Greetings.

In an unmoderated newsgroup unrelated to the topic of physics, I was
taking part in the following thread...


http://groups.google.com/group/alt.r...c38cffbffd17bb

...which served as one of many "flame wars" in that newsgroup. The
part I was interested in, and which I felt is relevant to this
newsgroup, was discussion on the following article:

http://www.mrelativity.net/Papers/8/Sharma4.htm

The article asserts that the formula E=m(c^2) did not originate with
Einstein, and towards the end there are no so subtle recriminations of
"plagiarism" (the author even cites fringe elements, such as Bjerknes
and Moody, who have explicitly claimed such). The person who first
introduced the article to the relevant thread did so within the context
of an attempt to demonstrate that (a) Einstein was "an icorrigible
plagiarist," and (b) Einstein did not deserve the Nobel Prize he
received for physics.

I myself am a complete novice with regard to physics, but I want to
look deeper into the issue. My questions are as follows:

(1) Does the article above actually demonstrate "plagiarism" on the
part of Einstein?

(2) Is the subject covered therein at all relevant to the work which
earned Einstein his Nobel Prize?

(3) What is position of the mainstream scientific community with regard
to origins and history of the formula E=m(c^2) attributed to Einstein?

(4) I plan on spending some time in the library reading up on all this,
so can anyone recommend books or articles in serious peer reviewed
journals which cover this subject?

Any other comments or insights on that piece would be greatly
appreciated.

I wanted to add a bit more...

Sayid Abu Khamr al-Murtad wrote:
The part I was interested in, and which I felt is relevant to this
newsgroup, was discussion on the following article:

http://www.mrelativity.net/Papers/8/Sharma4.htm

The article above includes the following claim:

"In 1905 Einstein derived light energy–mass equivalence ΔL=Δmc²,
then speculated from it ΔE =Δmc² without proof."

Now, I had been taught in my undergraduate intro to physics class that
the formula popularly written...

E=m(c^2)

...was originally written by Einstein as:

m=L(c^2)

...where L represented the exact same thing E did. It turns out
neither formula was explicitly written in Einstein's article. You can
see the German original he

http://www.physik.uni-augsburg.de/an...s/1905_18_639-...


...as well as an English translation he

http://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/einstein/E_mc2/www/

The first sentence of the fourth paragraph from the bottom reads as
follows:

"Gibt ein Körper die Energie L in Form von Strahlung ab, so
verkleinert sich seine Masse um L/(V^2)."

[The English translation has: "If a body gives off the energy L in the
form of radiation, its mass diminishes by L/c²."]

This is apparently the origin of the formula. What Einstein is
postulating is m=L(V^2). What 'L' represents is the same as what 'E'
represents in popular writings of the formula. What 'V' represents is
what 'c' represents in the same popular writings of the formula.

In short, what I'm saying is that it seems the author is exhibiting a
rather gross misunderstanding of the subject. I was wondering if
perhaps others could comment on this?

Sayid Abu Khamr al-Murtad wrote:

Now, I had been taught in my undergraduate intro to physics class that
the formula popularly written...

E=m(c^2)

...was originally written by Einstein as:

m=L(c^2)

Sorry, bad typo (instantiated several times in my post). I meant to
write:

m=L/(c^2)

Sayid Abu Khamr al-Murtad wrote:
Greetings.

In an unmoderated newsgroup unrelated to the topic of physics, I was
taking part in the following thread...


http://groups.google.com/group/alt.r...c38cffbffd17bb

...which served as one of many "flame wars" in that newsgroup. The
part I was interested in, and which I felt is relevant to this
newsgroup, was discussion on the following article:

http://www.mrelativity.net/Papers/8/Sharma4.htm

The article asserts that the formula E=m(c^2) did not originate with
Einstein, and towards the end there are no so subtle recriminations of
"plagiarism" (the author even cites fringe elements, such as Bjerknes
and Moody, who have explicitly claimed such). The person who first
introduced the article to the relevant thread did so within the context
of an attempt to demonstrate that (a) Einstein was "an icorrigible
plagiarist," and (b) Einstein did not deserve the Nobel Prize he
received for physics.

I myself am a complete novice with regard to physics, but I want to
look deeper into the issue. My questions are as follows:

(1) Does the article above actually demonstrate "plagiarism" on the
part of Einstein?

One only needs to study the actual physics to see that the claims are
wrong.

(2) Is the subject covered therein at all relevant to the work which
earned Einstein his Nobel Prize?

No, actually. He got it for the photoelectric effect. You can already
tell by the handling of the HTML on the second site you mention how
incompetent the fellow is. And HTML is infinitely easier than
relativity.

(3) What is position of the mainstream scientific community with regard
to origins and history of the formula E=m(c^2) attributed to Einstein?

The position is that the formula is Einstein's. Physics is not just the
look of formulas, development of entire ideas is what counts. For
example, Karl Schwarzschild wrote down in 1915 the famous spacetime
metric which is now known as the static black hole. This metric
predicts the existence of a certain critical distance called the
Schwarzschild radius with the property that light cannot escape from a
body whose diameter is less than its Schwarzschild radius. The same
conclusion and the same value for such critical radius had been
obtained earlier (in 1798) by Laplace - yet no sane person would call
it "the Laplace radius". So it may be true that somebody somewhere has
written down something like E=mc^2 but it's the context that matters
and to trace those things down one must understand physics - from my
experience none of the guys who write that plagiarism stuff can do even
simplest physics.

(4) I plan on spending some time in the library reading up on all this,
so can anyone recommend books or articles in serious peer reviewed
journals which cover this subject?

AFAIK there are none, IMHO it's a cuckoo field, like angle trisecting,
perpetual motion machine building, etc.

Any other comments or insights on that piece would be greatly
appreciated.

The Einstein Archive has been made public only recently (1987, I think)
and it activated a lot of research into Einstein's way of deriving his
theories. It turns out he put a lot of information of this type in his
letters, they are fascinating to read. Unlike the sources you mention,
this research is based on hard facts. It can get very technical in
places but that's the nature of the thing and unless one can follow
this in full detail one cannot really make any claims of the sort you
quote. Two standard and ongoing research projects on this a
http://tinyurl.com/fpf3r (several volumes)
http://tinyurl.com/kojac (several volumes)

The latter series has its volumes assigned different Library of
Congress subject classification numbers so if you go a library they'll
most likely be spread all over the physics section which is a bit
annoying (the Library of Congress cataloguing scheme is another mystery
bordering on total idiocy - another topic for another time :-) )

--
Jan Bielawski

Study the real physics!

Sayid Abu Khamr al-Murtad wrote:
(1) Does the article above actually demonstrate "plagiarism" on the
part of Einstein?

No. Einstein derived the formula using the formalism he introduced in an
earlier paper in 1905, which we now call Special Relativity. His
approach is completely new. The fact that other approaches can yield a
similar formula in a completely different context is irrelevant.


(2) Is the subject covered therein at all relevant to the work which
earned Einstein his Nobel Prize?

No. He earned the prize for his paper on the photoelectric effect, which
became a seminal paper in quantum mechanics. That's a completely
different field of physics from SR.


(3) What is position of the mainstream scientific community with regard
to origins and history of the formula E=m(c^2) attributed to Einstein?

There is no doubt whatsoever that this formula is attributed to Einstein.


(4) I plan on spending some time in the library reading up on all this,
so can anyone recommend books or articles in serious peer reviewed
journals which cover this subject?

Waste of time. This has been well researched, and an amateur who is
un-educated in physics has no realistic hope of making any contribution.
Look up the references given elsewhere in this thread.


Any other comments or insights on that piece would be greatly
appreciated.

On the web today, the amount of nonsense far exceeds the amount of
accurate information, especially in technical subjects. This is merely a
case in point.


Tom Roberts

"Tom Roberts" wrote in message
.com...
Sayid Abu Khamr al-Murtad wrote:
(1) Does the article above actually demonstrate "plagiarism" on the
part of Einstein?

No. Einstein derived the formula using the formalism he introduced in
an
earlier paper in 1905, which we now call Special Relativity. His
approach is completely new. The fact that other approaches can yield a
similar formula in a completely different context is irrelevant.


(2) Is the subject covered therein at all relevant to the work which
earned Einstein his Nobel Prize?

No. He earned the prize for his paper on the photoelectric effect,
which
became a seminal paper in quantum mechanics. That's a completely
different field of physics from SR.

Actually, not different fields any longer. They both help to explain
each other. A marriage made in heaven. Quantum Field Theory. The big
result; quantum vacuum charge = +,- sqrt(hbar*c). Now on to Super-GR.

FrediFizzx

Quantum Vacuum Charge papers;
http://www.vacuum-physics.com/QVC/qu...uum_charge.pdf
or postscript
http://www.vacuum-physics.com/QVC/qu...cuum_charge.ps
http://www.arxiv.org/abs/physics/0601110
http://www.vacuum-physics.com

"Sayid Abu Khamr al-Murtad" wrote in message
oups.com...

Tom's reply is excellent - but I just wanted to add a few comments.

Greetings.

In an unmoderated newsgroup unrelated to the topic of physics, I was
taking part in the following thread...


http://groups.google.com/group/alt.r...c38cffbffd17bb

...which served as one of many "flame wars" in that newsgroup. The
part I was interested in, and which I felt is relevant to this
newsgroup, was discussion on the following article:

http://www.mrelativity.net/Papers/8/Sharma4.htm

The article asserts that the formula E=m(c^2) did not originate with
Einstein, and towards the end there are no so subtle recriminations of
"plagiarism" (the author even cites fringe elements, such as Bjerknes
and Moody, who have explicitly claimed such).

Much of the formalism of SR can be found in the writings of Poincaire and
Lorentz. However Einstein was the first to realize the true bass of SR lies
in his two axioms (today is generally considered to really lie in one axiom
but that is another issue). Lorentz recognized immediately it was a major
step forward; Poincare never did. That is the reason Einstein is given
credit.

he person who first
introduced the article to the relevant thread did so within the context
of an attempt to demonstrate that (a) Einstein was "an icorrigible
plagiarist," and (b) Einstein did not deserve the Nobel Prize he
received for physics.

He got it for the photoelectric effect - something no one else had been able
to explain.


I myself am a complete novice with regard to physics, but I want to
look deeper into the issue. My questions are as follows:

(1) Does the article above actually demonstrate "plagiarism" on the
part of Einstein?

Einstein was not a plagiarist. Plagiarism is a very serious academic
transgression. If proven Einstein would have been stripped of his many
honors. Intensive research has never even shown a hint of any actual
plagiarism. Only kooks and anti semantic idiots with an ax to grind ever
make such unfounded accusations.


(2) Is the subject covered therein at all relevant to the work which
earned Einstein his Nobel Prize?

Since that is not what he got the Nobel prize for it is obviously
irrelevant.


(3) What is position of the mainstream scientific community with regard
to origins and history of the formula E=m(c^2) attributed to Einstein?

Einstein was the first to realize the modern viewpoint of its origin -
namely that is a result of fundamental notions regarding space-time.


(4) I plan on spending some time in the library reading up on all this,
so can anyone recommend books or articles in serious peer reviewed
journals which cover this subject?

See
http://www.mathpages.com/rr/s8-08/8-08.htm

Thanks
Bill



Any other comments or insights on that piece would be greatly
appreciated.

Sayid Abu Khamr al-Murtad wrote:
Greetings.

In an unmoderated newsgroup unrelated to the topic of physics, I was
taking part in the following thread...


http://groups.google.com/group/alt.r...c38cffbffd17bb

...which served as one of many "flame wars" in that newsgroup. The
part I was interested in, and which I felt is relevant to this
newsgroup, was discussion on the following article:

http://www.mrelativity.net/Papers/8/Sharma4.htm

The article asserts that the formula E=m(c^2) did not originate with
Einstein, and towards the end there are no so subtle recriminations of
"plagiarism" (the author even cites fringe elements, such as Bjerknes
and Moody, who have explicitly claimed such). The person who first
introduced the article to the relevant thread did so within the context
of an attempt to demonstrate that (a) Einstein was "an icorrigible
plagiarist," and (b) Einstein did not deserve the Nobel Prize he
received for physics.

I do not agree that he did not deserve the Nobel. All things
considered, he built on what others did before him, which is
perfectly legal, he just "forgot" to note where he learned it
from. He made errors, which only proved he was a human
and not a god like some today think he was.

The idea of relative motion was already well-known, so no
one can say he "discovered" relative motion. He took the
current knowledge and invented tools for us to measure
relative motion in a theory having tenets that have not been
easy to overturn so far. Some of his conclusions in the
building of his theory have been off somewhat, esp. where
it appears he mixes fantasy with reality, but that only has to
do with the explanations offered from the logic behind the
ideas, and so his ideas are not impugned by that.

His idea that space is curved, e.g., or warped, is a conclusion
that is wrong, I believe, and my model offers another conclusion
that is a better explanation that that. For anything to warp, or
bend or fold, it must have the capacity to do so, and he failed
to explain how space could do such physical things when it has
no such capacity. His conclusion leaves a paradox in its wake.

I read long ago somewhere that the famous formula had been
around for some time as E=mc^2+(energy of motion), which
is the formula to measure the total energy of a mass. This
formula includes the energy accruing to a mass due to its
motion, and since everything in the universe is in motion, and
since the formulas includes the energy of motion, it shows that
was a fact already well-known before Einstein. It is likely that
there was no one person to attribute that formula to, at that
time, other than to the discipline in which it was thought to be
valid (mechanics, I assume), and so we cannot really call that an
act of plagiarism on Einstein's part.

He did not claim to have invented the above formula, and he did
use that formula, either. He shortened it to fit his essay about
relative motion. The energy of motion accruing to objects does
so as kinetic energy and is described as momentum. All objects
in the universe are in motion and so all objects accrue kinetic
energy. That is the reality of our universe.

Then what gives Einstein the right to exclude that from reality?
The right to tell fairytales, which we all have, so long as we do
not hide from others the fact that we are telling such tales. AE
(Albert Einstein) did in fact tell everyone he was talking ONLY
about Relative motion, and not about Absolute motion. There
are many, unfortunately, who missed that disclaimer and have
come to believe he was talking about reality.

He could not have made it any plainer than he did with the title of
his work: Relativity! He said abs. motion was "redundant" in his
work because he was only talking about Relative Motion! I have
found that there are many dolts in science, and some of them
post here in these ngs. You can tell who they are by the way
they argue that Relativity represents reality. I believe it is they,
not AE, who have brought dishonor on his work by not having the
capacity to understand simple words in whatever language. Such
posters here are but a tiny tiny number compared to those who
really have and show a more objective approach to physics.

There is nothing wrong with fairytales, even Relativity, so long as
we see it for what it is: a tool for humans to use. All of our tools
should always be used wisely, but some use them as if they are
not tools, but as if they are reality. Relativity is a great tool for
us to use in measuring our world, but like all math constructs, it is
not reality! It is a measuring tool!

In the case of the famous formula, I think it was not plagiarism,
but I think AE could have made reference to his sources more
often. His failure to do so led to such charges against him. Yet,
even if he was or is guilty of that, his work is not. It is worthy of
the great acclaim it has received.

tomgee wrote:

His idea that space is curved, e.g., or warped, is a conclusion
that is wrong, I believe, and my model offers another conclusion
that is a better explanation that that. For anything to warp, or
bend or fold, it must have the capacity to do so, and he failed
to explain how space could do such physical things when it has
no such capacity.

I rest my case.

--
Jan Bielawski