EINSTEIN REPENTS

Einstein's 1905 false constant-speed-of-light postulate is consistent with the concept of light as a continuous field (with or without ether), and incompatible with the (Newtonian) concept of light as discontinuous particles (nowadays called photons):

http://www.relativitybook.com/resour...ein_space.html
Albert Einstein 1952: "In accordance with the historical development of the field concept, where no matter was available there could also exist no field. But in the first quarter of the nineteenth century it was shown that the phenomena of the interference and motion of light could be explained with astonishing clearness when light was regarded as a wave-field, completely analogous to the mechanical vibration field in an elastic solid body. It was thus felt necessary to introduce a field, that could also exist in "empty space" in the absence of ponderable matter. (...) Since the special theory of relativity revealed the physical equivalence of all inertial systems, it proved the untenability of the hypothesis of an aether at rest. It was therefore necessary to renounce the idea that the electromagnetic field is to be regarded as a state of a material carrier. The field thus becomes an irreducible element of physical description, irreducible in the same sense as the concept of matter in the theory of Newton."

http://books.google.com/books?id=JokgnS1JtmMC
"Relativity and Its Roots" By Banesh Hoffmann, p.92: "There are various remarks to be made about this second principle. For instance, if it is so obvious, how could it turn out to be part of a revolution - especially when the first principle is also a natural one? 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. If it was so obvious, though, why did he need to state it as a principle? Because, having taken from the idea of light waves in the ether the one aspect that he needed, he declared early in his paper, to quote his own words, that "the introduction of a 'luminiferous ether' will prove to be superfluous."

At the end of his life Einstein unexpectedly became honest and suggested that the field concept might be fatal not only for his theory but for physics as a whole:

http://www.perimeterinstitute.ca/pdf...09145525ca.pdf
Albert Einstein (1954): "I consider it entirely possible that physics cannot be based upon the field concept, that is on continuous structures. Then nothing will remain of my whole castle in the air, including the theory of gravitation, but also nothing of the rest of contemporary physics."

How can the field concept be fatal for Einstein's relativity and "the rest of contemporary physics"? Through Einstein's 1905 false constant-speed-of-light postulate of course:

http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/astro-ph/p.../0305457v3.pdf
Joao Magueijo: "In sharp contrast, the constancy of the speed of light has remain sacred, and the term "heresy" is occasionally used in relation to "varying speed of light theories". The reason is clear: the constancy of c, unlike the constancy of G or e, is the pillar of special relativity and thus of modern physics. Varying c theories are expected to cause much more structural damage to physics formalism than other varying constant theories."

http://www.kritik-relativitaetstheor...-of-physics-2/
Bryan Wallace: "Einstein's special relativity theory with his second postulate that the speed of light in space is constant is the linchpin that holds the whole range of modern physics theories together. Shatter this postulate, and modern physics becomes an elaborate farce! (...) The speed of light is c+v."

Pentcho Valev

Einstein abandoned the emission theory because... it was not a field theory:

http://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/papers/companion.pdf
John Norton: "Einstein could not see how to formulate a fully relativistic electrodynamics merely using his new device of field transformations. So he considered the possibility of modifying Maxwell's electrodynamics in order to bring it into accord with an emission theory of light, such as Newton had originally conceived. There was some inevitability in these attempts, as long as he held to classical (Galilean) kinematics. Imagine that some emitter sends out a light beam at c. According to this kinematics, an observer who moves past at v in the opposite direction, will see the emitter moving at v and the light emitted at c+v. This last fact is the defining characteristic of an emission theory of light: the velocity of the emitter is added vectorially to the velocity of light emitted. (...) If an emission theory can be formulated as a field theory, it would seem to be unable to determine the future course of processes from their state in the present. As long as Einstein expected a viable theory of light, electricity and magnetism to be a field theory, these sorts of objections would render an emission theory of light inadmissible."

Walther Ritz, immeasurably cleverer than Einstein, was on the right track as early as in 1908 but... died in 1909:

http://www.datasync.com/~rsf1/crit/1908l.htm
Walther Ritz 1908: "The only conclusion which, from then on, seems possible to me, is that ether doesn't exist, or more exactly, that we should renounce use of this representation, that the motion of light is a relative motion like all the others, that only relative velocities play a role in the laws of nature; and finally that we should renounce use of partial differential equations and the notion of field, in the measure that this notion introduces absolute motion."

Pentcho Valev

Richard P. Feynman "QED: The strange theory of light and matter" Princeton University Press , 1985, p. 15: "I want to emphasize that light comes in this form - particles. It is very important to know that light behaves like particles, especially for those of you who have gone to school, where you probably learned something about light behaving like waves. I'm telling you the way it does behave - like particles."

http://www.philoscience.unibe.ch/doc...S07/Norton.pdf
John Norton: "These efforts were long misled by an exaggeration of the importance of one experiment, the Michelson-Morley experiment, even though Einstein later had trouble recalling if he even knew of the experiment prior to his 1905 paper. This one experiment, in isolation, has little force. Its null result happened to be fully compatible with Newton's own emission theory of light. Located in the context of late 19th century electrodynamics when ether-based, wave theories of light predominated, however, it presented a serious problem that exercised the greatest theoretician of the day."

http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/1743/2/Norton.pdf
John Norton: "In addition to his work as editor of the Einstein papers in finding source material, Stachel assembled the many small clues that reveal Einstein's serious consideration of an emission theory of light; and he gave us the crucial insight that Einstein regarded the Michelson-Morley experiment as evidence for the principle of relativity, whereas later writers almost universally use it as support for the light postulate of special relativity. Even today, this point needs emphasis. The Michelson-Morley experiment is fully compatible with an emission theory of light that CONTRADICTS THE LIGHT POSTULATE."

Pentcho Valev