On Apr 20, 10:51Â*pm, "Bill Hobba" wrote:
"Pentcho Valev" wrote in message

ups.com...





http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/node/1162

John Farrell wrote: "The anti-relativity movement got underway as soon
as Einstein's first paper on special relativity was published, in
1905. Some scientists disputed its assertion that the old Newtonian
concepts of absolute space and time - which had never been
scientifically established - were superfluous. Indeed, the attempt to
restore these concepts to mainstream physics has been the essential
foundation of almost every crank theory since."

Red herrings. The real problems with Einstein's relativity were
formulated by Einstein himself at the end of his life:

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."

John Farrell also wrote: "Albert Michelson, famous as the American who
devised the failed Michelson-Morley experiment to detect aether, the
invisible medium that 19th century scientists supposed responsible for
the propagation of light waves through space, never accepted
relativity and he politely admitted this to Einstein when they met."

Michelson had any reason not to accept relativity:

http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/arch...Norton.pdfJohn
Norton: "Einstein regarded the Michelson-Morley experiment as evidence
for the principle of relativity,

There is some evidence he was not even, or only vaguely aware of it.

whereas later writers almost
universally use it as support for the light postulate of special
relativity

Whoever wrote that obviously doesn't read modern physics texts. Â*It is
usually only mentioned in passing; not as central to it.

......THE MICHELSON-MORLEY EXPERIMENT IS FULLY COMPATIBLE
WITH AN EMISSION THEORY OF LIGHT THAT CONTRADICTS THE LIGHT
POSTULATE."

It is fully compatible with all sorts of things, including the existence of
an aether. Â*People with a bit of common sense however know what it implies,
just as those same people know what the evidence the earth in not flat
implies, and the correct conclusion to draw about flat earth nuts, even
though one can not prove it is all not one giant conspiracy like they claim.

Bill





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This from Wikipedia:



CRITICISMS FROM INTERNAL CONSISTENCY--BROWNIAN MOTION AND THE
RELATIVITY OF SIMULTANEITY
Still another criticism has to do with the mathematics Einstein
adopted in order to express special relativity. Unaware of the
polemics involved in the response to Cantorian set theory, he
enthusiastically embraced Poincare's approach in SCIENCE AND
HYPOTHESIS. He was unaware that Poincare's goal in this book was to
develop an approach to mathematics which would "solve" or "avoid" the
supposed paradoxes of set theory.

The polemical position developed--now called natural mathematics (see
P. Maddy, NATURALISM IN MATHEMATICS)--asserts that mathematical
formulations are inherently anomalous; the evidence of this is that
they generate paradoxes. Therefore, the idea that mathematics is an
aspect of human perception, must be made a part of mathematical
formulations even if it plays no internally consistent role in any
natural mathematical formulation. According to Howard and Stachel in
their recent book on Einstein's formative years (John Stachel is
director of the Center for Einstein Studies at Boston University),
Einstein made a “careful reading� of Poincare's formulation of this
point of view.

Poincare believed that “the mind has a direct intuition of this power
['proof by recurrence' or 'mathematical induction'], and experiment
can only be for [the mind] an opportunity of using it, and thereby of
becoming conscious of it.� In geometry “we are brought to [the concept
of space] solely by studying the laws by which…[muscular] sensations
succeed one another.� This idea of “succession� was vital if the
“standstill� to which the “paradoxes� had brought mathematics, was to
be overcome.

Natural mathematics gained widespread acceptance before Einstein came
to it, and when he adopted its precepts, it caused him problems, even
before the formulation of special relativity. As indicated in the
Brown and Stachel book, it was employed in Einstin's 1905 paper on
Brownian motion, with disturbing results: “Einstein begins with an
assumption whose status is still problematic and troubled his
contemporaries: that there exists ‘a time interval τ, which shall be
very small compared with observable time intervals but still so large
that all motions performed by a particle during two consecutive time
intervals τ may be considered as mutually independent events….� As the
author of this passage notes, “[t]his is essentially a very strong
Markov postulate. Einstein makes no attempt to justify it….[W]here
mathematics ends and physics begins is far from clear….�

From here, Einstein went on to apply natural mathematics to his
formulation of the relativity of simultaneity (here the geometric
formulation in RELATIVITY, where its use is particularly clear):


Are two events (e.g. the two strokes of lightning A and B) which are
simultaneous with reference to the railway embankment also
simultaneous relatively to the train? We shall show directly that the
answer must be in the negative. When we say that the lightning strokes
A and B are simultaneous with respect to be embankment, we mean: the
rays of light emitted at the places A and B, where the lightning
occurs, meet each other at the mid-point M of the length AB of the
embankment. But the events A and B also correspond to positions A and
B on the train. Let M1 be the mid-point of the distance AB on the
traveling train. Just when the flashes (as judged from the embankment)
of lightning occur, this point M1 naturally coincides with the point M
but it moves…with the velocity…of the train.


The criticism is that the term “naturally coincides� has no meaning
and leads to logical problems. Einstein does not define it. If it is
dropped, the assumption of two Cartesian coordinate systems leads to a
contradictory conclusion of only one. The idea is that if two parallel
coordinate systems coincide at one point, they coincide at all points
and are one coordinate system, not two. So far, this criticism has not
been overcome.

The natural mathematics justification for the use of the term is that
it “allows� one point to “succeed� another, and so permits the notion
of the relativity of simultaneity to go forward. The criticism is that
that does not resolve the logical problem of the use of "natural"
coincidence in the argument.