"shuba" writes:

[shuba]: I didn't present an original argument in the article to which
you responded. I did insert an editorial comment to the effect that for
you not to mention the approximation after being corrected so many times
is in my opinion dishonest, a view which I still hold.

My point was that, if you had read the paper I have refereed
you to several times now instead of simply quoting old, defeated
arguments, you would plainly see why the "approximation" argument is no
longer on the table. I've already given you a short summary of those
reasons. But you act as if a reasoned argument cannot trump the
previously expressed opinions of experts. If that were true, theoretical
science could make very little progress.

[shuba]: Steve Carlip wrote: "No, it is part of the basic point you
are missing. If you want to know exact properties of GR, you start with
exact properties of the field equations, not with an approximation that
can hide those properties."

Precisely as I said - an argument raised and answered. The
field equations describe the gravitational potential field. Changes in
gravitational potential are gravitational waves, which propagate at
speed c in everyone's book. But my arguments dealt exclusively with the
GR equations of motion, which are expressions for 3-space acceleration.
There is no exact expression for these. They are expansions in velocity
and potential, and the ones in MTW are complete to fourth order in
velocity and second order on potential, which is easily accurate enough
for all existing applications (typically 16 decimal places). Yet the
speed of gravity issue is about what happened to the missing first-order
velocity term that represents force propagation delay (typically in the
fourth decimal place).

So the "approximation" issue has become a "red herring"
argument for anyone who continues to raise or defend it. However, my
"uninformed" remark referred specifically to you for taking sides on a
technical issue without reading the published technical paper with the
latest arguments about that issue.

[shuba]: Steve Carlip wrote: "Tom is confusing "the field equations of
general relativity" with "the first post-Newtonian approximation to the
equations of motion of an N-body system, as derived from the field
equations of general relativity." The latter can, indeed, be given an
"instantaneous propagation" interpretation. The former cannot."

Of course the latter equations, which are the GR equations
of motion describing gravitational force/acceleration, must be
interpreted as having instant propagation. That has been one of my
points right along. And these are the equations used to test GR against
observations. So they had better be representative of GR, or else GR is
untested experimentally.

As for the GR field equations, they describe gravitational
potential, changes in which propagate at speed c. I'm not confusing
these two different sets of equations. Indeed, I provided references to
Carlip and others to the papers where the equations of motion were first
derived from solutions to the field equations. However, Carlip's comment
makes it appear that the *physical* distinction (as opposed to the
mathematical one) between a potential field and a propagating force was
not clear in his mind at the time. That is why Vigier and I spent much
time in our "Foundations of Physics" paper drawing this distinction.
Without it, the physics of GR would be confusing to anyone.

[shuba]: In view of the above, your response . applies to those who
actually made the arguments, Carlip and Roberts. If you hadn't meant to
say that, perhaps you shouldn't have.

I apologize for any ambiguity in my choice of words. Have I
now clarified that my reference to "the uninformed" was intended to
refer to those who persisted in making arguments already defeated by
published works, which does not include Roberts or Carlip but does
include you? -|Tom|-


Tom Van Flandern - Washington, DC - see our web site on replacement
astronomy research at http://metaresearch.org

Tom Van Flandern wrote:

My point was that, if you had read the paper I have refereed
you to several times now instead of simply quoting old, defeated
arguments, you would plainly see why the "approximation" argument is no
longer on the table. I've already given you a short summary of those
reasons. But you act as if a reasoned argument cannot trump the
previously expressed opinions of experts. If that were true, theoretical
science could make very little progress.

To my knowledge, *none* of the experts in physics and mathematics
who have addressed your faster-than-light claims on usenet are
satisfied that your argument holds water. In fact, the consensus
seems to be that you use terminology poorly and imprecisely.

[shuba]: Steve Carlip wrote: "No, it is part of the basic point you
are missing. If you want to know exact properties of GR, you start with
exact properties of the field equations, not with an approximation that
can hide those properties."

Precisely as I said - an argument raised and answered. The
field equations describe the gravitational potential field. Changes in
gravitational potential are gravitational waves, which propagate at
speed c in everyone's book. But my arguments dealt exclusively with the
GR equations of motion, which are expressions for 3-space acceleration.
There is no exact expression for these. They are expansions in velocity
and potential, and the ones in MTW are complete to fourth order in
velocity and second order on potential, which is easily accurate enough
for all existing applications (typically 16 decimal places). Yet the
speed of gravity issue is about what happened to the missing first-order
velocity term that represents force propagation delay (typically in the
fourth decimal place).

So the "approximation" issue has become a "red herring"
argument for anyone who continues to raise or defend it. However, my
"uninformed" remark referred specifically to you for taking sides on a
technical issue without reading the published technical paper with the
latest arguments about that issue.

[shuba]: Steve Carlip wrote: "Tom is confusing "the field equations of
general relativity" with "the first post-Newtonian approximation to the
equations of motion of an N-body system, as derived from the field
equations of general relativity." The latter can, indeed, be given an
"instantaneous propagation" interpretation. The former cannot."

Of course the latter equations, which are the GR equations
of motion describing gravitational force/acceleration, must be
interpreted as having instant propagation. That has been one of my
points right along. And these are the equations used to test GR against
observations. So they had better be representative of GR, or else GR is
untested experimentally.

As for the GR field equations, they describe gravitational
potential, changes in which propagate at speed c. I'm not confusing
these two different sets of equations. Indeed, I provided references to
Carlip and others to the papers where the equations of motion were first
derived from solutions to the field equations. However, Carlip's comment
makes it appear that the *physical* distinction (as opposed to the
mathematical one) between a potential field and a propagating force was
not clear in his mind at the time. That is why Vigier and I spent much
time in our "Foundations of Physics" paper drawing this distinction.
Without it, the physics of GR would be confusing to anyone.

[shuba]: In view of the above, your response . applies to those who
actually made the arguments, Carlip and Roberts. If you hadn't meant to
say that, perhaps you shouldn't have.

I apologize for any ambiguity in my choice of words. Have I
now clarified that my reference to "the uninformed" was intended to
refer to those who persisted in making arguments already defeated by
published works, which does not include Roberts or Carlip but does
include you? -|Tom|-

It may give you pleasure to have someone to label "uninformed",
especially since that's basically the label which genuine experts
have given you. However, your claims to have defeated the arguments
against your ideas seem to be convincing only to yourself. I'm not
an expert, and I do rely on what is said by people I consider the
most knowledgeable. I also look at how people present themselves.
Most everything about your approach leads me to believe you are not
particularly honest, from your claims above to the particular choice
of journals to which you've published.

One thought on the last point, and I'm probably done with this
thread. One of few things we appear to agree on is that Carlip does
deserve to be labeled an informed expert. In response to a query I
made on usenet, Carlip gave an interesting overview regarding
journal publication of general relativity articles.



With this response in mind, in certainly looks as if, whether by
design or default, Van Flandern has avoided those publications in
which the most knowledgeable reviewers about the subject can be
found.


---Tim Shuba---

"shuba" writes:

[tvf]: you act as if a reasoned argument cannot trump the previously
expressed opinions of experts. If that were true, theoretical science
could make very little progress.

[shuba]: To my knowledge, *none* of the experts in physics and
mathematics who have addressed your faster-than-light claims on usenet
are satisfied that your argument holds water.

And yet none of them have anything of substance left to say
in rebuttal. But I can assure you that my email feedback is
overwhelmingly positive - not just because people think or hope my
published arguments are right, but more because they can at least
*understand* them.

"The discovery of truth is prevented more effectively not by
the false appearance of things present and which mislead into error, not
directly by weakness of the reasoning powers, but by preconceived
opinion, by prejudice." -- Arthur Schopenhauer

[shuba] In fact, the consensus seems to be that you use terminology
poorly and imprecisely.

Until recently, I continued in the naïve belief that most
relativists knew basic physics. It has been an eye-opener to discover
that many of them cannot go beyond mathematical arguments into the
physics and experiments behind the math. Yet this is the domain where
all my arguments occur because I have no issues with the math of GR, but
only with the physical interpretation.

So it does not now surprise me to hear this claim. However,
what counts is not USENET polls, but the opinions of reviewers and
editors of journals and rank-and-file physicists, where I seem to be
having no such problems. In fact, the majority of USENET readers who
choose to communicate with me remark on how much more sense my messages
make than the messages of those who try to counter mine. (You might
fairly remark that I am describing a biased selection of opinions; but
then, your selection is no less biased.)

[shuba]: It may give you pleasure to have someone to label
"uninformed", especially since that's basically the label which genuine
experts have given you. However, your claims to have defeated the
arguments against your ideas seem to be convincing only to yourself.

You forgot that I have a co-author on my most recent work,
another senior physicist; and that my three published papers all went
through refereeing and past editors; and that I have been involved in
USENET discussions on this topic for more than a decade, during which
time many others have found the ideas attractive and said so here or on
their web sites. So which group is better entitled to make that claim
that their ideas are convincing only to themselves, the group that has
answered all objections and repeatedly published its claims, or the
group that has fallen silent and has nothing of value left to say except
the occasional ad hominem remark?

[shuba]: I'm not an expert, and I do rely on what is said by people I
consider the most knowledgeable. I also look at how people present
themselves. Most everything about your approach leads me to believe you
are not particularly honest, from your claims above to the particular
choice of journals to which you've published.

Well, I am supposedly an "expert" in the physics of
gravitation and in celestial mechanics, which is the field in which I
earned my doctorate at Yale. I am well-familiar with mathematical
relativity, but not especially expert there. However, the relevant field
for my published papers is the former where I have more expertise than
most on USENET, not the latter where I don't. And one of the main
reasons why my papers draw so little response from relativists is that
their expertise is not in these areas relevant to the physical
interpretation of GR. Mine is. So you have chosen to follow experts in
the wrong field of expertise to judge my published papers. (That doesn't
make my arguments correct. It simply means you have chosen less
qualified judges to pin your hopes on.)

And speaking of the occasional ad hominem remark. Of course,
you are unable to defend your "dishonest" claim or your "choice of
journals" claim with anything of substance. But I understand the
frustration that leads you to lash out in this way. By your own
admission, you have established some criteria about whose opinions to
trust. You probably have based many of your life decisions around those
criteria. It follows that, if you have misjudged me, you would have a
*lot* of re-thinking and soul-searching to do because your criteria for
deciding matters where experts disagree would be called into question.
This is a difficulty for all authority-oriented people, not just you.

To avoid that dilemma and the problem that so many people
follow poor leaders and fool themselves with their beliefs, science has
set up some rules about formulating and testing hypotheses and
insulating the results from the biases that we all bring to the table. I
recommend some reading about scientific method - not the "testing" part
that everyone knows, but the "controls against bias" part that few still
put into practice. Without controls, we would continually select
favorable data, reject unfavorable data, and interpret all events as
supporting our most cherished beliefs. "Controls" is the area where your
personal criteria are defective, IMO, because you do not require them in
your choice of experts. If you look into this, your criteria will
probably need revision; but someday you will be very glad you did. It
might even save your life or that of a loved one because medical doctors
are no more exempt from fooling themselves and being collectively wrong
than are experts in any field.

[shuba]: One of few things we appear to agree on is that Carlip does
deserve to be labeled an informed expert. In response to a query I made
on usenet, Carlip gave an interesting overview regarding journal
publication of general relativity articles. . With this response in
mind, in certainly looks as if, whether by design or default, Van
Flandern has avoided those publications in which the most knowledgeable
reviewers about the subject can be found.

As I noted above, I was not writing about mathematical
relativity, so those journals would not have been the most appropriate
for my paper. I wrote about the physical interpretation of relativity.
For that and the physical interpretation of quantum mechanics (the area
of expertise of my co-author, J.P. Vigier), Physics Letters would be one
the most appropriate journals, which is where the paper went first.

But I'm dodging an issue here that I really should address.
Anyone who thinks that the leading journals are unbiased forums is
inexperienced or naïve. I do not know of any of them that do not have
"reject at the door" criteria, and that includes my own journal (Meta
Research Bulletin). These criteria are persons or institutions or
subjects or methods or other things that get an automatic rejection
without review. Obviously, the tolerance of individual journals to
non-conformist ideas varies widely. But ultimately, "experts" in any
given area tend to choose one or a few favorite journals where they
support the editor and where the editor in turn recognizes them as "the
experts". Then they can reject non-conformist papers that come to these
selected journals and denounce other non-conformist papers as "not
published in a journal recognized by experts", which is then a
self-aggrandizing criterion.

Steve Carlip and I have been debating the "speed of gravity"
issue for about a decade now. Suppose I submitted a very good paper
(suspend your disbelief about that being possible :-) to "Classical and
Quantum Gravity", which is at the top of Carlip's recommended journals
list. The editor might well choose Carlip as a referee because he might
be thought highly qualified in this area, even though my arguments deal
mostly with celestial mechanics, physics experiments, and equations of
motion. Carlip would probably not like my paper's conclusion (he has not
up to now), so he might reject my paper with some technical argument
over the editor's head. If the editor gives me a chance to respond at
all (a long shot at many journals), and I respond with a clear argument
that undermines Carlip's reason for rejection, the editor has a major
problem on his hands. He depends on Carlip's support and needs to
continue calling on his expertise in the future because Carlip is a
member of that journal's editorial board. Given the need to upset either
the author or the editorial board member, which way do you suppose the
editor will go? More importantly, why would the editor go down a path
that might put him into such a bind? The easiest way is
rejection-at-the-door for anything potentially upsetting to journal
supporters or board members. The author usually never learns what hit
him.

By contrast, good scientists never fear to engage, debate,
test, and use controls against bias. Consider a scenario for dealing
with this controversy that is designed to advance science. Carlip,
acting as a member of the editorial board, invites me to submit a paper
to CQG and to personally oversee the review process to ensure that it is
both thorough and fair. He selects reviewers who are expert in each
relevant area. He does not require that I convince skeptical reviewers,
but does require that I show the paper contains no demonstrable error.
As long as the reviewer and editor are prepared to accept a paper that
is not clearly erroneous, and the author(s) can admit error when it is
pointed out, then react appropriately (correct error or withdraw paper),
this should represent the fairest way to advance science and get at
nature's truth. But the system is what it is because few reviewers,
editors, or authors act in this idealistic way.

In yesterday's science news I read the following: "Why did
it take half a century to figure out that Piltdown man was a phony? 'The
people who believed in it were very powerful", . especially Arthur Smith
Woodward, the museum's leading geologist at the time of the discovery.
'You had to be very cautious about taking after people like this.'" The
same can be said for the editorial boards at many journals. I once had a
paper rejected at the door - not because of any fault in it but because
publishing it would be "too risky" to the journal's reputation
regardless of what reviewers might have said.

Here's another challenge. Lorentzian relativity (LR)
competes with special relativity (SR) to best describe the relativity of
motion. SR has a universal speed limit, c. LR has no speed limit. The
key difference between the two theories is that SR applies the Lorentz
transformations both ways between any two inertial frames, whereas LR
applies them only one way, from the local gravitational potential field
to a relatively moving inertial frame. So why do some "experts" continue
to claim the universe must have a speed limit when LR remains as
experimentally viable as SR? Clearly, while LR is still viable, such a
claim has no firm experimental underpinnings. To justify such a claim,
any published refutation of Lorentzian relativity or the Lorentz Ether
Theory would suffice. For a matter this important to physics, can you
imagine that such a refutation is possible but no one has ever bothered
to do it? -|Tom|-


Tom Van Flandern - Washington, DC - see our web site on replacement
astronomy research at http://metaresearch.org

Paul Stowe wrote:
As well you should Bill, that IS the whole point. Namely, Quantum
behavior arrises from so-called classical systems... It all in what
matter is, and how that CAN react to AND interact with its parent
medium.


Bill Hobba wrote:
Then you have not taken on the import of the Kochen-Specker theorem
which strongly suggests otherwise.

No Bill, it is you, not I that does not realize the 'limitations'
that 'idealized assumptions' set on ANY theorem. See,

http://math.ucsd.edu/~dmeyer/researc...snull/abs.html
http://confer.uj.edu.pl/bell.workshop/doc/breuer.pdf
http://tph.tuwien.ac.at/~svozil/publ/2000-co.pdf

As I said in previous threads people have tried to escape the Kochen-Specker
theorem in numerous ways - all have failed. The refutation of the claim
finite precision measurement nullifies the Kochen-Specker theorem can be
found at http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0104024.

Bill Hobba wrote:
Classical systems are inherently both value definite and noncontextual.
Quantum systems are not.

Paul stowe replied:
Sigh,...

Sigh....

Thanks
Bill

Tom Van Flandern:
"shuba" writes:

[tvf]: you act as if a reasoned argument cannot trump the previously
expressed opinions of experts. If that were true, theoretical science
could make very little progress.

[shuba]: To my knowledge, *none* of the experts in physics and
mathematics who have addressed your faster-than-light claims on usenet
are satisfied that your argument holds water.

And yet none of them have anything of substance left to say
in rebuttal.

That isn't true. You claimed the gradients in E&M and gravity
"propagate instantaneously", so that there was no reason that
one couldn't make things go faster than light. I gave you an
example where a charge sees only a static potential difference
accelerating it, but cannot be made to exceed the speed of
light. So far you haven't answered that.


But I can assure you that my email feedback is
overwhelmingly positive - not just because people think or hope my
published arguments are right, but more because they can at least
*understand* them.

Lot's of people posting to this newsgroup claim the understand
special relativity, too, but in followups, demonstrate otherwise.

[...]
Until recently, I continued in the naïve belief that most
relativists knew basic physics.

Until I started reading sci.physics.relativity, I had the naive
belief that the ether was a rather arcane subject of interest to
historians rather than something anyone who had studied physics
would take seriously. So much for expectations.


It has been an eye-opener to discover
that many of them cannot go beyond mathematical arguments into the
physics and experiments behind the math.

Having read one of your papers, I took you to be one of those to
whom you refer. Your description of special relativity was so
tortured and mangled, that it would have difficult to tell you
were describing special relativity had you not stated what you
were describing. Methinks your description of special relativity
is deliberately created to make special relativity appear confusing
in order to promote your own version of LET and make it seem less
tortured by comparison.

Yet this is the domain where all my arguments occur because I have
no issues with the math of GR, but only with the physical interpretation.

That makes us even. I have a great deal of difficulty believing
you could have studied relativity and come up with your physical
interpretation of it.

[...]
You forgot that I have a co-author on my most recent work,
another senior physicist; and that my three published papers all went
through refereeing and past editors; and that I have been involved in
USENET discussions on this topic for more than a decade, during which
time many others have found the ideas attractive and said so here or on
their web sites. So which group is better entitled to make that claim
that their ideas are convincing only to themselves, the group that has
answered all objections and repeatedly published its claims, or the
group that has fallen silent and has nothing of value left to say except
the occasional ad hominem remark?

Peter lynds was published in "Foundations of Physics Letters",
despite his article not being very novel if one read between the
lines and gave him credit for expressing an idea rather common
to quantum mechanics, except not doing it very well. So?
That only tells me what the stuff that doesn't get published
must be like.

[...]
continue calling on his expertise in the future because Carlip is a
member of that journal's editorial board. Given the need to upset either
the author or the editorial board member, which way do you suppose the
editor will go? More importantly, why would the editor go down a path
that might put him into such a bind? The easiest way is
rejection-at-the-door for anything potentially upsetting to journal
supporters or board members. The author usually never learns what hit
him.

I can't address the editorial policy of that journal, but
the aps journals encourage authors to submit a list of
referees the author believes is qualified to judge the
merits of the article being submitted.

[...]

"Bilge" writes:

[Bilge]: You claimed the gradients in E&M and gravity "propagate
instantaneously", so that there was no reason that one couldn't make
things go faster than light. I gave you an example where a charge sees
only a static potential difference accelerating it, but cannot be made
to exceed the speed of light. So far you haven't answered that.

In our previous exchange, you at first appeared interested
and asked good questions. But some answer I gave was apparently not to
your liking, so you made some non-sequitur assertions without further
questions, which I took to be the end of your interest. I will take your
last sentence above as an implied question and repeat the answer I gave
previously, but will use new phraseology in the hope of being better
understood.

First, your summary of what I said is out of context and
disorganized. Among the things I do claim are these:
** In GR and electrodynamics, potential fields exist that behave like
optical mediums, and in which propagation speeds for any disturbance are
(without dispute) equal to the speed of light.
** In GR and electrodynamics, when mathematical gradients are taken in
those fields, the process used is to take partial derivatives with
respect to instantaneous spatial coordinates rather than retarded
spatial coordinates. This is what I call an "instantaneous gradient". It
is obviously appropriate for some fixed point within those fields, and
just as obviously inappropriate for a moving point (such as an orbiting
body or moving charge) within those fields.
** The gradient of the potential is supposed to represent the force,
defined as the time rate of change of the momentum of a target body.
Changes in momentum propagate at some speed: the speed that is a factor
in the definition of momentum, which is the (relativistically scaled)
product of a mass and a velocity. If such a force is to remain equal to
the gradient of the potential, that gradient *must* be a retarded
gradient and consider the motion of the source during the finite
propagation time from source mass/charge to target body.
** Radiation pressure is an example of a force that propagates at speed
c and appears to emanate from the retarded source position. This
propagation delay results in spiral orbits.

Separately, I noted that Lorentzian relativity (LR) is a
viable model that competes with special relativity (SR) to represent the
relativity of motion. Yet LR, unlike SR, has no speed limit. For that
reason, physics has no problem with FTL propagation and communication in
forward time at any speed. Only SR has a problem with such things; but
SR does not have to be the right choice between SR and LR; and SR is
contradicted by experiments showing forces in gravity and
electrodynamics propagating strongly FTL in forward time.

Reverting to your question about accelerating charges to FTL
speeds, in physics no body can be pushed to a higher speed than the
speed of the force doing the pushing. In accelerator experiments, all
applied forces are operating at or below the speed of light. So an FTL
speed cannot result, just as a propeller plane cannot achieve a speed
faster than sound unless a force other than the sub-sonic one from the
propellers operates. The same holds for your charge accelerated by a
static potential difference. Waves or disturbances in gravitational or
electrodynamic potentials propagate at the speed of light. Only
gravitational force and Coulomb force propagate strongly FTL.

I provided some additional details in my answer to Carlip in
another thread.

[Bilge]: Your description of special relativity was so tortured and
mangled, that it would have difficult to tell you were describing
special relativity had you not stated what you were describing. Methinks
your description of special relativity is deliberately created to make
special relativity appear confusing in order to promote your own version
of LET and make it seem less tortured by comparison.

I assume you refer to "What the Global Positioning System
tells us about the twins paradox", Episteme #6 pt. II,
http://www.dipmat.unipg.it/~bartocci/ep6/ep6-vanfl.htm (2002/12/21);
also published in MetaRes.Bull. 11, 39-46 (2002). Methinks you have
never understood why SR has created so much controversy over the years
and continues to do so. If you think in causality terms instead of math
terms, acceleration cannot be invoked as the cause of the asymmetry in
SR because the whole Twins paradox can be done without accelerations. So
most "resolutions" of the paradox are no such thing.

My paper discusses the first and only explanation I've seen
that explains how to get the twins result without accelerations. The
main new insight is to follow what happens to a "moving" clock adjusted
in the same way as GPS satellite clocks are adjusted pre-launch to
maintain continuous synchronization in orbit with ground clocks. In that
way, the traveler carries two clocks: a native clock and a clock always
reading Earth time. It provides much insight into how SR and LR work to
explain nature.

No surprise: the LR explanation is much simpler. But if you
don't already know that, you aren't staying current in the
field. -|Tom|-


Tom Van Flandern - Washington, DC - see our web site on replacement
astronomy research at http://metaresearch.org

"Tom Van Flandern" wrote in message ...
"Bilge" writes:

[Bilge]: You claimed the gradients in E&M and gravity "propagate
instantaneously", so that there was no reason that one couldn't make
things go faster than light. I gave you an example where a charge sees
only a static potential difference accelerating it, but cannot be made
to exceed the speed of light. So far you haven't answered that.

In our previous exchange, you at first appeared interested
and asked good questions. But some answer I gave was apparently not to
your liking, so you made some non-sequitur assertions without further
questions, which I took to be the end of your interest. I will take your
last sentence above as an implied question and repeat the answer I gave
previously, but will use new phraseology in the hope of being better
understood.

First, your summary of what I said is out of context and
disorganized. Among the things I do claim are these:
** In GR and electrodynamics, potential fields exist that behave like
optical mediums, and in which propagation speeds for any disturbance are
(without dispute) equal to the speed of light.
** In GR and electrodynamics, when mathematical gradients are taken in
those fields, the process used is to take partial derivatives with
respect to instantaneous spatial coordinates rather than retarded
spatial coordinates. This is what I call an "instantaneous gradient". It
is obviously appropriate for some fixed point within those fields, and
just as obviously inappropriate for a moving point (such as an orbiting
body or moving charge) within those fields.
** The gradient of the potential is supposed to represent the force,
defined as the time rate of change of the momentum of a target body.
Changes in momentum propagate at some speed: the speed that is a factor
in the definition of momentum, which is the (relativistically scaled)
product of a mass and a velocity. If such a force is to remain equal to
the gradient of the potential, that gradient *must* be a retarded
gradient and consider the motion of the source during the finite
propagation time from source mass/charge to target body.
** Radiation pressure is an example of a force that propagates at speed
c and appears to emanate from the retarded source position. This
propagation delay results in spiral orbits.

Separately, I noted that Lorentzian relativity (LR) is a
viable model that competes with special relativity (SR) to represent the
relativity of motion. Yet LR, unlike SR, has no speed limit. For that
reason, physics has no problem with FTL propagation and communication in
forward time at any speed. Only SR has a problem with such things; but
SR does not have to be the right choice between SR and LR; and SR is
contradicted by experiments showing forces in gravity and
electrodynamics propagating strongly FTL in forward time.

Reverting to your question about accelerating charges to FTL
speeds, in physics no body can be pushed to a higher speed than the
speed of the force doing the pushing. In accelerator experiments, all
applied forces are operating at or below the speed of light. So an FTL
speed cannot result, just as a propeller plane cannot achieve a speed
faster than sound unless a force other than the sub-sonic one from the
propellers operates. The same holds for your charge accelerated by a
static potential difference. Waves or disturbances in gravitational or
electrodynamic potentials propagate at the speed of light. Only
gravitational force and Coulomb force propagate strongly FTL.

I provided some additional details in my answer to Carlip in
another thread.

[Bilge]: Your description of special relativity was so tortured and
mangled, that it would have difficult to tell you were describing
special relativity had you not stated what you were describing. Methinks
your description of special relativity is deliberately created to make
special relativity appear confusing in order to promote your own version
of LET and make it seem less tortured by comparison.

I assume you refer to "What the Global Positioning System
tells us about the twins paradox", Episteme #6 pt. II,
http://www.dipmat.unipg.it/~bartocci/ep6/ep6-vanfl.htm (2002/12/21);
also published in MetaRes.Bull. 11, 39-46 (2002). Methinks you have
never understood why SR has created so much controversy over the years
and continues to do so. If you think in causality terms instead of math
terms, acceleration cannot be invoked as the cause of the asymmetry in
SR because the whole Twins paradox can be done without accelerations. So
most "resolutions" of the paradox are no such thing.

My paper discusses the first and only explanation I've seen
that explains how to get the twins result without accelerations. The
main new insight is to follow what happens to a "moving" clock adjusted
in the same way as GPS satellite clocks are adjusted pre-launch to
maintain continuous synchronization in orbit with ground clocks. In that
way, the traveler carries two clocks: a native clock and a clock always
reading Earth time. It provides much insight into how SR and LR work to
explain nature.

No surprise: the LR explanation is much simpler. But if you
don't already know that, you aren't staying current in the
field. -|Tom|-


Tom Van Flandern - Washington, DC - see our web site on replacement
astronomy research at http://metaresearch.org

xxein: Sorry. This universe will not hand out a cigar to you either.