Einstein as Mythmaker

Albert Einstein: "Now let us suppose that our railway carriage is again travelling along the railway lines with the velocity v, and that its direction is the same as that of the ray of light, but its velocity of course much less. Let us inquire about the velocity of propagation of the ray of light relative to the carriage. It is obvious that we can here apply the consideration of the previous section, since the ray of light plays the part of the man walking along relatively to the carriage. The velocity W of the man relative to the embankment is here replaced by the velocity of light relative to the embankment. w is the required velocity of light with respect to the carriage, and we have w = c - v. The velocity of propagation of a ray of light relative to the carriage thus comes out smaller than c. But this result comes into conflict with the principle of relativity set forth in Section V." http://www.bartleby.com/173/7.html

Does w=c-v come into conflict with the principle of relativity? It doesn't of course and this is obvious. Moreover, w=c-v is the only result compatible with the Michelson-Morley experiment without recourse to ad hoc miracles (length contraction, time dilation etc.). Yet the idiotic "conflict" made up by Einstein justifies, according to him, the introduction of special relativity. Einstein continues:

Albert Einstein: "In view of this dilemma there appears to be nothing else for it than to abandon either the principle of relativity or the simple law of the propagation of light in vacuo. [...] At this juncture the theory of relativity entered the arena. As a result of an analysis of the physical conceptions of time and space, it became evident that in reality there is not the least incompatibility between the principle of relativity and the law of propagation of light, and that by systematically holding fast to both these laws a logically rigid theory could be arrived at. This theory has been called the special theory of relativity to distinguish it from the extended theory, with which we shall deal later. In the following pages we shall present the fundamental ideas of the special theory of relativity."

Pentcho Valev

The following confession is staggering:

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."

That is, according to Stachel and Norton, Einstein was honest and taught the truth (the Michelson-Morley experiment confirmed the principle of relativity but not the principle of constancy of the speed of light) while today's Einsteinians ("later writers") are mythmakers and teach a blatant lie (the experiment confirmed the principle of constancy of the speed of light).

Did Einstein really teach the truth? Of course not. He was the author of the myth:

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstrac...66838A 639EDE
The New York Times, April 19, 1921: "The special relativity arose from the question of whether light had an invariable velocity in free space, he [Einstein] said. The velocity of light could only be measured relative to a body or a co-ordinate system. He sketched a co-ordinate system K to which light had a velocity C. Whether the system was in motion or not was the fundamental principle. This has been developed through the researches of Maxwell and Lorentz, the principle of the constancy of the velocity of light having been based on many of their experiments. But did it hold for only one system? he asked. He gave the example of a street and a vehicle moving on that street. If the velocity of light was C for the street was it also C for the vehicle? If a second co-ordinate system K was introduced, moving with the velocity V, did light have the velocity of C here? When the light traveled the system moved with it, so it would appear that light moved slower and the principle apparently did not hold. Many famous experiments had been made on this point. Michelson showed that relative to the moving co-ordinate system K1, the light traveled with the same velocity as relative to K, which is contrary to the above observation. How could this be reconciled? Professor Einstein asked."

Pentcho Valev

Einstein was a powerful doublethinker - he was able to defend both thesis and antithesis with the same conviction, without remorse. So, before the advent of Einstein's general relativity, the traveling-twin-is-younger tale was more than vulnerable in an analysis taking into account only the valid inferences from Einstein's 1905 postulates. The youthfulness of the traveling twin was totally unjustifiable - the stationary twin sees his brother's clock running slow, the traveling twin sees his brother's clock running slow, and the "sudden change of direction" involving acceleration is immaterial, as Einstein himself explained in 1911:

http://einsteinpapers.press.princeto...vol3-trans/368
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."

In 1918 the "sudden change of direction" involving acceleration, which had been immaterial a couple of years before, became crucial and produced a miraculous HOMOGENEOUS gravitational field:

http://sciliterature.50webs.com/Dialog.htm
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."

Today's Einsteinians prefer Einstein 1911 argument and teach that the "sudden change of direction" involving acceleration is immaterial, but a small minority sticks to Einstein's 1918 idiocy and teaches that the "sudden change of direction" is crucial:

http://www.fnal.gov/pub/today/archiv...lReadMore.html
Don Lincoln: "Some readers, probably including some of my doctoral-holding colleagues at Fermilab, will claim that the difference between the two twins is that one of the two has experienced an acceleration. (After all, that's how he slowed down and reversed direction.) However, the relativistic equations don't include that acceleration phase; they include just the coasting time at high velocity."

http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/research/...tivity2010.pdf
Gary W. Gibbons FRS: "In other words, by simply staying at home Jack has aged relative to Jill. There is no paradox because the lives of the twins are not strictly symmetrical. This might lead one to suspect that the accelerations suffered by Jill might be responsible for the effect. However this is simply not plausible because using identical accelerating phases of her trip, she could have travelled twice as far. This would give twice the amount of time gained."

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/blogs/p...ds-philosophy/
Tim Maudlin: "...so many physicists strongly discourage questions about the nature of reality. The reigning attitude in physics has been "shut up and calculate": solve the equations, and do not ask questions about what they mean. But putting computation ahead of conceptual clarity can lead to confusion. Take, for example, relativity's iconic "twin paradox." Identical twins separate from each other and later reunite. When they meet again, one twin is biologically older than the other. (Astronaut twins Scott and Mark Kelly are about to realize this experiment: when Scott returns from a year in orbit in 2016 he will be about 28 microseconds younger than Mark, who is staying on Earth.) No competent physicist would make an error in computing the magnitude of this effect. But even the great Richard Feynman did not always get the explanation right. In "The Feynman Lectures on Physics," he attributes the difference in ages to the acceleration one twin experiences: the twin who accelerates ends up younger. But it is easy to describe cases where the opposite is true, and even cases where neither twin accelerates but they end up different ages. The calculation can be right and the accompanying explanation wrong."

http://sciencechatforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=84&t=26847
Don Lincoln: "A common explanation of this paradox is that the travelling twin experienced acceleration to slow down and reverse velocity. While it is clearly true that a single person must experience this acceleration, you can show that the acceleration is not crucial. What is crucial is that the travelling twin experienced time in two reference frames, while the homebody experienced time in one. We can demonstrate this by a modification of the problem. In the modification, there is still a homebody and a person travelling to a distant star. The modification is that there is a third person even farther away than the distant star. This person travels at the same speed as the original traveler, but in the opposite direction. The third person's trajectory is timed so that both of them pass the distant star at the same time. As the two travelers pass, the Earthbound person reads the clock of the outbound traveler. He then adds the time he experiences travelling from the distant star to Earth to the duration experienced by the outbound person. The sum of these times is the transit time. Note that no acceleration occurs in this problem...just three people experiencing relative inertial motion."

http://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/teachi...yon/index.html
John Norton: "Then, at the end of the outward leg, the traveler abruptly changes motion, accelerating sharply to adopt a new inertial motion directed back to earth. What comes now is the key part of the analysis. The effect of the change of motion is to alter completely the traveler's judgment of simultaneity. The traveler's hypersurfaces of simultaneity now flip up dramatically. Moments after the turn-around, when the travelers clock reads just after 2 days, the traveler will judge the stay-at-home twin's clock to read just after 7 days. That is, the traveler will judge the stay-at-home twin's clock to have jumped suddenly from reading 1 day to reading 7 days. This huge jump puts the stay-at-home twin's clock so far ahead of the traveler's that it is now possible for the stay-at-home twin's clock to be ahead of the travelers when they reunite."

http://topquark.hubpages.com/hub/Twin-Paradox
"The Twin Paradox is a scenario that, at first glance, seems to make nonsense out of Einstein's theory of special relativity. The situation is that a man sets off in a rocket travelling at high speed away from Earth, whilst his twin brother stays on Earth. [...] What happens is that the twin on Earth, viewing himself as stationary and his brother as moving at high speed, sees his brother experiencing time dilation and thus ageing more slowly. At the same time, the twin in the spaceship considers himself to be the stationary twin, and therefore as he looks back towards Earth he sees his brother ageing more slowly than himself. Each sees the other as moving, and therefore as experiencing time dilation. But which brother is "correct" in the way he perceives the situation? Both are. Each sees the other as being younger than himself. How they were perceived by any onlooker would depend on which frame of reference the onlooker was in. It doesn't make sense to ask which brother is "really" older, because the answer depends on where you stand to ask the question! But what about when the brother in the spaceship returns to Earth? Surely the contradiction will be apparent then? Ah, but in order to return to Earth, the spaceship must slow down, stop moving, turn around and go back the other way. During those periods of deceleration and deceleration, it is not an inertial frame and therefore the normal rules of special relativity don't apply. When the twin in the spaceship turns around to make his journey home, the shift in his frame of reference causes his perception of his brother's age to change rapidly: he sees his brother getting suddenly older. This means that when the twins are finally reunited, the stay-at-home twin is the older of the two."

The sudden ageing syndrome deserves special attention (there can be nothing more idiotic than that):

"When the twin in the spaceship turns around to make his journey home, the shift in his frame of reference causes his perception of his brother's age to change rapidly: he sees his brother getting suddenly older. This means that when the twins are finally reunited, the stay-at-home twin is the older of the two."

Pentcho Valev