rejoin the grandiose choir: "It is a measure of Einstein's genius that even when he was wrong, somehow he was right".

Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com

Posted by: Pentcho Valev at Nov 10, 2006 10:28:26 AM

DO EINSTEINIANS DELIBERATELY DESTROY THEIR CRIMINAL CULT?

Tom Roberts wrote in sci.physics.relativity:

> Note when we say "lifetime of a muon" we mean the DECAY lifetime. That
> is, for muons that don't interact. The omitted discussion is confusing
> the issue by noting that muons interact with air and some "live" much
> shorter times because of those interactions -- while true, that is NOT
> what we mean by "lifetime". Note also that the major interaction of
> muons with air is energy loss (via EM processes), and the muons are not
> being annihilated or changed by the air, they are merely being SLOWED
> DOWN (which changes the value of gamma and therefore the duration of
> their existence measured in the earth frame).

Is this some mental aberration or does the Einsteinian really want to destroy his criminal cult for some reason? Strange things happen in Einstein's world.

Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com

Posted by: Pentcho Valev at Nov 12, 2006 2:55:33 AM

IRREVERSIBLE DESTRUCTION OF RATIONALITY IN EINSTEIN'S WORLD

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/my_einstein06/my_einstein06_index.html

"His [Einsteins] science opened the door to an unknown world, one beyond sensory perception-an invisible world with mysterious properties and bizarre effects. Once you stepped into this new worldview, you couldnt go back. Like the mythic hero returning from his quest, youd emerge transformed, with a new conception of reality."

Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com

Posted by: Pentcho Valev at Nov 12, 2006 4:31:15 AM

BIG BROTHER'S WORLD AND EINSTEIN'S WORLD

In Big Brother's world truth is replaced by falsity but the identification and rejection of false statements remain essential: if 2+2=5 is declared true, 2+2=4 automatically becomes false and is rejected.

In Einstein's world true and false statements coexist in "theories". So in Einstein's theory the speed of light is both invariable and variable. "Invariable" is false, "variable" is true but this distinction does not matter. What matters is the fact that Einstein's theory "works" in the sense that millions of people make their living by teaching it, developing it, confirming it experimentally etc. It is unthinkable to disturb the integrity of the theory and threaten all those people by identifying, let alone rejecting, false statements.

Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com

Posted by: Pentcho Valev at Nov 13, 2006 3:30:38 AM

EINSTEINIANS TEACH

http://www.math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/SpeedOfLight/speed_of_light.html

"Is c, the speed of light in vacuum, constant? At the 1983 Conference Generale des Poids et Mesures, the following SI (Systeme International) definition of the metre was adopted: The metre is the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1/299 792 458 of a second. This defines the speed of light in vacuum to be exactly 299,792,458 m/s. This provides a very short answer to the question "Is c constant": Yes, c is constant by definition!.....Any such possible photon rest mass is certainly too small to have any practical significance for the definition of the metre in the foreseeable future, but it cannot be shown to be exactly zero--even though currently accepted theories indicate that it is. If it wasn't zero, the speed of light would not be constant; but from a theoretical point of view we would then take c to be the upper limit of the speed of light in vacuum so that we can continue to ask whether c is constant."

Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com

Posted by: Pentcho Valev at Nov 24, 2006 2:35:39 AM

THE PRINCIPLE OF VARIABILITY OF THE SPEED OF LIGHT

Einstein's 1911 equation c'=c(1+V/c^2), where c' is the speed of light as measured by an observer, c=300000km/s is the initial speed of light relative to the light source and V is the gravitational potential relative to the point where light is emitted, proves the validity of the following principle:

Since the probability that V=0 is virtually zero, light NEVER travels in space with speed c=300000km/s; its speed is either higher or lower than that value (V>0 or V<0).

Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com

Posted by: Pentcho Valev at Dec 1, 2006 4:40:00 AM

THE MONEY-SPINNER OF RUDOLF CLAUSIUS

Heat never flows spontaneously from cold to hot. In Clausius' 1850 language this statement would take the form:

X: It is impossible, without any expenditure of force or any other change, to transfer heat from a cold to a hot body.

X is a true statement and therefore its negation, not-X, is false:

Not-X: It is possible, without any expenditure of force or any other change, to transfer heat from a cold to a hot body.

If not-X is a corollary of the statement Y, then Y is false and not-Y is true. So in 1850 Clausius deduced a version of the second law of thermodynamics:

Not-Y: Reversible heat engines working between the same two temperatures have the same efficiency. (Y: Reversible heat engines working between the same two temperatures have different efficiencies.)

The problem was (and still is) that not-X is NOT a corollary of Y. Clausius did not deduce anything. He just laid the foundations of the huge edifice of irrationality that crushed science but proved extremely profitable for the builders.

Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com

Posted by: Pentcho Valev at Dec 8, 2006 2:47:47 AM

NOBEL PRIZES IN THE ERA OF POSTSCIENTISM

For a closed system doing reversible work of expansion the first law of thermodynamics takes the form

dU = dQ - PdV /1/

where dU is the internal energy change, dQ is the heat absorbed, P is pressure and V is volume. Since the system is CLOSED and undergoes reversible changes the entropy change is, by definition, dS=dQ/T and /1/ becomes:

dU = TdS - PdV /2/

J. Gibbs managed to convince the world that, if the system is OPEN (substances are added to it), /2/ should be replaced by

dU = TdS - PdV + SUM mu_i dn_i /3/

where mu_i is the chemical potential and n_i is the amount of the ith component. However Gibbs failed to explain the meaning of the entropy change, dS, for an OPEN system. Was dS again equal to dQ/T, as for a closed system, or was dS equal to something else when substances were added to the system?

The fact that dS was not defined for open systems made the equation /3/ so fashionable (scientists adore equations with undefined terms) that in the end /3/ was called "the fundamental equation of thermodynamics". Yet scientists somehow felt that a new definition of dS would bring even more money. The quickest among them, Ilya Prigogine, simply combined /1/ and /3/ and obtained

dS = dQ/T - (1/T)SUM mu_i dn_i /4/

The Nobel Committee immediately gave him the money in the form of a Nobel Prize.

Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com

Posted by: Pentcho Valev at Dec 11, 2006 4:43:09 AM

EINSTEIN'S PHILOSOPHERS REFUTE NEWTON

Einstein's philosophers organized a conference

http://www.spacetimesociety.org/conferences/2006/cprogram.html

in order to refute Newton, gather some courage and offer reasonable hypotheses based on Einstein's principle of invariability of the speed of light:

http://www.spacetimesociety.org/conferences/2006/docs/Forrest.html

"Who’s Afraid of Special elativity?

Peter Forrest

Who’s Afraid of Special Relativity? Too many philosophers who shouldn’t be. In particular presentists and Growing Block theorists tend to prefer alternatives. The presentist William Craig, for instance, holds a neo-Lorentzian position and the Growing Block theorist Michael Tooley endorses Winnie’s theory. My claim is that neither Presentism nor the Growing Block is threatened by Special Relativity. What is under threat is the Newtonian conception of time as necessarily flowing uniformly... One of my hypotheses is a "many universes" theory in which in each "universe" time flows uniformly unless and until it stops flowing. Another is one in which reality is added to the past in a series of "volcanic eruptions" in which a small light cone is added (the larger the hyper-volume of the additional reality the less probable the "eruption")"

Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com

Posted by: Pentcho Valev at Dec 14, 2006 11:54:12 AM

BEYOND EINSTEIN: NEWTON

Einstein's theory is an inconsistency: the set of its axioms involves, explicitly, the principle of INVARIABILITY of the speed of light and, implicitly, the principle of VARIABILITY of the speed of light. Any development, improvement etc. should obviously be preceded by a removal of the false principle of invariability of the speed of light and the miracles it has generated (time dilation, length contraction, Minkowski's spacetime etc.). "Relativity without Einstein's second postulate" has been a recurrent dream of initiated Einsteinians who have known about the falsehood from the very beginning:

http://www.worldscibooks.com/physics/4114.html :
"They lead to an unexpected affirmative answer to the long-standing question of whether it is possible to construct a relativity theory without postulating the constancy of the speed of light and retaining only the first postulate of special relativity. This question was discussed in the early years following the discovery of special relativity by many physicists, including Ritz, Tolman, Kunz, Comstock and Pauli, all of whom obtained negative answers."

The problem is that "Relativity without Einstein's second postulate" or, in other terms, "Relativity without c", is equivalent to "Back to Newton". Curiously, the proof of this equivalency can be found in perhaps the most famous textbook on relativity:

http://www.courses.fas.harvard.edu/~phys16/Textbook/ch10.pdf
p.35: "Relativity without c....it is easy to imagine a universe where the speed of light depends on the frame of reference. Light could behave like a baseball, for example. So let's drop the speed of light postulate and see what we can say about the coordinate transformations between frames, using only the relativity postulate."
p.38: "There is only one decision to be made when constructing the spacetime structure of an (empty) universe. You just have to say whether V is finite or infinite, that is, whether the universe is Lorentzian or Galilean."

Note that "Light could behave like a baseball" amounts to an implicit introduction of Newton's particle model of light (confirmed by Einstein himself in 1905) valid in a Galilean universe where the speed of light is VARIABLE.

Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com

Posted by: Pentcho Valev at Dec 16, 2006 3:13:04 AM

DANGEROUS BUSINESS IN EINSTEIN'S CRIMINAL CULT

Classically, Einstein's criminal cult extracted their billions from miracles deduced from Einstein's false principle of constancy of the speed of light. However a few years ago Einsteinians realized in horror that taxpayers were not excited anymore about a twin that sees his brother's clock running slow but then returns and proves younger etc. That was the end of the constant speed of light affair and a natural beginning of the variable speed of light affair.

The new business is dangerous for two reasons: first, variable speed of light could wipe out Einstein's criminal cult altogether; second, variable speed of light per se is unable to produce miracles and therefore excitement among taxpayers is by no means guaranteed. So new business plans involve the following tasks. First, the meaning of "variable" should be confused: the attention should shift from "depending on the speed of the light source" to something different, e.g. "faster in the past, slower now". Second, the variability of the speed of light should be served in fantastically small portions, so fantastically small that excitement is unavoidably restored and, what is even more important, Einstein's theory remains essentially correct:

http://www.discover.com/issues/sep-04/features/testing-the-limits/?page=1
"Testing the Limit of Einstein’s Theories....IS THE SPEED OF LIGHT CONSTANT?....If you compare a lot of high-energy photons with a lot of relatively low-energy ones, you should find that on average, after a billion-year race, the high-energy ones reach GLAST’s detector sooner—by about a millisecond. He and other quantum gravity theorists are pretty excited by that possibility, which just goes to show what they’re up against."

Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com

Posted by: Pentcho Valev at Dec 20, 2006 2:04:01 AM

EINSTEIN'S RELATIVITY: VIOLATIONS AND AXIOMS

Any Einsteinian would tell you violations of the theory entail reconsideration of the axioms: since Einstein's deductions are rigorous, false conclusions would imply false axioms. On the other hand, any breathtaking development of Einstein's relativity can only be triggered by violations and Einsteinians do wish to see that development - the present stalemate is disturbing even for them. The dilemma has an elegant solution: there are numerous violations indeed so the breathtaking development is imminent but those violations are tiny, so tiny that reconsideration of the axioms is not necessary:

http://newsinfo.iu.edu/tips/page/normal/4519.html :
"Alan Kostelecky, Distinguished Professor of Physics at Indiana University Bloomington, has been elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science "for seminal contributions to relativity and spacetime symmetries, and for the development of a profound and comprehensive theoretical framework for relativity violations," according to a statement from AAAS....he realized that tiny violations of Einstein's relativity could be an experimental signal of the long-sought underlying theory unifying all known forces and particles....Kostelecky's theory has inspired many searches for relativity violations around the world, and more are being performed..... "The ongoing search for relativity violations is an impressive interdisciplinary effort," Kostelecky said."

Einsteinians reassure themselves in the following way. Since the violations are tiny, axioms are just a little false and therefore virtually true. The reassurance is quite explicit sometimes:

Einsteinians know Einstein would disagree about "little falsehood". Once he said: "If the speed of light is the least bit affected by the speed of the light source, then my whole theory of relativity and theory of gravity is false." However the solution Einsteinians have found is both elegant and all-embracing: Violations are tiny, axioms are just a little false, Einstein is just a little wrong.

Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com

Posted by: Pentcho Valev at Dec 21, 2006 2:25:49 AM

BAD NEWS FOR EINSTEIN'S CRIMINALS

I have the impression that only the fiercest zombies are still defending Einstein's idiocies. Other members of Einstein's criminal cult are mercilessly removing Einstein's name from their websites while looking for another money-spinner. Bad news comes from everywhere:

http://www.amazon.com/Einsteins-Relativity-Theory-Correct-Paradoxical/dp/1425104819
AMAZON: Einstein's Relativity Theory: Correct, Paradoxical & Wrong (Paperback) by Lyubomir T. Gruyitch. "It accepts severely restrictive, physically unacceptable in general, assumptions that Einstein lifted up to the untouchable postulates. Consequently, his relativity theory and its developments represent a singular case valid only when the assumptions hold, rather than a general relativity theory. They are physically valid only if the Lorentz transformations are physically applicable, which does not happen even for simple systems used in Einstein's relativity theory as illustrative ones."

Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com

Posted by: Pentcho Valev at Dec 26, 2006 3:10:54 AM

WHERE EXACTLY THE PHYSICS CRISIS IS

http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/jan07/4812 :
Lee Smolin: "The crisis is not in physics overall but in that part of physics whose goal is to deepen our understanding of the laws of nature. Since the middle 1970s, there has been no definitive progress, no match between a new experimental result and a new theoretical prediction. That’s worrying.....String theory is not a theory in the sense that Newtonian mechanics or quantum mechanics is. It’s not defined by the statement of two or three principles that are expressed in the basic equations of the theory—which are then solved to yield examples and predictions."

Note that a year ago the paradigm for something "defined by the statement of two or three principles that are expressed in the basic equations of the theory—which are then solved to yield examples and predictions" would inevitably have been Einsteinian mechanics. Now Smolin believes it is Newtonian mechanics again whereas Einstein's name is not even mentioned. And Smolin was an admirer of Einstein, to say the least.

Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com

Posted by: Pentcho Valev at Jan 3, 2007 2:44:51 AM

Inconsistency Queen of Science 1850-2007

When you introduce a falsehood in physical science you cannot remove the respective truth from your theory. Rather, explicit falsehood and implicit truth form a powerful couple able to produce virtually any result you need. The following quotation is based on formal logic and is an exaggeration with respect to physical theories; nevertheless it is quite instructive:

W. H. Newton-Smith, The Rationality of Science, Routledge, London, 1981, p. 229: "A theory ought to be internally consistent. The grounds for including this factor are a priori. For given a realist construal of theories, our concern is with verisimilitude, and if a theory is inconsistent it will contain every sentence of the language, as the following simple argument shows. Let ‘q’ be an arbitrary sentence of the language and suppose that the theory is inconsistent. This means that we can derive the sentence ‘p and not-p’. From this ‘p’ follows. And from ‘p’ it follows that ‘p or q’ (if ‘p’ is true then ‘p or q’ will be true no matter whether ‘q’ is true or not). Equally, it follows from ‘p and not-p’ that ‘not-p’. But ‘not-p’ together with ‘p or q’ entails ‘q’. Thus once we admit an inconsistency into our theory we have to admit everything. And no theory of verisimilitude would be acceptable that did not give the lowest degree of verisimilitude to a theory which contained each sentence of the theory’s language and its negation."

As soon as you introduce the magic contradictory couple rationality starts disappearing and you do not need valid arguments anymore. Invalid arguments increase the power of your theory additionally: whether "Reversible heat engines working between the same two temperatures have the same efficiency" does or does not really follow from "Heat never flows spontaneously from cold to hot" is a question brothers scientists would never ask.

The falsehood enables you to demonstrate miracles and become a divinity; the respective truth enables you to predict verifiable results. Einstein's false principle of constancy of the speed of light produces miracles such as time dilation, length contraction, Minkowski's space-time, time travel etc. Einstein's (rather, Newton's) true principle of variability of the speed of light gives correct predictions such as the gravitational redshift factor.

Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com

Posted by: Pentcho Valev at Jan 7, 2007 3:27:20 AM

BRINGING EINSTEIN'S SECOND POSTULATE TO PERFECTION

In 1905 Einstein postulates 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" but fails to explain whether this "definite velocity c" would remain "definite velocity c" when the observer and the place of emission are at different gravitational potentials. Einstein's explanation comes later, in 1911, and in 2007 it is time to bring the original 1905 postulate to perfection:

If the relative speed of the observer and the emitting body is zero, light is always propagated in empty space with a variable speed c'=c(1+V/c^2) where c is the initial speed of photons relaive to the emitting body and V is the gravitational potential relative to the place of emission. Equivalently, if the observer and the place of emission are at the same gravitational potential, light is always propagated in empty space with a variable speed c'=c+v where v is the relative speed of the observer and the emitting body.

Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com

Posted by: Pentcho Valev at Jan 9, 2007 10:51:40 AM

EINSTEINIANS AS CONVULSIONISTS

The miraculous corollary of Einstein's false principle of constancy of the speed of light - length contraction - allows Einsteinians to see through opaque bodies: see Problem 7 ("Seeing behind the stick"), p. 47 (solution on p. 54), in

http://www.courses.fas.harvard.edu/~phys16/Textbook/ch10.pdf

Seeing through the opaque stick is exciting but Einsteinians experience something even more exciting. After having moved towards the wall the rear end of the stick starts moving backward from the wall in an attempt to restore the proper length of the stick. Einsteinians do see that backward movement and ask questions: What is its speed? What is its energy? Sometimes Einsteinians believe the energy of the backward movement of the rear end is infinite. If it were not, they argue, some pawl would be able to prevent the stick from restoring its proper length but no, no, nothing can prevent the stick from restoring its proper length. Therefore in its backward movement the rear end of the stick is able to break ANY pawl.

So much excitement makes Einsteinians go into convulsions. Spasms are regularly interrupted by ecstatic singing. "Divine Einstein" fills the space:

http://www.haverford.edu/physics-astro/songs/divine.htm

Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com

Posted by: Pentcho Valev at Jan 11, 2007 1:41:54 AM

TIME DILATION AND EINSTEIN'S FREEDOM TO CHOOSE

The miraculous corollary of Einstein's false principle of constancy of the speed of light - time dilation - implies that, if a single clock belonging to the inertial system K consecutively meets clocks belonging to the inertial system K', and if at every meeting the two readings are compared, the single clock in K turns out to run SLOWER than clocks in K'. That is, the difference in reading between clocks in K' and the single clock in K gradually increases with the number of meetings. Yet in Chapter 23 in his "Relativity" Einstein says the opposite: the clock in the system at rest K runs FASTER than clocks placed on the periphery of the rotating disc K'. True, the periphery of the rotating disc K' is not an inertial system but does that justify the transition from SLOWER to FASTER? Moreover, by increasing the diameter of the disc and keeping the linear speed of the periphery constant one can convert the periphery of the disc into an INERTIAL system: clocks on the periphery would experience no gravitational field while meeting consecutively the single clock from K. For such cases all textbooks say Einstein's false principle of constancy of the speed of light predicts that the difference in reading between clocks in K' and the single clock in K must gradually INCREASE with the number of meetings. Then why does Einstein say the opposite in Chapter 23 in his "Relativity"?

The radical solution to the problem involves abandoning Einstein's false principle of constancy of the speed of light. This solution is too dangerous. Einstein once said: "If the speed of light is the least bit affected by the speed of the light source, then my whole theory of relativity and theory of gravity is false."

There is also a partial solution: The single clock in the system at rest K runs both SLOWER and FASTER than clocks in the system K' and Einstein was free to choose. He chose FASTER.

Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com

Posted by: Pentcho Valev at Jan 12, 2007 2:38:24 AM

PHILOSOPHERS WILL SAVE EINSTEIN'S FALSE SECOND POSTULATE

Einstein's false second postulate will be saved after all. Philosophers are organizing a conference

http://quantum.leeds.ac.uk/~sonwm/fop07/

where Philosopher Harvey Brown of Oxford will set other philosophers straight by explaining the physical meaning of Einstein's false second postulate:

http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=6603 : "Harvey Brown thinks that most philosophers are confused about relativity. Most centrally, he thinks they're confused about the relativistic effects of length contraction and time dilation. In this important book, he aims to set them straight.....According to (what Brown alleges is) the dominant view among substantivalists, the geometrical structure of Minkowski spacetime plays some role in explaining why moving rods shrink and why moving clocks run slow. Brown rejects this view. He asserts, instead, that in order to explain why moving rods shrink we must appeal to the dynamical laws governing the forces that hold the parts of the rod together. The geometry of Minkowski spacetime plays no role in this explanation."

Philosopher Steven French of Leeds will also set other philosophers straight by explaining why Einstein's false second postulate does not invalidate Einstein's theory:

http://www.amazon.com/Science-Partial-Truth-Scientific-Philosophy/dp/019515651X
"Da Costa and French explore the consequences of adopting a "pragmatic" notion of truth in the philosophy of science--in other words, accepting a theory as valid when it may only be partially true rather than wholly true."

Finally, Philosopher Jeremy Butterfield of Cambridge will demonstrate how subtle Einstein's false second postulate is:

http://talks.cam.ac.uk/talk/index/5570 : Jeremy Butterfield "Reconsidering Relativistic Causality": "I discuss the idea of relativistic causality, i.e. the requirement that causal processes (signals) can propagate only within the light-cone. After briefly locating this requirement in the philosophy of causation, my main aim is to draw philosophers’ attention to the fact that it is subtle, and even problematic, in contemporary physics. For there are scenarios in which it fails."

Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com

Posted by: Pentcho Valev at Jan 19, 2007 3:09:21 AM

VERY SPECIAL RELATIVITY AND VERY LITTLE FALSEHOOD

Relativists have always claimed Divine Albert rigorously deduced his special relativity from two postulates and countless experimental confirmations of the theory are in fact confirmations of the truth of the postulates. Yet lately relativists seem to have discovered countless violations of the theory but somehow forget to relate them to the problem of the truth or falsehood of the postulates. So Nobel prizewinners have found some Lorentz violation and have dared (those that are not Nobel prizewinners would never dare) to challenge Divine Albert and "rewrite the rules of Einstein's special theory of relativity":

http://space.newscientist.com/article/mg19325871.400
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2006PhRvL..97b1601C

Perhaps in Very Special Relativity Einstein's false second postulate will prove Very Little False. Perhaps not. Who knows.

Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com

Posted by: Pentcho Valev at Jan 21, 2007 2:29:15 AM

EINSTEINIANS AGAINST EINSTEIN'S SECOND POSTULATE

http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Special-Relativity-2-nd/dp/0198539525
"My first remark is that I cannot understand the reason why textbooks in English (as this one) insist in deriving the Lorentz transformation using Einstein's second postulate on the speed of light: as already pointed out by Jean-Marc Levy-Leblond (Am. J. Phys., Vol. 44, pp. 271-277, 1976), this second postulate is not only superfluous but also epistemological misleading -- see, e.g., the French textbook by J. Hladik and M. Chrysos (Introduction a la Relativite Restreinte, Dunod, Paris, 2001) which can be bought at Amazon.fr."

Incredible! Absolutely incredible! This Jean-Marc Levy-Leblond should be locked in a dark room with a single picture on the wall:

http://www.bnl.gov/community/Tours/EinsteinPics/Einsteine.jpg

If he can't sing the hymn "Divine Einstein" (many Einsteinians are not programmed for music) he should at least learn by rote this:

http://www.haverford.edu/physics-astro/songs/divineEinstein.htm

Finally, he should be forced to visit centers for children education where he should shout endlessly, together with the children:

http://www.bnl.gov/community/Tours/TYSaDTW.asp
"Einstein! Einstein! He's our man! Einstein! Einstein! He's our man! If he can't solve it, no one can!"

Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com

Posted by: Pentcho Valev at Feb 3, 2007 3:29:56 AM

DOUBLY SPECIAL RELATIVITY (EINSTEINIANS KNOW NO LIMITS)

In order to camouflage the falsehood of Einstein's principle of constancy of the speed of light

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"

Einsteinians would do anything. They have already created Very Special Relativity, Doubly Special Relativity etc.:

http://arxiv.org/ftp/physics/papers/0406/0406104.pdf

"The constancy, or otherwise, of the speed of light" Daniel J. Farrell & J. Dunning-Davies, Department of Physics, University of Hull, Hull HU6 7RX, England. "Since the Special Theory of Relativity was expounded and accepted, it has seemed almost tantamount to sacrilege to even suggest that the speed of light be anything other than a constant. This is somewhat surprising since even Einstein himself suggested in a paper of 1911 [1] that the speed of light might vary with the gravitational potential."

Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com

Posted by: Pentcho Valev at Feb 4, 2007 7:29:18 AM

VARIABLE SPEED OF LIGHT AND MINKOWSKI SPACETIME

Soon after Einstein discovered the speed of light was constant he also discovered it varied with the gravitational potential:

philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00000138/00/norton.rtf
"What Can We Learn about the Ontology of Space and Time from the Theory of Relativity?" John D. Norton, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh PA USA 15260: "In general relativity there is no comparable sense of the constancy of the speed of light. The constancy of the speed of light is a consequence of the perfect homogeneity of spacetime presumed in special relativity. There is a special velocity at each event; homogeneity forces it to be the same velocity everywhere. We lose that homogeneity in the transition to general relativity and with it we lose the constancy of the speed of light. Such was Einstein's conclusion at the earliest moments of his preparation for general relativity. Already in 1907, a mere two years after the completion of the special theory, he had concluded that the speed of light is variable in the presence of a gravitational field; indeed, he concluded, the variable speed of light can be used as a gravitational potential."

Needless to say, Einstein's principle of variability of the speed of light was a great discovery (although it was a corollary of Newton's particle model of light and contradicted Einstein's principle of constancy of the speed of light). However Einsteinians still do not know whether Einstein's principle of variability of the speed of light is compatible with Minkowski spacetime or not (they are sure Einstein's principle of constancy of the speed of light IS compatible). So they are organizing a conference

http://www.spacetimesociety.org/conferences/2008/

where the selfsame John Norton is an invited speaker. There he will say "Yes they are compatible" or "No they are not compatible" and Einstenians all over the world will remember his verdict forever.

Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com

Posted by: Pentcho Valev at Feb 10, 2007 3:24:37 AM

HYPOCRISY OR WHY THEORETICAL SCIENCE DIED

http://www.nyas.org/publications/UpdateUnbound.asp?UpdateID=41
“A Crisis in Fundamental Physics…Then, about 30 years ago, something changed. The last time there was a definitive advance in our knowledge of fundamental physics was the construction ofthe theory we call the standard model of particle physics in 1973. The last time a fundamental theory was proposed that has since gotten any support from experiment was a theory about the very early universe called inflation, which was proposed in 1981.”

http://www.logosjournal.com/issue_4.3/smolin.htm
“Quantum theory 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 be always 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.”

Has the author of the two texts (Lee Smolin) ever seen the close relation between them? Surely he has.

Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com

Posted by: Pentcho Valev at Feb 21, 2007 10:48:49 AM

THE IDIOCY IN THE WORLD OF EINSTEIN

http://www.itnews.com.au/newsstory.aspx?CIaNID=47047&src=site-marq
"In the experiment a beam of light was passed through a specially prepared caesium atomic chamber. The beam of light arrived at the far end 62 nanoseconds sooner than would be expected under normal conditions. "Our experiment is not at odds with Einstein's special relativity, but it does show that the generally held misconception that nothing can move faster than the speed of light is wrong," the laboratory reported. "The statement only applies to objects with a rest mass. Light can be viewed as waves and has no mass. Therefore, it is not limited by its speed inside a vacuum."

In the world of Einstein, except for a few "crackpots", nobody would see anything idiotic in the above quotation. Rather, Einsteinians would resume their endless discussion about group and phase velocity and, after disentangling some initial confusion, would reach again the most important conclusion:

"In sum: phase and group velocity may exceed c, but frontal velocity cannot exceed c."

Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com

Posted by: Pentcho Valev at Mar 7, 2007 2:36:31 AM

THE DEATH OF SCIENCE AND THE ROYAL SOCIETY

Twelve years ago (still just shocking the public and making money):

http://www.totse.com/en/technology/space_astronomy_nasa/ftltravl.html : "ASTRONOMERS PREDICT FASTER THAN LIGHT SPACE TRAVEL. It is boldly going where no reputable scientific body has gone before. Contradicting Einstein, the normally conservative Royal Astronomical Society is about to publish a report predicting that mankind will be able to travel faster than the speed of light. The breakthrough means that Star Trek fantasies of interstellar civilisations and voyages powered by warp drive are now no longer the exclusive domain of science fiction writers...Crawford argues that modern physics may allow two possible ways around Einstein's theory....The theories will boost growing interest among scientists in the possibility of travelling faster than light. The IPS, whose members include several NASA engineers, starts its first conference shortly in Halifax, Nova Scotia."

Six years ago (concern is growing):

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/519406/posts : "A GROUP of astronomers and cosmologists has warned that the laws thought to govern the universe, including Albert Einstein's theory of relativity, must be rewritten. The group, which includes Professor Stephen Hawking and Sir Martin Rees, the astronomer royal, say such laws may only work for our universe but not in others that are now also thought to exist.....AMONG THE IDEAS FACING REVISION IS EINSTEIN'S BELIEF THAT THE SPEED OF LIGHT MUST ALWAYS BE THE SAME - 186,000 miles a second in a vacuum.....Rees, Hawking and others are so concerned at the impact of such ideas that they recently organised a private conference in Cambridge for more than 30 leading cosmologists."

What is going on NOW? Why is the silence? Perhaps Rees, Hawking and others have realised that the death of science is irreversible anyway:

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23384875-details/Science+and+maths+degrees+in+'irreversible+decline'/article.do "SCIENCE AND MATH DEGREES IN IRREVERSIBLE DECLINE"

So one should just concentrate on his/her private happiness and forget about anything else.

Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com

Posted by: Pentcho Valev at Mar 9, 2007 4:12:46 AM

WILL EINSTEINIANS ABANDON THE FALSE SECOND POSTULATE?

The eternal trouble in Einstein's cult: The theory of relativity is an excellent money-spinner but one based on Einstein's false second postulate - the principle of constancy of the speed of light. So Einsteinians have never stopped trying to get rid of this postulate:

http://www.worldscibooks.com/physics/4114.html :"They lead to an unexpected affirmative answer to the long-standing question of whether it is possible to construct a relativity theory without postulating the constancy of the speed of light and retaining only the first postulate of special relativity. This question was discussed in the early years following the discovery of special relativity by many physicists, including Ritz, Tolman, Kunz, Comstock and Pauli, all of whom obtained negative answers."

http://o.castera.free.fr/pdf/chronogeometrie.pdf : Jean-Marc Lévy-Leblond “De la relativité à la chronogéométrie ou: Pour en finir avec le “second postulat” et autres fossiles”: “D’autre part, nous savons aujourd’hui que l’invariance de la vitesse de la lumière est une conséquence de la nullité de la masse du photon. Mais, empiriquement, cette masse, aussi faible soit son actuelle borne supérieure expérimentale, ne peut et ne pourra jamais être considérée avec certitude comme rigoureusement nulle. Il se pourrait même que de futures mesures mettent enévidence une masse infime, mais non-nulle, du photon ; la lumière alors n’irait plus à la “vitesse de la lumière”, ou, plus précisément, la vitesse de la lumière, désormais variable, ne s’identifierait plus à la vitesse limite invariante.”

The problem is that even the most convoluted attempt to build a relativity without Einstein's false second postulate unavoidably leads to reestablishing the old Newtonian-Galilean mechanics:

http://www.chapitre.com/CHAPITRE/fr/NEUF/product/eisenstaedt-jean/avant-einstein-relativite-lumiere-gravitation,9782020672924.aspx?donnee_appel=CHAPITRE : Jean Eisenstaedt, "AVANT EINSTEIN: RELATIVITE, LUMIERE, GRAVITATION": À l'université, on ânonne sans trop comprendre : « la vitesse de la lumière est indépendante de celle de sa source ». Le principe de relativité jeté aux orties, l'éther entre en scène, un mot savant dont on n'a jamais vraiment su ce qu'il recouvre : un désastre !.... Newtoniens impénitents, ces « philosophes de la nature » ont tout simplement traité la lumière comme faite de vulgaires particules matérielles : des « corpuscules lumineux ». Mais ce sont gens sérieux et ils se sont basés sur leurs Classiques, Galilée, Newton et ses Principia où déjà l'on trouve des idées intéressantes. À la fin du XVIIIe siècle, au siècle des Lumières (si bien nommé en l'occurrence !), en Angleterre, en Écosse, en Prusse et même à Paris, une véritable balistique de la lumière sous-tend silencieusement la théorie de l'émission, avatar de la théorie corpusculaire de la lumière de Newton. Lus à la lumière ( !) des théories aujourd'hui acceptées, les résultats ne sont pas minces : toute une préhistoire émerge ainsi ! Une physique des rapports entre la lumière, la relativité, la gravitation... De très nombreux tests, expériences et effets aujourd'hui bien connus, peuvent s'y lire. Il s'agit de rien moins que d'une cinématique classique (galiléo-newtonienne) de la lumière, cohérente avec le principe de relativité et donc comparable par anticipation avec la cinématique einsteinienne. Il y manque bien sûr - et ce n'est pas rien ! - l'étrange loi de composition des vitesses (qui ne s'ajoutent plus si simplement) de Lorentz et l'interprétation plus tardive de Minkowski, qu'Einstein lui-même eut bien du mal à accepter...... Les « relativités » d'Einstein, cinématique einsteinienne et théorie de la gravitation, ont la triste réputation d'être difficiles... Ne remettent-elles pas en cause des notions familières ? Leur « refonte » est d'autant plus nécessaire."

http://www.courses.fas.harvard.edu/~phys16/Textbook/ch10.pdf : p. 35:"Relativity without c....it is easy to imagine a universe where the speed of light depends on the frame of reference. Light could behave like a baseball, for example. So let's drop the speed of light postulate and see what we can say about the coordinate transformations between frames, using only the relativity postulate." p.38:"There is only one decision to be made when constructing the spacetime structure of an (empty) universe. You just have to say whether V is finite or infinite, that is, whether the universe is Lorentzian or Galilean."

Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com

Posted by: Pentcho Valev at Mar 15, 2007 4:13:19 AM