Why relativists don't understand Einstein's 1905 mathematics.

On Sep 1, 3:39 pm, John Kennaugh
wrote in sci.physics.relativity:
The TimeLord wrote:
By 1905 the first postulate had been shown to be experimentally true in
that the one type of experiment which was expected to show it to be
false (the MMX and others) had failed to do so. Lorentz's aether theory
recognised the experimental truth of the PoR. It is possible that
Einstein wanted it to be more than that but either way mathematically it
had been shown to be true - it forms the first postulate.

What Einstein actually did next was to assume that Maxwell's wave in
aether theory is impeccable (despite having got a Nobel prize for
demonstrating that the waves of Maxwell's theory do not physically
exist). If you assume Maxwell's wave in aether theory is impeccable and
if there is no obvious flaw in the MMX experiment then you interpret the
MMX experiment as showing that an observer's speed relative to the
aether is zero. The second postulate simply describes what an observer,
stationary w.r.t the aether would observe.

The rest of Einstein's 1905 paper is what Waldron calls "clumsy algebra"
by which he produces a theory mathematically identical to Lorentz's.
According to the historian Whittaker, the second postulate was a
statement of what was generally accepted at the time and the clue to the
truth of this is that while Einstein goes to some length to justify the
first postulate he simply introduces the second without comment. In fact
his first statement of the second postulate is exceedingly sloppy and
can be interpreted in more than one way. Again if he was introducing a
novel concept he would have taken more trouble to explain exactly what
he meant. It is only his second statement of the second postulate in the
section 2. "On the Relativity of Lengths and Times" which is
unambiguous.

His 1920 lecture is where he explained what it was all about. What he
objected to was the asymmetry in the theoretical structure of Lorentz's
theory. i.e. the idea that lurking within the physical theory of Lorentz
was a unique FoR stationary w.r.t the aether which was indistinguishable
from every other FoR. Although this results in a PoR which is
experimentally true Einstein wanted the PoR to be an absolute principle.
In order to achieve that symmetry a different sort of aether is required
what he calls "an aether without the immobility of Lorentz's" . His 1920
lecture is deliberately vague (or general in nature if you prefer) but
two things are undeniable. One, that he comes down in favour of the
aether for a number of reasons, the other that he rejects that this
implies there is a special FoR associated with (stationary w.r.t) the
aether.

In order to achieve symmetry every observer's relationship with the
aether must be the same - which brings us back to the second postulate
which in effect says that every observer is stationary w.r.t the aether
as shown by the MMX (IF one assumes that Maxwell's wave in aether theory
is impeccable).

While Einstein expected nature to provide a suitable aether which every
observer would naturally find himself stationary w.r.t no one else
shared that vision. What complicated matters was that his SR theory had
already been accepted on the assumption that it did not require an
aether at all because it states:

"The introduction of a 'luminiferous ether' will prove to be superfluous
...." 1905 SR paper

No one seems to have asked the obvious questions as to how it manages
without one. Perhaps physics had been taken over by mathematicians who
were interested in the mathematical possibilities. In fact what the
paper actually says is

"The introduction of a 'luminiferous ether' will prove to be superfluous
*inasmuch* as the view here to be developed will not require an
'absolutely stationary space' provided with special properties..."

The key word being "inasmuch". The 1920 lecture makes it clear that it
was not the aether which Einstein considered superfluous but the
'absolutely stationary space' - the FoR stationary w.r.t the aether
which is a part of Lorentz's theory.

If Einstein's "aether without the immobility of Lorentz's" is not
acceptable - and it wasn't - the whole scenario falls apart. Einstein
has reproduced exactly the same maths as Lorentz, has objected to the
theoretical structure of Lorentz's theory and then failed to come up
with an acceptable alternative theoretical structure i.e. his attempt to
come up with an improved theory has apparently failed.

At this point the physics establishment changed its own rules by
deciding that a theory doesn't need a theoretical structure - thus
making SR acceptable without one. Getting rid of the aether was not the
work of Einstein, nor the result of experiment nor some theoretical
wizardry but by an arbitrary decision on the part of the physics
establishment that a theory no longer needs a physical interpretation.

You say:

Actually Einstein's contribution was much more fundamental than
that......
At least that's the idea right now that comes from
Einstein's contribution.

except that it was not Einstein's contribution. It was a fundamental
change which the physics establishment used to get itself out of a hole
having accepted a theory without proper scrutiny and not wanting to go
back on its acceptance. They decided that physics theory was better off
without physical interpretation because they had accepted a theory which
has no credible physical causality (apart from that provided by LET
which they did not like).

It is dishonest, (while not strictly untrue) to say that Einstein's
theory resulted in a fundamental change in the way physicists viewed the
nature of physics; as that gives completely the wrong impression of
Einstein's role.

When physics disowned the aether it sawed through the intellectual
branch it was sitting on. Everything now has to be dressed up with
impressive sounding phrases and spin to cover the gaps but essentially
Maxwell's equations are simply extensions of empirical relationships
provided by Faraday. They can only be assumed valid under the conditions
under which Faraday made his measurements - charge moving at low speed.
It is the physical aether theory which it was assumed those equations
were describing which leads to the MMX - which was measuring the speed
of the earth w.r.t the aether not testing Maxwell's equations. The
interpretation of the MMX - that every observer appears to be stationary
w.r.t the aether, and the assumption of source independence both come
from the physical aether theory not from the empirical relationships
produced by Faraday.

Certainly as far as SR is concerned I really cannot see what Einstein
was supposed to have done which was in any way clever let alone give him
the status of genius and whether glird shows his maths to be inept or
not really doesn't matter to me. Lorentz was in my view a far better
physicist than Einstein and he legitimately tried to explain why it
appeared, from the MMX that every observer is stationary w.r.t the
aether. Einstein simply accepted that every observer is stationary w.r.t
the aether and failed to explain why. Lorentz was legitimately trying to
find a fix for Maxwell's theory to account for the null result of the
MMX. Einstein tried to find a different fix (and failed) when there
wasn't any point anyway, Maxwell's theory having failed again re
Ultraviolet catastrophe, Planck's quantization, and Einstein's own
explanation of the photoelectric effect.

It makes no sense to me at all. In SR Einstein ditches 3 apparently
sensible and long standing axioms of physics in order to save Maxwell's
aether theory when he himself has shown that the waves of Maxwell's wave
in aether theory do not physically exist. It makes no sense to me that
his theory should have been accepted and even less sense that that
decision should not have been reversed when it was decided that the
aether - for which 3 axioms of physics had been sacrificed - was a
terribly bad idea and doesn't exist.

I just do not accept that "it all worked out right in the end" neither
do I accept that physics without physical process as a compliment to the
maths is any longer a true science.
--
John Kennaugh
"The nature of the physicists' default was their failure to insist sufficiently
strongly on the physical reality of the physical world." Dr Scott Murray

I think the key to understanding Einstein's initial behaviour is this
text:

http://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/einstein/specrel/www/
Albert Einstein 1905: "From this there ensues the following peculiar
consequence. If at the points A and B of K there are stationary clocks
which, viewed in the stationary system, are synchronous; and if the
clock at A is moved with the velocity v along the line AB to B, then
on its arrival at B the two clocks no longer synchronize, but the
clock moved from A to B lags behind the other which has remained at B
by tv^2/2c^2 (up to magnitudes of fourth and higher order), t being
the time occupied in the journey from A to B. It is at once apparent
that this result still holds good if the clock moves from A to B in
any polygonal line, and also when the points A and B coincide. If we
assume that the result proved for a polygonal line is also valid for a
continuously curved line, we arrive at this result: If one of two
synchronous clocks at A is moved in a closed curve with constant
velocity until it returns to A, the journey lasting t seconds, then by
the clock which has remained at rest the travelled clock on its
arrival at A will be tv^2/2c^2 second slow. Thence we conclude that a
balance-clock at the equator must go more slowly, by a very small
amount, than a precisely similar clock situated at one of the poles
under otherwise identical conditions."

The mediocrity badly needed miracles that could convert Albert the
Plagiarist into Divine Albert. And this particular miracle went well
beyond the plagiarism - the conclusion that the clock at rest is
running FASTER than the travelling clock had nothing to do with
Lorentz transformation equations. Yet, unlike today's Einsteins, the
original Einstein was tortured by guilty conscience all along:

http://www.astrofind.net/documents/t...-radiation.php
The Development of Our Views on the Composition and Essence of
Radiation by Albert Einstein
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."

Pentcho Valev

The source of relativity may be duality of time. We will always see an
explosion
coming at us with a speed under the speed of light approaching us from
its
origin starting the time we see it exploding and not where one would
calculate
when it started and when it should hit us. You are probably not
interested in
looking at the real explanations to relativity, why things are the way
they are.