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Heuristics in Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity
http://www.uni-stuttgart.de/hi/gnt/h...icsProgram.pdf
Program of the conference "Heuristics in Physics", Bad Honnef, Dec. 2010, Organized by the working group for philosophy of physics (AG Phil) and the section for history of physics (FV Geschichte) in the German Physical Society (DPG) at the House of Physics, Bad Honnef Friday, Dec. 10, 2010, 15:30 John Norton (Pittsburgh): Heuristics in Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity Recently John Norton suggested that "the passage of time is an illusion" is a mistaken conclusion "from the work of Einstein, Minkowski and many more" so perhaps he is now going to identify the exact heuristics that led to this mistaken conclusion: http://www.humanamente.eu/PDF/Issue13_Paper_Norton.pdf John Norton: "It is common to dismiss the passage of time as illusory since its passage has not been captured within modern physical theories. I argue that this is a mistake. Other than the awkward fact that it does not appear in our physics, there is no indication that the passage of time is an illusion. (...) The passage of time is a real, objective fact that obtains in the world independently of us. How, you may wonder, could we think anything else? One possibility is that we might think that the passage of time is some sort of illusion, an artifact of the peculiar way that our brains interact with the world. Indeed that is just what you might think if you have spent a lot of time reading modern physics. Following from the work of Einstein, Minkowski and many more, physics has given a wonderfully powerful conception of space and time. Relativity theory, in its most perspicacious form, melds space and time together to form a four- dimensional spacetime. The study of motion in space and all other processes that unfold in them merely reduce to the study of an odd sort of geometry that prevails in spacetime. In many ways, time turns out to be just like space. In this spacetime geometry, there are differences between space and time. But a difference that somehow captures the passage of time is not to be found. There is no passage of time." Norton will surely give the rallying cry "Back to Newton" in the end. Hopefully he will directly vindicate Newton's emission theory of light paying no attention to his brother Einsteinian Craig Callender who is desperately crying "Back to Newton through Lorentz": http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...me-an-illusion Craig Callender: "Einstein mounted the next assault by doing away with the idea of absolute simultaneity. According to his special theory of relativity, what events are happening at the same time depends on how fast you are going. The true arena of events is not time or space, but their union: spacetime. Two observers moving at different velocities disagree on when and where an event occurs, but they agree on its spacetime location. Space and time are secondary concepts that, as mathematician Hermann Minkowski, who had been one of Einstein's university professors, famously declared, "are doomed to fade away into mere shadows." And things only get worse in 1915 with Einstein's general theory of relativity, which extends special relativity to situations where the force of gravity operates. Gravity distorts time, so that a second's passage here may not mean the same thing as a second's passage there. Only in rare cases is it possible to synchronize clocks and have them stay synchronized, even in principle. You cannot generally think of the world as unfolding, tick by tick, according to a single time parameter. In extreme situations, the world might not be carvable into instants of time at all. It then becomes impossible to say that an event happened before or after another." http://www.amazon.com/Relativity-Sim.../dp/0415701740 Einstein, Relativity and Absolute Simultaneity (Routledge Studies in Contemporary Philosophy) "Einstein, Relativity and Absolute Simultaneity is an anthology of original essays by an international team of leading philosophers and physicists who, on the centenary of Albert Einsteins Special Theory of Relativity, come together in this volume to reassess the contemporary paradigm of the relativistic concept of time. A great deal has changed since 1905 when Einstein proposed his Special Theory of Relativity, and this book offers a fresh reassessment of Special Relativitys relativistic concept of time in terms of epistemology, metaphysics and physics. There is no other book like this available; hence philosophers and scientists across the world will welcome its publication." "UNFORTUNATELY FOR EINSTEIN'S SPECIAL RELATIVITY, HOWEVER, ITS EPISTEMOLOGICAL AND ONTOLOGICAL ASSUMPTIONS ARE NOW SEEN TO BE QUESTIONABLE, UNJUSTIFIED, FALSE, PERHAPS EVEN ILLOGICAL." Craig Callender: "In my opinion, by far the best way for the tenser to respond to Putnam et al is to adopt the Lorentz 1915 interpretation of time dilation and Fitzgerald contraction. Lorentz attributed these effects (and hence the famous null results regarding an aether) to the Lorentz invariance of the dynamical laws governing matter and radiation, not to spacetime structure. On this view, Lorentz invariance is not a spacetime symmetry but a dynamical symmetry, and the special relativistic effects of dilation and contraction are not purely kinematical. The background spacetime is Newtonian or neo- Newtonian, not Minkowskian. Both Newtonian and neo-Newtonian spacetime include a global absolute simultaneity among their invariant structures (with Newtonian spacetime singling out one of neo-Newtonian spacetimes many preferred inertial frames as the rest frame). On this picture, there is no relativity of simultaneity and spacetime is uniquely decomposable into space and time." Pentcho Valev |
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Heuristics in Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity
John Norton, the subtlest practitioner of doublethink in Einsteiniana,
informs believers that Maxwell's theory violates the principle of relativity while Newton's emission theory of light does not: http://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/papers/Chasing.pdf John Norton: "In Maxwell's theory, a light wave in a vacuum always propagates at the same speed, c, with respect to the ether. So measuring the speed of a light beam gives observers an easy way to determine their motion in the ether. If they find the light to move at c, the observers are at rest in the ether. If they find the light frozen, they are moving at c in the ether. Since observers can determine their absolute motion, the theory violates the principle of relativity. The alternative theory that Einstein began to pursue was an "emission theory." In such a theory, the speed of light in vacuo is still c. But it is not c with respect to the ether; it is c with respect to the source that emits the light. In such a theory, observing the speed of a light beam tells observers nothing about their absolute motion. It only reveals their motion with respect to the source that emitted the light. If they find the beam to propagate at c, the observers are at rest with respect to the emitter. If they find the beam to be frozen, they are fleeing from the source at c. In general, observers can only ascertain their relative velocity with respect to the source." http://www.liferesearchuniversal.com...html#seventeen George Orwell: "Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. The Party intellectual knows in which direction his memories must be altered; he therefore knows that he is playing tricks with reality; but by the exercise of doublethink he also satisfies himself that reality is not violated. The process has to be conscious, or it would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling of falsity and hence of guilt. Doublethink lies at the very heart of Ingsoc, since the essential act of the Party is to use conscious deception while retaining the firmness of purpose that goes with complete honesty. To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies - all this is indispensably necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this knowledge ; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth. (...) It need hardly be said that the subtlest practitioners of doublethink are those who invented doublethink and know that it is a vast system of mental cheating. In our society, those who have the best knowledge of what is happening are also those who are furthest from seeing the world as it is. In general, the greater the understanding, the greater the delusion ; the more intelligent, the less sane." Pentcho Valev |
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Heuristics in Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity
http://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/papers/Chasing.pdf
John Norton: "In Maxwell's theory, a light wave in a vacuum always propagates at the same speed, c, with respect to the ether. So measuring the speed of a light beam gives observers an easy way to determine their motion in the ether. If they find the light to move at c, the observers are at rest in the ether. If they find the light frozen, they are moving at c in the ether." So John Norton sincerely believes that, according to Maxwell's theory, the speed of light varies with the speed of the observer. Brothers Einsteinians share John Norton's belief: http://www.amazon.com/Brief-History-.../dp/0553380168 Stephen Hawking: "Maxwell's theory predicted that radio or light waves should travel at a certain fixed speed. But Newton's theory had got rid of the idea of absolute rest, so if light was supposed to travel at a fixed speed, one would have to say what that fixed speed was to be measured relative to. It was therefore suggested that there was a substance called the "ether" that was present everywhere, even in "empty" space. Light waves should travel through the ether as sound waves travel through air, and their speed should therefore be relative to the ether. Different observers, moving relative to the ether, would see light coming toward them at different speeds, but light's speed relative to the ether would remain fixed." http://www.solidarity-us.org/node/58 "Maxwell's theory of electricity and magnetism provides a successful framework with which to study light. In this theory light is an electromagnetic wave. Using Maxwell's equations one can compute the speed of light. One finds that the speed of light is 300,000,000 meters (186,000 miles) per second. The question arises: which inertial observer is this speed of light relative to? As in the previous paragraph, two inertial observers traveling relative to each other should observe DIFFERENT SPEEDS FOR THE SAME LIGHT WAVE." http://culturesciencesphysique.ens-l..._CSP_relat.xml Gabrielle Bonnet, École Normale Supérieure de Lyon: "Les équations de Maxwell font en particulier intervenir une constante, c, qui est la vitesse de la lumière dans le vide. Par un changement de référentiel classique, si c est la vitesse de la lumière dans le vide dans un premier référentiel, et si on se place désormais dans un nouveau référentiel en translation par rapport au premier à la vitesse constante v, la lumière devrait désormais aller à la vitesse c-v si elle se déplace dans la direction et le sens de v, et à la vitesse c+v si elle se déplace dans le sens contraire." On the other hand, John Norton and brothers Einsteinians sincerely believe and fiercely teach that, according to Maxwell's theory, the speed of light is independent of the speed of the observer: http://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/teachi...ics/index.html John Norton: "Why Einstein should believe the light postulate is a little harder to see. We would expect that a light signal would slow down relative to us if we chased after it. The light postulate says no. No matter how fast an inertial observer is traveling in pursuit of the light signal, that observer will always see the light signal traveling at the same speed, c. The principal reason for his acceptance of the light postulate was his lengthy study of electrodynamics, the theory of electric and magnetic fields. The theory was the most advanced physics of the time. Some 50 years before, Maxwell had shown that light was merely a ripple propagating in an electromagnetic field. Maxwell's theory predicted that the speed of the ripple was a quite definite number: c." http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/20...ce-book-review "Why Does E=mc^2? by Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw - review (...) By the end of the 19th century, Maxwell had tied together decades of work on electricity and magnetism by, among others, Humphrey Davy and Michael Faraday, to produce his masterful equations on electromagnetism. These showed that light was a wave in the electromagnetic field, much as ripples on a pond are waves in water or sound is a wave in the air. He also showed that these waves of light moved at a constant speed, "c", through empty space and that speed remained the same no matter who was watching. Whether you are sitting still or moving at hundreds of miles an hour towards the source of the light, Maxwell's equations say that the light you see will only ever move at "c" relative to you." http://www.planetastronomy.com/speci...20mars2005.htm Françoise Balibar: "Maxwell rentre en scène : il pense que la lumière se propage dans un milieu matériel baptisé éther, ce qui est une erreur, mais il pense aussi que la lumière est un champ électromagnétique, ça c'est révolutionnaire. Il met au point ses célèbres équations dans lesquelles la vitesse de la lumière est la même dans l'éther (référentiel absolu) et dans tout autre référentiel en translation uniforme." http://groups.google.com/group/sci.p...a09f114dcd6052 John Baez: "When Newton was finally overthrown by Einstein, the birth of the new theory owed much less to the astronomical facts it could explain - such as a puzzling drift in the point where Mercury made its closest approach to the sun - than to an elegant theory of electromagnetism that had arisen more or less independently of ideas about gravity. Electrostatic and magnetic effects had been unified by James Clerk Maxwell, but Maxwell's equations only offered one value for the speed of light, however you happened to be moving when you measured it. Making sense of this fact led Einstein first to special relativity, in which the geometry of space-time had the unvarying speed of light built into it, then general relativity, in which the curvature of the same geometry accounted for the motion of objects free-falling through space." http://www.liferesearchuniversal.com...html#seventeen George Orwell: "Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. The Party intellectual knows in which direction his memories must be altered; he therefore knows that he is playing tricks with reality; but by the exercise of doublethink he also satisfies himself that reality is not violated. The process has to be conscious, or it would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling of falsity and hence of guilt. Doublethink lies at the very heart of Ingsoc, since the essential act of the Party is to use conscious deception while retaining the firmness of purpose that goes with complete honesty. To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies - all this is indispensably necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this knowledge ; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth. (...) It need hardly be said that the subtlest practitioners of doublethink are those who invented doublethink and know that it is a vast system of mental cheating. In our society, those who have the best knowledge of what is happening are also those who are furthest from seeing the world as it is. In general, the greater the understanding, the greater the delusion ; the more intelligent, the less sane." Pentcho Valev |
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