Evidence of superluminal group velocity in the near field

On May 16, 5:27*am, Tom Roberts wrote in
sci.physics.relativity:
You apparently believe that relativity depends on the speed of light
being c. While Einstein originally formulated it that way, today we know
it is not required.

By "we" you certainly mean Mitchell Feigenbaum, Jean-Marc Levy-
Leblond, Jong-Ping Hsu, and Honest Tom Roberts. Are there other
Einsteinians who believe that, even if "light in vacuum does not
travel at the invariant speed of the Lorentz transform", special
relativity "would be unaffected":

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/...elativity.html
Why Einstein was wrong about relativity
29 October 2008
Mark Buchanan
NEW SCIENTIST
"Welcome to the weird world of Einstein's special relativity, where as
things move faster they shrink, and where time gets so distorted that
even talking about events being simultaneous is pointless. That all
follows, as Albert Einstein showed, from the fact that light always
travels at the same speed, however you look at it. Really? Mitchell
Feigenbaum, a physicist at The Rockefeller University in New York,
begs to differ. He's the latest and most prominent in a line of
researchers insisting that Einstein's theory has nothing to do with
light - whatever history and the textbooks might say. "Not only is it
not necessary," he says, "but there's absolutely no room in the theory
for it." What's more, Feigenbaum claims in a paper on the arXiv
preprint server that has yet to be peer-reviewed, if only the father
of relativity, Galileo Galilei, had known a little more modern
mathematics back in the 17th century, he could have got as far as
Einstein did (http://arxiv.org/abs/0806.1234). "Galileo's thoughts are
almost 400 years old," he says. "But they're still extraordinarily
potent. They're enough on their own to give Einstein's relativity,
without any additional knowledge." (...) This was a problem if
Maxwell's theory, like all good physical theories, was to follow
Galileo's rule and apply for everyone. If we do not know who measures
the speed of light in the equations, how can we modify them to apply
from other perspectives? Einstein's workaround was that we don't have
to. Faced with the success of Maxwell's theory, he simply added a
second assumption to Galileo's first: that, relative to any observer,
light always travels at the same speed. This "second postulate" is the
source of all Einstein's eccentric physics of shrinking space and
haywire clocks. And with a little further thought, it leads to the
equivalence of mass and energy embodied in the iconic equation E =
mc2. The argument is not about the physics, which countless
experiments have confirmed. It is about whether we can reach the same
conclusions without hoisting light onto its highly irregular pedestal.
(...) But in fact, says Feigenbaum, both Galileo and Einstein missed a
surprising subtlety in the maths - one that renders Einstein's second
postulate superfluous. (...) The result turns the historical logic of
Einstein's relativity on its head. Those contortions of space and time
that Einstein derived from the properties of light actually emerge
from even more basic, purely mathematical considerations. Light's
special position in relativity is a historical accident. (...) The
idea that Einstein's relativity has nothing to do with light could
actually come in rather handy. For one thing, it rules out a nasty
shock if anyone were ever to prove that photons, the particles of
light, have mass. We know that the photon's mass is very small - less
than 10-49 grams. A photon with any mass at all would imply that our
understanding of electricity and magnetism is wrong, and that electric
charge might not be conserved. That would be problem enough, but a
massive photon would also spell deep trouble for the second postulate,
as a photon with mass would not necessarily always travel at the same
speed. Feigenbaum's work shows how, contrary to many physicists'
beliefs, this need not be a problem for relativity."

http://o.castera.free.fr/pdf/chronogeometrie.pdf
Jean-Marc Levy-Leblond "De la relativite à la chronogeometrie ou: Pour
en finir avec le "second postulat" et autres fossiles": "D'autre part,
nous savons aujourd'hui que l'invariance de la vitesse de la lumiere
est une consequence de la nullite de la masse du photon. Mais,
empiriquement, cette masse, aussi faible soit son actuelle borne
superieure experimentale, ne peut et ne pourra jamais etre consideree
avec certitude comme rigoureusement nulle. Il se pourrait meme que de
futures mesures mettent en evidence une masse infime, mais non-nulle,
du photon ; la lumiere alors n'irait plus à la "vitesse de la
lumiere", ou, plus precisement, la vitesse de la lumiere, desormais
variable, ne s'identifierait plus à la vitesse limite invariante. Les
procedures operationnelles mises en jeu par le "second postulat"
deviendraient caduques ipso facto. La theorie elle-meme en serait-elle
invalidee ? Heureusement, il n'en est rien ; mais, pour s'en assurer,
il convient de la refonder sur des bases plus solides, et d'ailleurs
plus economiques. En verite, le "premier postulat" suffit, a la
condition de l'exploiter a fond."

http://o.castera.free.fr/pdf/onemorederivation.pdf
Jean-Marc Levy-Leblond: "This is the point of view from wich I intend
to criticize the overemphasized role of the speed of light in the
foundations of the special relativity, and to propose an approach to
these foundations that dispenses with the hypothesis of the invariance
of c....We believe that special relativity at the present time stands
as a universal theory discribing the structure of a common space-time
arena in which all fundamental processes take place....The evidence of
the nonzero mass of the photon would not, as such, shake in any way
the validity of the special relativity. It would, however, nullify all
its derivations which are based on the invariance of the photon
velocity."

http://www.amazon.com/Einsteins-Rela.../dp/9810238886
Jong-Ping Hsu: "The fundamentally new ideas of the first purpose are
developed on the basis of the term paper of a Harvard physics
undergraduate. They lead to an unexpected affirmative answer to the
long-standing question of whether it is possible to construct a
relativity theory without postulating the constancy of the speed of
light and retaining only the first postulate of special relativity.
This question was discussed in the early years following the discovery
of special relativity by many physicists, including Ritz, Tolman,
Kunz, Comstock and Pauli, all of whom obtained negative answers."

http://groups.google.ca/group/sci.ph...1ebdf49c012de2
Tom Roberts: "If it is ultimately discovered that the photon has a
nonzero mass (i.e. light in vacuum does not travel at the invariant
speed of the Lorentz transform), SR would be unaffected but both
Maxwell's equations and QED would be refuted (or rather, their domains
of applicability would be reduced)."

Pentcho Valev

On May 15, 10:37*pm, Pentcho Valev wrote:
On May 16, 5:27*am, Tom Roberts wrote in
sci.physics.relativity:

You apparently believe that relativity depends on the speed of light
being c. While Einstein originally formulated it that way, today we know
it is not required.

By "we" you certainly mean Mitchell Feigenbaum, Jean-Marc Levy-
Leblond, Jong-Ping Hsu, and Honest Tom Roberts. Are there other
Einsteinians who believe that, even if "light in vacuum does not
travel at the invariant speed of the Lorentz transform", special
relativity "would be unaffected":

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/...6801.500-why-e...
Why Einstein was wrong about relativity
29 October 2008
Mark Buchanan
NEW SCIENTIST
"Welcome to the weird world of Einstein's special relativity, where as
things move faster they shrink, and where time gets so distorted that
even talking about events being simultaneous is pointless. That all
follows, as Albert Einstein showed, from the fact that light always
travels at the same speed, however you look at it. Really? Mitchell
Feigenbaum, a physicist at The Rockefeller University in New York,
begs to differ. He's the latest and most prominent in a line of
researchers insisting that Einstein's theory has nothing to do with
light - whatever history and the textbooks might say. "Not only is it
not necessary," he says, "but there's absolutely no room in the theory
for it." What's more, Feigenbaum claims in a paper on the arXiv
preprint server that has yet to be peer-reviewed, if only the father
of relativity, Galileo Galilei, had known a little more modern
mathematics back in the 17th century, he could have got as far as
Einstein did (http://arxiv.org/abs/0806.1234). "Galileo's thoughts are
almost 400 years old," he says. "But they're still extraordinarily
potent. They're enough on their own to give Einstein's relativity,
without any additional knowledge." (...) This was a problem if
Maxwell's theory, like all good physical theories, was to follow
Galileo's rule and apply for everyone. If we do not know who measures
the speed of light in the equations, how can we modify them to apply
from other perspectives? Einstein's workaround was that we don't have
to. Faced with the success of Maxwell's theory, he simply added a
second assumption to Galileo's first: that, relative to any observer,
light always travels at the same speed. This "second postulate" is the
source of all Einstein's eccentric physics of shrinking space and
haywire clocks. And with a little further thought, it leads to the
equivalence of mass and energy embodied in the iconic equation E =
mc2. The argument is not about the physics, which countless
experiments have confirmed. It is about whether we can reach the same
conclusions without hoisting light onto its highly irregular pedestal.
(...) But in fact, says Feigenbaum, both Galileo and Einstein missed a
surprising subtlety in the maths - one that renders Einstein's second
postulate superfluous. (...) The result turns the historical logic of
Einstein's relativity on its head. Those contortions of space and time
that Einstein derived from the properties of light actually emerge
from even more basic, purely mathematical considerations. Light's
special position in relativity is a historical accident. (...) The
idea that Einstein's relativity has nothing to do with light could
actually come in rather handy. For one thing, it rules out a nasty
shock if anyone were ever to prove that photons, the particles of
light, have mass. We know that the photon's mass is very small - less
than 10-49 grams. A photon with any mass at all would imply that our
understanding of electricity and magnetism is wrong, and that electric
charge might not be conserved. That would be problem enough, but a
massive photon would also spell deep trouble for the second postulate,
as a photon with mass would not necessarily always travel at the same
speed. Feigenbaum's work shows how, contrary to many physicists'
beliefs, this need not be a problem for relativity."

http://o.castera.free.fr/pdf/chronogeometrie.pdf
Jean-Marc Levy-Leblond "De la relativite à la chronogeometrie ou: Pour
en finir avec le "second postulat" et autres fossiles": "D'autre part,
nous savons aujourd'hui que l'invariance de la vitesse de la lumiere
est une consequence de la nullite de la masse du photon. Mais,
empiriquement, cette masse, aussi faible soit son actuelle borne
superieure experimentale, ne peut et ne pourra jamais etre consideree
avec certitude comme rigoureusement nulle. Il se pourrait meme que de
futures mesures mettent en evidence une masse infime, mais non-nulle,
du photon ; la lumiere alors n'irait plus à la "vitesse de la
lumiere", ou, plus precisement, la vitesse de la lumiere, desormais
variable, ne s'identifierait plus à la vitesse limite invariante. Les
procedures operationnelles mises en jeu par le "second postulat"
deviendraient caduques ipso facto. La theorie elle-meme en serait-elle
invalidee ? Heureusement, il n'en est rien ; mais, pour s'en assurer,
il convient de la refonder sur des bases plus solides, et d'ailleurs
plus economiques. En verite, le "premier postulat" suffit, a la
condition de l'exploiter a fond."

http://o.castera.free.fr/pdf/onemorederivation.pdf
Jean-Marc Levy-Leblond: "This is the point of view from wich I intend
to criticize the overemphasized role of the speed of light in the
foundations of the special relativity, and to propose an approach to
these foundations that dispenses with the hypothesis of the invariance
of c....We believe that special relativity at the present time stands
as a universal theory discribing the structure of a common space-time
arena in which all fundamental processes take place....The evidence of
the nonzero mass of the photon would not, as such, shake in any way
the validity of the special relativity. It would, however, nullify all
its derivations which are based on the invariance of the photon
velocity."

http://www.amazon.com/Einsteins-Rela...aches-Theoreti...
Jong-Ping Hsu: "The fundamentally new ideas of the first purpose are
developed on the basis of the term paper of a Harvard physics
undergraduate. They lead to an unexpected affirmative answer to the
long-standing question of whether it is possible to construct a
relativity theory without postulating the constancy of the speed of
light and retaining only the first postulate of special relativity.
This question was discussed in the early years following the discovery
of special relativity by many physicists, including Ritz, Tolman,
Kunz, Comstock and Pauli, all of whom obtained negative answers."

http://groups.google.ca/group/sci.ph...g/dc1ebdf49c01...
Tom Roberts: "If it is ultimately discovered that the photon has a
nonzero mass (i.e. light in vacuum does not travel at the invariant
speed of the Lorentz transform), SR would be unaffected but both
Maxwell's equations and QED would be refuted (or rather, their domains
of applicability would be reduced)."

Pentcho Valev


Very nice topic. Too bad the brown-nosed clowns in charge of most
everything could care less.
~ BG