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How Einstein's Field Theory Killed Physics



 
 
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Old May 1st 16, 06:55 PM posted to sci.astro
Pentcho Valev
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Default How Einstein's Field Theory Killed Physics

Einstein postulated that the speed of light is constant (independent of the motion of the light source) because he very much wanted his theory to be 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."

http://www.worldscientific.com/world...s/10.1142/6019
Frank Wilczek, Fantastic Realities, p. 294: "One of the most basic results of special relativity, that the speed of light is a limiting velocity for the propagation of any physical influence, makes the field concept almost inevitable."

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."

However in 1954 Einstein made the following confession:

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."

Pentcho Valev
  #2  
Old May 2nd 16, 04:29 PM posted to sci.astro
Pentcho Valev
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Posts: 8,078
Default How Einstein's Field Theory Killed Physics

Without recourse to additional absurd assumptions (in Banesh Hoffmann's terms, "without recourse to contracting lengths, local time, or Lorentz transformations"), the Michelson-Morley experiment is compatible with the variable speed of light predicted by Newton's emission theory of light, and incompatible with the constant (independent of the speed of the emitter) speed of light predicted by the ether field theory and adopted by Einstein as his 1905 second postulate:

http://books.google.com/books?id=JokgnS1JtmMC
Relativity and Its Roots, 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."

http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/1743/2/Norton.pdf
"The Michelson-Morley experiment is fully compatible with an emission theory of light that CONTRADICTS THE LIGHT POSTULATE."

Pentcho Valev
 




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