View Single Post
  #2  
Old August 24th 20, 04:05 PM posted to sci.astro
Pentcho Valev
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 8,078
Default Einstein's Relativity and Post-Truth Science

Banesh Hoffmann, Einstein's collaborator, admits that, originally ("without recourse to contracting lengths, local time, or Lorentz transformations"), the Michelson-Morley experiment directly proved Newton's variable speed of light and disproved the constant speed of light:

"Moreover, if light consists of particles, as Einstein had suggested in his paper submitted just thirteen weeks before this one, the second principle seems absurd: A stone thrown from a speeding train can do far more damage than one thrown from a train at rest; the speed of the particle is not independent of the motion of the object emitting it. And if we take light to consist of particles and assume that these particles obey Newton's laws, they will conform to Newtonian relativity and thus automatically account for the null result of the Michelson-Morley experiment without recourse to contracting lengths, local time, or Lorentz transformations. Yet, as we have seen, Einstein resisted the temptation to account for the null result in terms of particles of light and simple, familiar Newtonian ideas, and introduced as his second postulate something that was more or less obvious when thought of in terms of waves in an ether." Banesh Hoffmann, Relativity and Its Roots, p.92 https://www.amazon.com/Relativity-It.../dp/0486406768

Wikipedia tells the truth about the Michelson-Morley experiment here (elsewhere it says the opposite):

"Emission theory, also called emitter theory or ballistic theory of light, was a competing theory for the special theory of relativity, explaining the results of the Michelson–Morley experiment of 1887. [...] The name most often associated with emission theory is Isaac Newton. In his corpuscular theory Newton visualized light "corpuscles" being thrown off from hot bodies at a nominal speed of c with respect to the emitting object, and obeying the usual laws of Newtonian mechanics, and we then expect light to be moving towards us with a speed that is offset by the speed of the distant emitter (c ± v)." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emission_theory

John Norton: "The Michelson-Morley experiment is fully compatible with an emission theory of light that CONTRADICTS THE LIGHT POSTULATE." http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/1743/2/Norton.pdf

Except for a few eccentrics (e.g. Banesh Hoffmann, John Norton) who indulge in hinting at the truth sometimes, high priests in the Einstein cult teach that in 1887 the Michelson-Morley experiment proved the constant speed of light and disproved Newton's variable speed of light. So the physics community is unanimously convinced that this is the truth. Sometimes physicists come across texts (like those above) that suggest a different truth, but immediately forget them. The fundamental post-truth principle "truth doesn't matter" has developed into "truthful thoughts should be suppressed":

George Orwell: "Crimestop means the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical to Ingsoc, and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. Crimestop, in short, means protective stupidity."

More he https://twitter.com/pentcho_valev

Pentcho Valev