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Old June 30th 16, 06:27 PM posted to sci.astro
Pentcho Valev
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Default Are Einsteinians Disguised Newtonians?

Judging from the following texts, actually most Einsteinians are more or less disguised Newtonians:

https://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-185331159.html
"That lecture, by the German mathematician Hermann Minkowski, established a new arena for the presentation of physics, a new vision of the nature of reality redefining the mathematics of existence. The lecture was titled Space and Time, and it introduced to the world the marriage of the two, now known as spacetime. It was a good marriage, but lately physicists passion for spacetime has begun to diminish. And some are starting to whisper about possible grounds for divorce."

https://edge.org/response-detail/25477
What scientific idea is ready for retirement? Steve Giddings: "Spacetime. Physics has always been regarded as playing out on an underlying stage of space and time. Special relativity joined these into spacetime... [...] The apparent need to retire classical spacetime as a fundamental concept is profound..."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U47kyV4TMnE
Nima Arkani-Hamed (06:11): "Almost all of us believe that space-time doesn't really exist, space-time is doomed and has to be replaced by some more primitive building blocks."

http://www.newscientist.com/article/...spacetime.html
"Rethinking Einstein: The end of space-time [...] The stumbling block lies with their conflicting views of space and time. As seen by quantum theory, space and time are a static backdrop against which particles move. In Einstein's theories, by contrast, not only are space and time inextricably linked, but the resulting space-time is moulded by the bodies within it. [...] Something has to give in this tussle between general relativity and quantum mechanics, and the smart money says that it's relativity that will be the loser."

https://www.newscientist.com/article...wards-in-time/
"[George] Ellis is up against one of the most successful theories in physics: special relativity. It revealed that there's no such thing as objective simultaneity. Although you might have seen three things happen in a particular order – 
A, then B, then C – someone moving 
at a different velocity could have seen 
it a different way – C, then B, then A. 
In other words, without simultaneity there is no way of specifying what things happened "now". And if not "now", what is moving through time? Rescuing an objective "now" is a daunting task."

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22029410.900
New Scientist: "Saving time: Physics killed it. Do we need it back? [...] Einstein landed the fatal blow at the turn of the 20th century."

https://www.perimeterinstitute.ca/re...essons-quantum
Perimeter Institute: "Quantum mechanics has one thing, time, which is absolute. But general relativity tells us that space and time are both dynamical so there is a big contradiction there. So the question is, can quantum gravity be formulated in a context where quantum mechanics still has absolute time?"

http://www.newscientist.com/article/...erse-tick.html
"...says John Norton, a philosopher based at the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Norton is hesitant to express it, but his instinct - and the consensus in physics - seems to be that space and time exist on their own. The trouble with this idea, though, is that it doesn't sit well with relativity, which describes space-time as a malleable fabric whose geometry can be changed by the gravity of stars, planets and matter."

Pentcho Valev