"How Does Light 'Know' How Fast to Travel?"

On 4 Sept, 17:34, Tom Roberts wrote in
sci.physics.relativity:
John Kennaugh wrote:
You cannot transport
energy from A to B by means of geometry.

I never said or implied that one could. But one CAN infer what
"straight" means from geometry. And one can infer what "c" is from the
geometry of SR.

But you are a genius Roberts Roberts! You take Minkowski spacetime
geometry and you know what "c" is! That is certainly an elaboration on
Einstein's 1905 approach - then he took Lorentz transformation
equations and immediately knew what "c" was. Are you considering
publishing your new discovery in Nature and Science simultaneously
Roberts Roberts?

Pentcho Valev

On 4 Sep, 16:25, Pentcho Valev wrote:
On 4 Sept, 17:34, Tom Roberts wrote in
sci.physics.relativity:

John Kennaugh wrote:
You cannot transport
energy from A to B by means of geometry.

I never said or implied that one could. But one CAN infer what
"straight" means from geometry. And one can infer what "c" is from the
geometry of SR.

But you are a genius Roberts Roberts! You take Minkowski spacetime
geometry and you know what "c" is! That is certainly an elaboration on
Einstein's 1905 approach - then he took Lorentz transformation
equations and immediately knew what "c" was. Are you considering
publishing your new discovery in Nature and Science simultaneously
Roberts Roberts?

Pentcho Valev

What Tom Roberts said is well known so there will be no Nobel Prizes
today, it is based on Minkowski's approach to relativity. The geometry
of spacetime fixes a universal constant called "c". When the
spacetime interval due to a moving thing is zero all observers will
observe it to be zero whatever their state of uniform motion. This is
a geometrical property of (3+1)D spacetime. A zero spacetime interval
only occurs when the velocity of a thing is "c", it does not occur at
other velocities (except the trivial case of identity). So in
spacetime all observers observe a thing moving at "c" to be moving at
"c" whatever their own state of motion.

It is such a shame that so many people take Einstein's 1905 paper as
some sort of gospel, relativity moved on rapidly after 1905 and became
a fully fledged geometrical theory by 1910. Initially Einstein
rejected the geometrical approach that is now the standard theory.

Alex

On 7 Sept, 12:13, Alex wrote:
On 4 Sep, 16:25, Pentcho Valev wrote:

On 4 Sept, 17:34, Tom Roberts wrote in
sci.physics.relativity:

John Kennaugh wrote:
You cannot transport
energy from A to B by means of geometry.

I never said or implied that one could. But one CAN infer what
"straight" means from geometry. And one can infer what "c" is from the
geometry of SR.

But you are a genius Roberts Roberts! You take Minkowski spacetime
geometry and you know what "c" is! That is certainly an elaboration on
Einstein's 1905 approach - then he took Lorentz transformation
equations and immediately knew what "c" was. Are you considering
publishing your new discovery in Nature and Science simultaneously
Roberts Roberts?

Pentcho Valev

What Tom Roberts said is well known so there will be no Nobel Prizes
today, it is based on Minkowski's approach to relativity. The geometry
of spacetime fixes a universal constant called "c". When the
spacetime interval due to a moving thing is zero all observers will
observe it to be zero whatever their state of uniform motion. This is
a geometrical property of (3+1)D spacetime. A zero spacetime interval
only occurs when the velocity of a thing is "c", it does not occur at
other velocities (except the trivial case of identity). So in
spacetime all observers observe a thing moving at "c" to be moving at
"c" whatever their own state of motion.

It is such a shame that so many people take Einstein's 1905 paper as
some sort of gospel, relativity moved on rapidly after 1905 and became
a fully fledged geometrical theory by 1910. Initially Einstein
rejected the geometrical approach that is now the standard theory.

Still Einstein's 1905 light postulate

http://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/einstein/specrel/www/ "...light is
always propagated in empty space with a definite velocity c which is
independent of the state of motion of the emitting body."

is either true or false. If it is true, your statement that
"relativity moved on rapidly after 1905 and became a fully fledged
geometrical theory by 1910" is relevant. If Einstein's light postulate
is false, nobody should care about any development of the "theory".
One should just remember Einstein's words:

Einstein: "If the speed of light is the least bit affected by the
speed of the light source, then my whole theory of relativity and
theory of gravity is false."

Pentcho Valev