EINSTEINIANS MISREPRESENT EINSTEIN

For a century the answer to the question "What support did Einstein's
1905 constant-speed-of-light postulate have in 1905?" was easy in
Einsteiniana:

http://www.hawking.org.uk/index.php?...64&It emid=66
Stephen Hawking: "But a famous experiment, carried out by two
Americans, Michelson and Morley in 1887, showed that light always
travelled at a speed of one hundred and eighty six thousand miles a
second, no matter where it came from."

http://205.188.238.109/time/time100/...of_rela6a.html
Stephen Hawking: "So if you were traveling in the same direction as
the light, you would expect that its speed would appear to be lower,
and if you were traveling in the opposite direction to the light, that
its speed would appear to be higher. Yet a series of experiments
failed to find any evidence for differences in speed due to motion
through the ether. The most careful and accurate of these experiments
was carried out by Albert Michelson and Edward Morley at the Case
Institute in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1887......It was as if light always
traveled at the same speed relative to you, no matter how you were
moving."

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/...ial-relativity
Encyclopædia Britannica: "The fact that the speed of light is the same
for all observers is inexplicable in ordinary terms. If a passenger in
a train moving at 100 km per hour shoots an arrow in the trains
direction of motion at 200 km per hour, a trackside observer would
measure the speed of the arrow as the sum of the two speeds, or 300 km
per hour (see figure). In analogy, if the train moves at the speed of
light and a passenger shines a laser in the same direction, then
common sense indicates that a trackside observer should see the light
moving at the sum of the two speeds, or twice the speed of light (6 ×
108 metres per second). While such a law of addition of velocities is
valid in classical mechanics, the Michelson-Morley experiment showed
that light does not obey this law. This contradicts common sense; it
implies, for instance, that both a train moving at the speed of light
and a light beam emitted from the train arrive at a point farther
along the track at the same instant. Nevertheless, Einstein made the
constancy of the speed of light for all observers a postulate of his
new theory. As a second postulate, he required that the laws of
physics have the same form for all observers. Then Einstein extended
his postulates to their logical conclusions to form special
relativity."

http://www.amazon.com/Faster-Than-Sp.../dp/0738205257
Joao Magueijo: "A missile fired from a plane moves faster than one
fired from the ground because the plane's speed adds to the missile's
speed. If I throw something forward on a moving train, its speed with
respect to the platform is the speed of that object plus that of the
train. You might think that the same should happen to light: Light
flashed from a train should travel faster. However, what the Michelson-
Morley experiments showed was that this was not the case: Light always
moves stubbornly at the same speed. This means that if I take a light
ray and ask several observers moving with respect to each other to
measure the speed of this light ray, they will all agree on the same
apparent speed!"

http://www.pourlascience.fr/ewb_page...vite-26042.php
Marc Lachièze-Rey: "Mais au cours du XIXe siècle, diverses
expériences, et notamment celle de Michelson et Morley, ont convaincu
les physiciens que la vitesse de la lumière dans le vide est
invariante. En particulier, la vitesse de la lumière ne s'ajoute ni ne
se retranche à celle de sa source si celle-ci est en mouvement."

Recently the situation radically changed - even Wikipedia now teaches
that the Michelson-Morley experiment in fact confirmed Newton's
emission theory of light:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emission_theory
"Emission theory (also called emitter theory or ballistic theory of
light) was a competing theory for the special theory of relativity,
explaining the results of the Michelson-Morley experiment. Emission
theories obey the principle of relativity by having no preferred frame
for light transmission, but say that light is emitted at speed "c"
relative to its source instead of applying the invariance postulate.
Thus, emitter theory combines electrodynamics and mechanics with a
simple Newtonian theory. Although there are still proponents of this
theory outside the scientific mainstream, this theory is considered to
be conclusively discredited by most scientists. The name most often
associated with emission theory is Isaac Newton. In his Corpuscular
theory Newton visualized light "corpuscles" being thrown off from hot
bodies at a nominal speed of c with respect to the emitting object,
and obeying the usual laws of Newtonian mechanics, and we then expect
light to be moving towards us with a speed that is offset by the speed
of the distant emitter (c ± v)."

So Einsteinians are desperately looking for something that, in 1905,
could have spoken against the variable speed of light predicted by
Newton's emission theory of light. Their newest discovery is this:

http://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/papers/Chasing.pdf
John Norton: "At the age of sixteen, Einstein imagined chasing after a
beam of light. He later recalled that the thought experiment had
played a memorable role in his development of special relativity.
Famous as it is, it has proven difficult to understand just how the
thought experiment delivers its results. It fails to generate problems
for an ether-based electrodynamics. I propose that Einstein's
canonical statement of the thought experiment from his 1946
"Autobiographical Notes," makes most sense not as an argument against
ether-based electrodynamics, but as an argument against "emission"
theories of light."

Pentcho Valev

http://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/lectur.../Tsinghua.html
John Norton: "A full understanding of how Einstein found special
relativity should concentrate on Einstein's struggles in
electrodynamics and, in particular, it should pursue how he sought to
develop a so-called "emission" theory of light within the
electrodynamics of his era. It was the only way, Einstein mistakenly
believed, to implement a principle of relativity in electrodynamics.
The real story lies the years of Einstein's attempts to develop the
emission theory and the crisis provoked by his failure."

The "electrodynamics of his era" was Maxwell's ETHER theory. It was
incompatible with the principle of relativity but later versions of
Maxwell's equations were not so in 1954 Einstein knew that, by
abandoning Newton's emission theory of light, he had in fact killed
contemporary physics:

http://www.perimeterinstitute.ca/ind...ecture_id=3576
John Stachel: "Einstein discussed the other side of the particle-field
dualism - get rid of fields and just have particles."
EINSTEIN'S 1954 CONFESSION: "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."
John Stachel's comment: "If I go down, everything goes down, ha ha,
hm, ha ha ha."

It is not obvious that the statement:

"physics cannot be based upon the field concept, that is on continuous
structures"

is equivalent to the statement:

"physics should have been based on Newton's emission theory of light,
not on Einstein's special relativity"

but here are a few clues:

http://arxiv.org/ftp/physics/papers/0101/0101109.pdf
"The two first articles (January and March) establish clearly a
discontinuous structure of matter and light. The standard look of
Einstein's SR is, on the contrary, essentially based on the continuous
conception of the field."

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/einstein/genius/
"And then, in June, Einstein completes special relativity, which adds
a twist to the story: Einstein's March paper treated light as
particles, but special relativity sees light as a continuous field of
waves. Alice's Red Queen can accept many impossible things before
breakfast, but it takes a supremely confident mind to do so. Einstein,
age 26, sees light as wave and particle, picking the attribute he
needs to confront each problem in turn. Now that's tough."

http://www.amazon.com/Relativity-Its.../dp/0486406768
"Relativity and Its Roots" By Banesh Hoffmann
"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."

http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/astro-ph/p.../0305457v3.pdf
New varying speed of light theories
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.ekkehard-friebe.de/wallace.htm
The farce of physics
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."

http://www.docstoc.com/docs/50282475...s-dans-loeuvre
Louis de Broglie: "Tout d'abord toute idée de "grain" se trouvait
expulsée de la théorie de la Lumière : celle-ci prenait la forme d'une
"théorie du champ" où le rayonnement était représenté par une
répartition continue dans l'espace de grandeurs évoluant continûment
au cours du temps sans qu'il fût possible de distinguer, dans les
domaines spatiaux au sein desquels évoluait le champ lumineux, de très
petites régions singulières où le champ serait très fortement
concentré et qui fournirait une image du type corpusculaire. Ce
caractère à la fois continu et ondulatoire de la lumière se trouvait
prendre une forme très précise dans la théorie de Maxwell où le champ
lumineux venait se confondre avec un certain type de champ
électromagnétique."

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_De...e_of_Radiation
The Development of Our Views on the Composition and Essence of
Radiation by Albert Einstein, 1909
"A large body of facts shows undeniably that light has certain
fundamental properties that are better explained by Newton's emission
theory of light than by the oscillation theory. For this reason, I
believe that the next phase in the development of theoretical physics
will bring us a theory of light that can be considered a fusion of the
oscillation and emission theories. The purpose of the following
remarks is to justify this belief and to show that a profound change
in our views on the composition and essence of light is
imperative.....Then the electromagnetic fields that make up light no
longer appear as a state of a hypothetical medium, but rather as
independent entities that the light source gives off, just as in
Newton's emission theory of light......Relativity theory has changed
our views on light. Light is conceived not as a manifestation of the
state of some hypothetical medium, but rather as an independent entity
like matter. Moreover, this theory shares with the corpuscular theory
of light the unusual property that light carries inertial mass from
the emitting to the absorbing object."

http://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/papers/companion.doc
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 LIGHT, ELECTRICITY AND MAGNETISM TO BE A FIELD THEORY, these
sorts of objections would render an EMISSION THEORY OF LIGHT
INADMISSIBLE."

Pentcho Valev

Einstein shifts allegiance between 1952 and 1954:

http://www.relativitybook.com/resour...ein_space.html
"Relativity and the Problem of Space"
Albert Einstein (1952): "During the second half of the nineteenth
century, in connection with the researches of Faraday and Maxwell it
became more and more clear that the description of electromagnetic
processes in terms of field was vastly superior to a treatment on the
basis of the mechanical concepts of material points. By the
introduction of the field concept in electrodynamics, Maxwell
succeeded in predicting the existence of electromagnetic waves, the
essential identity of which with light waves could not be doubted
because of the equality of their velocity of propagation. As a result
of this, optics was, in principle, absorbed by electrodynamics. One
psychological effect of this immense success was that the field
concept, as opposed to the mechanistic framework of classical physics,
gradually won greater independence. (...) 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..."

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."

Banesh Hoffmann, Einstein's apostle, explains the essential difference
between the concept presenting light as a continuous field and the
concept presenting light as discontinuous particles:

http://www.amazon.com/Relativity-Its.../dp/0486406768
"Relativity and Its Roots" By Banesh Hoffmann
"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."

Pentcho Valev

On Jul 28, 9:08*pm, Pentcho Valev wrote:
For a century the answer to the question "What support
did Einstein's 1905 constant-speed-of-light postulate have
in 1905?" was easy in Einsteiniana:

Yes. James Clerk Maxwell established it must be constant, to see what
we see. Before 1905.

David A. Smith

On Jul 29, 8:00*am, Pentcho Valev wrote:
http://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/lectur.../Tsinghua.html
John Norton: "A full understanding of how Einstein found special
relativity should concentrate on Einstein's struggles in
electrodynamics and, in particular, it should pursue how he sought to
develop a so-called "emission" theory of light within the
electrodynamics of his era. It was the only way, Einstein mistakenly
believed, to implement a principle of relativity in electrodynamics.
The real story lies the years of Einstein's attempts to develop the
emission theory and the crisis provoked by his failure."

The "electrodynamics of his era" was Maxwell's ETHER theory. It was
incompatible with the principle of relativity but later versions of
Maxwell's equations were not so in 1954 Einstein knew that, by
abandoning Newton's emission theory of light, he had in fact killed
contemporary physics:

http://www.perimeterinstitute.ca/ind...ontent&task=vi....
John Stachel: "Einstein discussed the other side of the particle-field
dualism - get rid of fields and just have particles."
EINSTEIN'S 1954 CONFESSION: "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."
John Stachel's comment: "If I go down, everything goes down, ha ha,
hm, ha ha ha."

It is not obvious that the statement:

"physics cannot be based upon the field concept, that is on continuous
structures"

is equivalent to the statement:

"physics should have been based on Newton's emission theory of light,
not on Einstein's special relativity"

but here are a few clues:

http://arxiv.org/ftp/physics/papers/0101/0101109.pdf
"The two first articles (January and March) establish clearly a
discontinuous structure of matter and light. The standard look of
Einstein's SR is, on the contrary, essentially based on the continuous
conception of the field."

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/einstein/genius/
"And then, in June, Einstein completes special relativity, which adds
a twist to the story: Einstein's March paper treated light as
particles, but special relativity sees light as a continuous field of
waves. Alice's Red Queen can accept many impossible things before
breakfast, but it takes a supremely confident mind to do so. Einstein,
age 26, sees light as wave and particle, picking the attribute he
needs to confront each problem in turn. Now that's tough."

http://www.amazon.com/Relativity-Its.../dp/0486406768
"Relativity and Its Roots" By Banesh Hoffmann
"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."

http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/astro-ph/p.../0305457v3.pdf
New varying speed of light theories
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.ekkehard-friebe.de/wallace.htm
The farce of physics
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."

http://www.docstoc.com/docs/50282475...des-et-des-cor...
Louis de Broglie: "Tout d'abord toute idée de "grain" se trouvait
expulsée de la théorie de la Lumière : celle-ci prenait la forme d'une
"théorie du champ" où le rayonnement était représenté par une
répartition continue dans l'espace de grandeurs évoluant continûment
au cours du temps sans qu'il fût possible de distinguer, dans les
domaines spatiaux au sein desquels évoluait le champ lumineux, de très
petites régions singulières où le champ serait très fortement
concentré et qui fournirait une image du type corpusculaire. Ce
caractère à la fois continu et ondulatoire de la lumière se trouvait
prendre une forme très précise dans la théorie de Maxwell où le champ
lumineux venait se confondre avec un certain type de champ
électromagnétique."

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_De...ews_on_the_Com...
The Development of Our Views on the Composition and Essence of
Radiation by Albert Einstein, 1909
"A large body of facts shows undeniably that light has certain
fundamental properties that are better explained by Newton's emission
theory of light than by the oscillation theory. For this reason, I
believe that the next phase in the development of theoretical physics
will bring us a theory of light that can be considered a fusion of the
oscillation and emission theories. The purpose of the following
remarks is to justify this belief and to show that a profound change
in our views on the composition and essence of light is
imperative.....Then the electromagnetic fields that make up light no
longer appear as a state of a hypothetical medium, but rather as
independent entities that the light source gives off, just as in
Newton's emission theory of light......Relativity theory has changed
our views on light. Light is conceived not as a manifestation of the
state of some hypothetical medium, but rather as an independent entity
like matter. Moreover, this theory shares with the corpuscular theory
of light the unusual property that light carries inertial mass from
the emitting to the absorbing object."

http://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/papers/companion.doc
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 LIGHT, ELECTRICITY AND MAGNETISM TO BE A FIELD THEORY, these
sorts of objections would render an EMISSION THEORY OF LIGHT
INADMISSIBLE."

Pentcho Valev


It's funny how well relativity works.