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Old September 16th 17, 08:02 AM posted to sci.astro
Pentcho Valev
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Default Einstein and Feynman Teach the Same Lie

In my previous posting I wrote this:

Einstein was a powerful doublethinker. He was able to defend both thesis and antithesis with the same conviction, without any hesitation. So in 1911 he explained that the turning-around acceleration ("sudden change of direction") is immaterial with respect to the clock (twin) paradox:

Albert Einstein 1911: "The clock runs slower if it is in uniform motion, but if it undergoes a change of direction as a result of a jolt, then the theory of relativity does not tell us what happens. The sudden change of direction might produce a sudden change in the position of the hands of the clock. However, the longer the clock is moving rectilinearly and uniformly with a given speed in a forward motion, i.e., the larger the dimensions of the polygon, the smaller must be the effect of such a hypothetical sudden change." http://einsteinpapers.press.princeto...vol3-trans/368

In 1918 the turning-around acceleration, which had been immaterial a couple of years before, became crucial and produced a miraculous HOMOGENEOUS gravitational field:

Albert Einstein 1918: "A homogeneous gravitational field appears, that is directed towards the positive x-axis. Clock U1 is accelerated in the direction of the positive x-axis until it has reached the velocity v, then the gravitational field disappears again. An external force, acting upon U2 in the negative direction of the x-axis prevents U2 from being set in motion by the gravitational field. [...] According to the general theory of relativity, a clock will go faster the higher the gravitational potential of the location where it is located, and during partial process 3 U2 happens to be located at a higher gravitational potential than U1. The calculation shows that this speeding ahead constitutes exactly twice as much as the lagging behind during the partial processes 2 and 4."
http://sciliterature.50webs.com/Dialog.htm

Feynman was a much weaker doublethinker than his divine teacher Albert. In his interpretation of the twin paradox he was not doublethinker at all - he just chose "turning-around acceleration is crucial", presented it in a muddled way, and ignored "turning-around acceleration is immaterial":

Richard Feynman: "The twin paradox. To continue our discussion of the Lorentz transformation and relativistic effects, we consider a famous so-called "paradox" of Peter and Paul, who are supposed to be twins, born at the same time. When they are old enough to drive a space ship, Paul flies away at very high speed. Because Peter, who is left on the ground, sees Paul going so fast, all of Paul's clocks appear to go slower, his heart beats go slower, his thoughts go slower, everything goes slower, from Peter's point of view. Of course, Paul notices nothing unusual, but if he travels around and about for a while and then comes back, he will be younger than Peter, the man on the ground! That is actually right; it is one of the consequences of the theory of relativity which has been clearly demonstrated. Just as the mu-mesons last longer when they are moving, so also will Paul last longer when he is moving. This is called a "paradox" only by the people who believe that the principle of relativity means that all motion is relative; they say, "Heh, heh, heh, from the point of view of Paul, can't we say that Peter was moving and should therefore appear to age more slowly? By symmetry, the only possible result is that both should be the same age when they meet." But in order for them to come back together and make the comparison, Paul must either stop at the end of the trip and make a comparison of clocks or, more simply, he has to come back, and the one who comes back must be the man who was moving, and he knows this, because he had to turn around. When he turned around, all kinds of unusual things happened in his space ship - the rockets went off, things jammed up against one wall, and so on - while Peter felt nothing. So the way to state the rule is to say that the man who has felt the accelerations, who has seen things fall against the walls, and so on, is the one who would be the younger."
http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/I_16.html
[END OF SELF-QUOTATION]

Actually I was wrong about Feynman. He does teach doublethink here, quite blatantly, and fatally damages the rationality of his students/readers. In the text above he claims that the turning-around acceleration is crucial but the next text should convince his victims that the turning-around acceleration is immaterial:

Richard Feynman: "When we discussed the fact that moving muons live longer, we used as an example their straight-line motion in the atmosphere. But we can also make muons in a laboratory and cause them to go in a curve with a magnet, and even under this accelerated motion, they last exactly as much longer as they do when they are moving in a straight line. Although no one has arranged an experiment explicitly so that we can get rid of the paradox, one could compare a muon which is left standing with one that had gone around a complete circle, and it would surely be found that the one that went around the circle lasted longer. Although we have not actually carried out an experiment using a complete circle, it is really not necessary, of course, because everything fits together all right. This may not satisfy those who insist that every single fact be demonstrated directly, but we confidently predict the result of the experiment in which Paul goes in a complete circle."

Pentcho Valev