http://books.google.com/books?id=JokgnS1JtmMC
Banesh Hoffmann, Relativity and Its Roots, p. 106: "The effect is mutual. Each of us finds the other's lengths in the direction of our relative motion contracted. When FitzGerald and Lorentz and Poincaré spoke of a contraction, they thought of it as arising from motion through the ether. Undoubtedly they silently assumed that someone at rest in the ether would find that moving lengths were contracted but that a moving observer would find that lengths at rest in the ether were expanded compared with his own. And the even greater silence of these scientists about the slowing of clocks shows that in spite of their mathematical equations being the same as Einstein's, the idea of a reciprocal slowing of clocks was foreign to their views."

Why were the scientists silent about reciprocal length contraction and time dilation, in spite of the reciprocity being present in their equations? They were not as bright as Einstein? Or they didn't find reciprocal length contraction and time dilation physically plausible? The latter suggestion is more reasonable - actually reciprocal length contraction and time dilation are idiocies.

Let us consider reciprocal length contraction first. It implies that unlimitedly long objects can gloriously be trapped inside unlimitedly short containers:

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physic...barn_pole.html
John Baez: "These are the props. You own a barn, 40m long, with automatic doors at either end, that can be opened and closed simultaneously by a switch. You also have a pole, 80m long, which of course won't fit in the barn. [...] So, as the pole passes through the barn, there is an instant when it is completely within the barn. At that instant, you close both doors simultaneously, with your switch. [...] If it does not explode under the strain and it is sufficiently elastic it will come to rest and start to spring back to its natural shape but since it is too big for the barn the other end is now going to crash into the back door and the rod will be trapped in a compressed state inside the barn."

See, at 7:12 in the video below, how the train is trapped "in a compressed state" inside the tunnel:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xrqj88zQZJg
"Einstein's Relativistic Train in a Tunnel Paradox: Special Relativity"

It is not difficult to realize that trapping long objects inside short containers drastically violates the law of conservation of energy. The trapped object, in trying to restore its original volume ("spring back to its natural shape"), would produce an enormous amount of work the energy for which comes from nowhere.

At 9:01 in the above video Sarah sees the train falling through the hole, and in order to save Einstein's relativity, the authors of the video inform the gullible world that Adam as well sees the train falling through the hole. However Adam can only see this if the train undergoes an absurd disintegration first, as shown at 9:53.

Clearly we have reductio ad absurdum: An absurd disintegration is required - Adam sees it, Sarah doesn't. Conclusion: The underlying premise, Einstein's 1905 constant-speed-of-light postulate, is false.

Pentcho Valev