EINSTEINIANA'S LUNACY

Einsteinians accept the formula:

(frequency) = (speed of light)/(wavelength)

but fear it at the same time. As the observer starts moving towards
the light source, the frequency he measures increases and since the
speed of the light is to remain constant (here Einsteinians sing
"Divine Einstein", "Yes we all believe in relativity, relativity,
relativity" and go into convulsions), the formula says that the
observer should miraculously procrusteanize the wavelength of the
coming light:

http://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/teachi...ang/index.html
John Norton: "Here's a light wave and an observer. If the observer
were to hurry towards the source of the light, the observer would now
pass wavecrests more frequently than the resting observer. That would
mean that moving observer would find the frequency of the light to
have increased (AND CORRESPONDINGLY FOR THE WAVELENGTH - THE DISTANCE
BETWEEN CRESTS - TO HAVE DECREASED)."

http://www.quora.com/How-does-partic...ht-is-constant
Clint Law, M.S. in physics, experimentalist: "Red-shift is not an
alteration of the speed of light, but the frequency of the light.
(...) A thought experiment that may help: Imagine creating some
ripples in a lake, let's say from a dropped rock. You, the observer,
are standing a fixed distance from the source. Some time after the
rock is dropped, the first wave will reach your location. Then the
next few ripples will hit you, and you can measure the frequency of
the wave (the rate of pulses per unit time). Now, imagine that you are
moving away from the dropped rock. But, you are still exactly the same
distance away from the rock when the first wave hits (i.e. you must
have started closer to the rock than in the first example). The time
it took for the waves to get to you will be exactly the same (because
the waves propagated at a fixed speed). But, and here's the big deal,
the wave fronts will be spaced farther apart (in time), because you
are moving in the same direction. So, the bottom line is that the
speed of the wave is the same, but the (apparent) frequency is
changed."

Years ago I thought that the obvious inability of the moving observer
to change the wavelength of the coming light would make the demise of
Divine Albert's Divine Special Relativity imminent. Now I know
something more important: NOBODY CARES in the era of Postcientism.
From time to time Einsteinians forget that the speed of light should
always be constant and tell the truth: As the observer starts moving
towards the light source, the frequency and the speed of light
increase while the wavelength remains constant:

http://www.hep.man.ac.uk/u/roger/PHY.../lecture18.pdf
Roger Barlow: "Now suppose the source is fixed but the observer is
moving towards the source, with speed v. In time t, ct/(lambda) waves
pass a fixed point. A moving point adds another vt/(lambda). So f'=(c
+v)/(lambda)."

http://www-physics.ucsd.edu/students.../lecture16.pdf
Convention we will choose:
u = velocity of observer or source
v = velocity of wave
Moving Observer
Observer approaching: f'=(1/T')=(v+u)/(lambda)
Observer receding: f'=(1/T')=(v-u)/(lambda)

http://www.expo-db.be/ExposPrecedent...%20Doppler.pdf
6. Source immobile - Observateur en mouvement
La distance entre les crêtes, la longueur d'onde lambda ne change pas.
Mais la vitesse des crêtes par rapport à l'observateur change !
L'observateur se rapproche de la source
f' = V'/(lambda)
f' = f (1 + Vo/V)
L'observateur s'éloigne de la source
f' = f (1 - Vo/V)

http://www.eng.uwi.tt/depts/elec/sta...relativity.pdf
The Invalidation of a Sacred Principle of Modern Physics
Stephan J.G. Gift
"For a stationary observer O, the stationary light source S emits
light at speed c, wavelength Lo, and frequency Fo given by Fo=c/Lo. If
the observer moves toward S at speed v, then again based on classical
analysis, the speed of light relative to the moving observer is (c +
v) and not c as required by Einstein's law of light propagation. Hence
the observer intercepts wave-fronts of light at a frequency fA, which
is higher than Fo, as is observed, and is given by fA = (c+v)/Lo Fo.
(...) In light of this elementary result invalidating STR, it is
difficult to understand why this invalid theory has been (and
continues to be) accepted for the past 100 years."

Yet truth and lie ("the lie always one leap ahead of the truth")
safely coexist in the era of Postcientism:

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

Do photons and cannonballs undergo the same acceleration in a
gravitational field? In the period 1907-1914 Einstein's answer was an
unambiguous "yes". However this meant that Newton's emission theory of
light was correct: it is easy to show that, if the speeds of the
photon and the cannonball vary in the same way in a gravitational
field, then they vary in the same way in the absence of a
gravitational field. Precisely, both speeds obey the equation c'=c+v,
where c' is the speed of the photon/cannonball relative to the
observer, c is the speed of the photon/cannonball relative to the
emitter and v is the speed of the emitter relative to the observer.

In his 1915 (final) version of general relativity Einstein found it
pertinent to inform future believers that, in a gravitational field,
photons accelerate faster than cannonballs by a factor of two:

http://www.speed-light.info/speed_of_light_variable.htm
"Einstein wrote this paper in 1911 in German (download from:
http://www.physik.uni-augsburg.de/an...35_898-908.pdf
). It predated the full formal development of general relativity by
about four years. You can find an English translation of this paper in
the Dover book 'The Principle of Relativity' beginning on page 99; you
will find in section 3 of that paper Einstein's derivation of the
variable speed of light in a gravitational potential, eqn (3). The
result is: c'=c0(1+phi/c^2) where phi is the gravitational potential
relative to the point where the speed of light co is measured......You
can find a more sophisticated derivation later by Einstein (1955) from
the full theory of general relativity in the weak field
approximation....For the 1955 results but not in coordinates see page
93, eqn (6.28): c(r)=[1+2phi(r)/c^2]c. Namely the 1955 approximation
shows a variation in km/sec twice as much as first predicted in 1911."

In the era of Postscientism believers do not express doubts but feel
uneasy sometimes:

"Divine Albert says that massless photons accelerate faster than
cannonballs?!?"

Einsteiniana's priests find this uneasiness dangerous and disperse it
by fiercely confusing believers' minds: some teach that in a
gravitational field the speed of light is variable, others that in a
gravitational field the speed of light is constant, Steve Carlip
teaches that in a gravitational field the speed of light is both
variable and constant:

http://www.physlink.com/Education/AskExperts/ae13.cfm
"So, it is absolutely true that the speed of light is not constant in
a gravitational field [which, by the equivalence principle, applies as
well to accelerating (non-inertial) frames of reference]. If this were
not so, there would be no bending of light by the gravitational field
of stars....Indeed, this is exactly how Einstein did the calculation
in: 'On the Influence of Gravitation on the Propagation of Light,'
Annalen der Physik, 35, 1911. which predated the full formal
development of general relativity by about four years. This paper is
widely available in English. You can find a copy beginning on page 99
of the Dover book 'The Principle of Relativity.' You will find in
section 3 of that paper, Einstein's derivation of the (variable) speed
of light in a gravitational potential, eqn (3). The result is,
c' = c0 ( 1 + V / c^2 )
where V is the gravitational potential relative to the point where the
speed of light c0 is measured."

http://www.blazelabs.com/f-g-gcont.asp
"So, faced with this evidence most readers must be wondering why we
learn about the importance of the constancy of speed of light. Did
Einstein miss this? Sometimes I find out that what's written in our
textbooks is just a biased version taken from the original work, so
after searching within the original text of the theory of GR by
Einstein, I found this quote: "In the second place our result shows
that, according to the general theory of relativity, the law of the
constancy of the velocity of light in vacuo, which constitutes one of
the two fundamental assumptions in the special theory of relativity
and to which we have already frequently referred, cannot claim any
unlimited validity. A curvature of rays of light can only take place
when the velocity of propagation of light varies with position. Now we
might think that as a consequence of this, the special theory of
relativity and with it the whole theory of relativity would be laid in
the dust. But in reality this is not the case. We can only conclude
that the special theory of relativity cannot claim an unlimited domain
of validity ; its results hold only so long as we are able to
disregard the influences of gravitational fields on the phenomena
(e.g. of light)." - Albert Einstein (1879-1955) - The General Theory
of Relativity: Chapter 22 - A Few Inferences from the General
Principle of Relativity-. Today we find that since the Special Theory
of Relativity unfortunately became part of the so called mainstream
science, it is considered a sacrilege to even suggest that the speed
of light be anything other than a constant. This is somewhat
surprising since even Einstein himself suggested in a paper "On the
Influence of Gravitation on the Propagation of Light," Annalen der
Physik, 35, 1911, that the speed of light might vary with the
gravitational potential. Indeed, the variation of the speed of light
in a vacuum or space is explicitly shown in Einstein's calculation for
the angle at which light should bend upon the influence of gravity.
One can find his calculation in his paper. The result is c'=c(1+V/c^2)
where V is the gravitational potential relative to the point where the
measurement is taken. 1+V/c^2 is also known as the GRAVITATIONAL
REDSHIFT FACTOR."

http://www.mathpages.com/rr/s6-01/6-01.htm
"In geometrical units we define c_0 = 1, so Einstein's 1911 formula
can be written simply as c=1+phi. However, this formula for the speed
of light (not to mention this whole approach to gravity) turned out to
be incorrect, as Einstein realized during the years leading up to 1915
and the completion of the general theory. In fact, the general theory
of relativity doesn't give any equation for the speed of light at a
particular location, because the effect of gravity cannot be
represented by a simple scalar field of c values. Instead, the "speed
of light" at a each point depends on the direction of the light ray
through that point, as well as on the choice of coordinate systems, so
we can't generally talk about the value of c at a given point in a non-
vanishing gravitational field. However, if we consider just radial
light rays near a spherically symmetrical (and non- rotating) mass,
and if we agree to use a specific set of coordinates, namely those in
which the metric coefficients are independent of t, then we can read a
formula analogous to Einstein's 1911 formula directly from the
Schwarzschild metric. (...) In the Newtonian limit the classical
gravitational potential at a distance r from mass m is phi=-m/r, so if
we let c_r = dr/dt denote the radial speed of light in Schwarzschild
coordinates, we have c_r =1+2phi, which corresponds to Einstein's 1911
equation, except that we have a factor of 2 instead of 1 on the
potential term."

http://www.amazon.com/Brief-History-.../dp/0553380168
Stephen Hawking, "A Brief History of Time", Chapter 6:
"Under the theory that light is made up of waves, it was not clear how
it would respond to gravity. But if light is composed of particles,
one might expect them to be affected by gravity in the same way that
cannonballs, rockets, and planets are.....In fact, it is not really
consistent to treat light like cannonballs in Newton's theory of
gravity because the speed of light is fixed. (A cannonball fired
upward from the earth will be slowed down by gravity and will
eventually stop and fall back; a photon, however, must continue upward
at a constant speed...)"

http://www.hawking.org.uk/index.php?...64&It emid=66
Stephen Hawking: "Interestingly enough, Laplace himself wrote a paper
in 1799 on how some stars could have a gravitational field so strong
that light could not escape, but would be dragged back onto the star.
He even calculated that a star of the same density as the Sun, but two
hundred and fifty times the size, would have this property. But
although Laplace may not have realised it, the same idea had been put
forward 16 years earlier by a Cambridge man, John Mitchell, in a paper
in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. Both Mitchell
and Laplace thought of light as consisting of particles, rather like
cannon balls, that could be slowed down by gravity, and made to fall
back on the star. 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. How then could gravity slow down
light, and make it fall back."

http://helios.gsfc.nasa.gov/qa_sp_gr.html
"Is light affected by gravity? If so, how can the speed of light be
constant? Wouldn't the light coming off of the Sun be slower than the
light we make here? If not, why doesn't light escape a black hole?
Yes, light is affected by gravity, but not in its speed. General
Relativity (our best guess as to how the Universe works) gives two
effects of gravity on light. It can bend light (which includes effects
such as gravitational lensing), and it can change the energy of light.
But it changes the energy by shifting the frequency of the light
(gravitational redshift) not by changing light speed. Gravity bends
light by warping space so that what the light beam sees as "straight"
is not straight to an outside observer. The speed of light is still
constant." Dr. Eric Christian

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physic..._of_light.html
Steve Carlip: "Einstein went on to discover a more general theory of
relativity which explained gravity in terms of curved spacetime, and
he talked about the speed of light changing in this new theory. In the
1920 book "Relativity: the special and general theory" he wrote:
". . . according to the general theory of relativity, the law of the
constancy of the velocity of light in vacuo, which constitutes one of
the two fundamental assumptions in the special theory of relativity
[. . .] cannot claim any unlimited validity. A curvature of rays of
light can only take place when the velocity of propagation of light
varies with position." Since Einstein talks of velocity (a vector
quantity: speed with direction) rather than speed alone, it is not
clear that he meant the speed will change, but the reference to
special relativity suggests that he did mean so. THIS INTERPRETATION
IS PERFECTLY VALID AND MAKES GOOD PHYSICAL SENSE, BUT A MORE MODERN
INTERPRETATION IS THAT THE SPEED OF LIGHT IS CONSTANT in general
relativity."

Pentcho Valev

"Pentcho Valev" wrote in message
...
| Do photons and cannonballs undergo the same acceleration in a
| gravitational field? In the period 1907-1914 Einstein's answer

Who cares what the lunatic answers?

"It seems that Light is propagated in time, spending in its passage from
the sun to us about seven Minutes of time:" -- DEFIN. II of Opticks Or,
A Treatise of the Reflections, Refractions, Inflections and Colours of
Light - Sir Isaac Newton.


"the velocity of light in our theory plays the part, physically, of an
infinitely great velocity" --§ 4. Physical Meaning of the Equations
Obtained in Respect to Moving Rigid Bodies and Moving Clocks
-- ON THE ELECTRODYNAMICS OF MOVING BODIES By A. Einstein

"The ultimate source of Newton's conviction that light is corpuscular was
his recognition that individual rays of light have immutable properties;
-- Britannica Online

However, Newton was unaware of the work of Doppler, which only
became apparent with the arrival of steam locomotives fast enough to
produce a noticeable frequency shift, demonstrated he
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ut27rSwkV2k&NR=1

Einstein had no excuse.

Many (if not all) clever theoreticians find Einstein's 1918 paper
"explaining" the twin paradox idiotic:

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dialog...f_rela tivity
Dialog about Objections against the Theory of Relativity (1918), by
Albert Einstein
"During the partial processes 2 and 4 the clock U1, going at a
velocity v, runs indeed at a slower pace than the resting clock U2.
However, this is more than compensated by a faster pace of U1 during
partial process 3. 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.
This consideration completely clears up the paradox that you brought
up."

Yet in the era of Postscientism clever theoreticians are subtle
practitioners of doublethink so the idiocy found in Einstein's 1918
paper makes them sing "Divine Einstein" and "Yes we all believe in
relativity, relativity, relativity". Sound criticism that somehow
crosses the crimestop wall is just ignored:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/academ/...elativity.html
What is wrong with relativity?
G. BURNISTON BROWN
Bulletin of the Institute of Physics and Physical Society, Vol. 18
(March, 1967) pp.7177
"A more intriguing instance of this so-called 'time dilation' is the
well-known 'twin paradox', where one of two twins goes for a journey
and returns to find himself younger than his brother who remained
behind. This case allows more scope for muddled thinking because
acceleration can be brought into the discussion. Einstein maintained
the greater youthfulness of the travelling twin, and admitted that it
contradicts the principle of relativity, saying that acceleration must
be the cause (Einstein 1918). In this he has been followed by
relativists in a long controversy in many journals, much of which ably
sustains the character of earlier speculations which Born describes as
"monstrous" (Born 1956). Surely there are three conclusive reasons why
acceleration can have nothing to do with the time dilation
calculated:
(i) By taking a sufficiently long journey the effects of acceleration
at the start, turn-round and end could be made negligible compared
with the uniform velocity time dilation which is proportional to the
duration of the journey.
(ii) If there is no uniform time dilation, and the effect, if any, is
due to acceleration, then the use of a formula depending only on the
steady velocity and its duration cannot be justified.
(iii) There is, in principle, no need for acceleration. Twin A can get
his velocity V before synchronizing his clock with that of twin B as
he passes. He need not turn round: he could be passed by C who has a
velocity V in the opposite direction, and who adjusts his clock to
that of A as he passes. When C later passes B they can compare clock
readings. As far as the theoretical experiment is concerned, C's clock
can be considered to be A's clock returning without acceleration
since, by hypothesis, all the clocks have the same rate when at rest
together and change with motion in the same way independently of
direction. [fn. I am indebted to Lord Halsbury for pointing this out
to me.] (...) The three examples which have been dealt with above show
clearly that the difficulties are not paradoxes) but genuine
contradictions which follow inevitably from the principle of
relativity and the physical interpretations of the Lorentz
transformations. The special theory of relativity is therefore
untenable as a physical theory."

http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/con...ent=a909857880
Peter Hayes "The Ideology of Relativity: The Case of the Clock
Paradox" : Social Epistemology, Volume 23, Issue 1 January 2009, pages
57-78
"This first appearance of what has become known as time dilation in
Einstein's work requires careful attention. In particular, anyone who
assumes that the special theory deals only with uniform movement in a
straight line and is thus a precisely delineated subset of the later
general theory, will wish to explore why Einstein extends his
conclusions to polygonal and circular movements. It is by no means "at
once apparent" that what is true for a straight line is true for a
polygon, nor that what has been "proved" for a polygon applies to a
circle. The principle of relativity introduced at the outset of the
1905 paper implicitly limited the special theory to reference frames
moving at a constant speed in a straight line with respect to one
another. In later work, Einstein explicitly stated that the special
theory applied only to a reference frame "in a state of uniform
rectilinear and non rotary motion" in respect of a second reference
frame, in contrast to the general theory that dealt with reference
frames regardless of their state of motion (Einstein 1920, 61).
Acceleration, therefore, would appear to be the province of the
general theory. A polygon, however, would seem to necessarily involve
acceleration whenever there is a abrupt alteration in the direction of
travel. Even more confusingly, a circular path, far from allowing
movement at a "constant velocity", has a velocity that continually
changes. Einstein, it is argued, wished to minimise the significance
of acceleration - as he did not mention acceleration at all in the
passage, he could hardly be said to do otherwise (Essen 1971, 13).
With respect to the transition from the straight line to the polygon,
this assumption is corroborated by comments Einstein made in 1911 when
he said that the larger the polygon the less significant the impact of
a sudden change of direction would be.

Einstein 1911: "The [travelling] 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." (Einstein et
al. 1993, 354)

(...) The argument that the prediction of time difference between a
moving and a stationary clock violates the principle of relativity is
well known. Certainly, it must have become known to Einstein, for in
1918 he created a dialogue in which "Kritikus" voiced exactly this
objection (Einstein 1918). In response to this criticism, Einstein
underwent a volte-face, reversing his reasoning in 1905 and 1911. The
sudden change in direction of the moving clock, far from having
unknown effects that needed to be minimised, was now said to provide
the entire explanation for the change. Instead of imagining a moving
clock travelling in a huge polygon or circle to make sudden changes in
direction as insignificant as possible or the journey as smooth as
possible, Einstein imagined an out and back journey. He then explained
that the slow-down in the moving clock occurred during the sudden jolt
when it went into reverse. (...) Given Einsteins argument in 1918, it
seems inescapable that his 1905 prediction of time dilation was not,
in fact, a "peculiar consequence" of his forgoing account of special
relativity (Einstein 1923, 49). When it is also remembered that in
1904 Lorentz deduced the existence of "local time", it is reasonable
to conclude that the prediction that the clocks would end up showing
different times can be reached without entering into Einstein's
reasoning on the special theory at all. The supporters of Einstein,
however, generally maintain that one needs to move beyond the special
theory to the general theory to understand why the times shown by the
clocks would be different. However, as Einstein's prediction preceded
the general theory, this argument is problematic (Lovejoy 1931, 159;
Essen 1971, 14). It has been seen that: (a) in 1911 Einstein
explicitly rules out the ability of the special theory of relativity
to say what happened if the moving clock suddenly changed direction,
and (b) in 1918 Einstein tacitly admitted that his explanation of the
clock paradox in 1905 was incorrect by transforming the polygonal or
circular journey of the moving clock into an out and back journey. If
the general theory is necessary to explain the clock paradox, then
Einstein must have (a) predicted the effects of acceleration in 1905
even though he did not incorporate them into his theory for another
decade, and (b) hidden his intuition by describing a journey that
discounted their significance. (...) There is, nonetheless, some
divergence about how to resolve the clock paradox amongst mainstream
scientists and philosophers who address the issue. The majority
suggest that (a) the general theory is required to resolve the paradox
because like "Kritikus" they have deduced - quite correctly - that it
cannot be explained by the special theory. However, a minority believe
that (b) the paradox can be explained by the special theory because
they have deduced - again quite correctly - that it is incredible to
suppose that only the general theory can explain a prediction
ostensibly arising from the prior special theory. Each deduction,
considered in isolation, is allowable within the mainstream; what is
not permitted is to bring the two of them together to conclude that
( c) neither the special nor the general theory explains time
dilation. (...) The prediction that clocks will move at different
rates is particularly well known, and the problem of explaining how
this can be so without violating the principle of relativity is
particularly obvious. The clock paradox, however, is only one of a
number of simple objections that have been raised to different aspects
of Einstein's theory of relativity. (Much of this criticism is quite
apart from and often predates the apparent contradiction between
relativity theory and quantum mechanics.) It is rare to find any
attempt at a detailed rebuttal of these criticisms by professional
physicists. However, physicists do sometimes give a general response
to criticisms that relativity theory is syncretic by asserting that
Einstein is logically consistent, but that to explain why is so
difficult that critics lack the capacity to understand the argument.
In this way, the handy claim that there are unspecified, highly
complex resolutions of simple apparent inconsistencies in the theory
can be linked to the charge that antirelativists have only a shallow
understanding of the matter, probably gleaned from misleading popular
accounts of the theory. The claim that the theory of relativity is
logically consistent for reasons that are too complex for non-
professionals to grasp is not only convenient, but is rhetorically
unassailable - as whenever a critic disproves one argument, the
professional physicist can allude to another more abstruse one.
Einstein's transformation of the clock paradox from a purported
expression of the special theory to a purported expression of the much
more complicated general theory is one example of such a defence. A
more recent example is found in Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont's
scornful account of Henri Bergson's attempt to investigate the clock/
twin paradox. Like "Kritikus", Bergson argued that the asymmetric
outcome of the paradox was incompatible with the principle of
relativity. Like Einstein, Sokal and Bricmont explain that Bergson has
failed to recognise the asymmetric forces of acceleration at work.
They go on to claim that the special theory tells us what happens
under these circumstances and that the general theory only laboriously
leads to the same conclusion. The suggestion that to vindicate this
claim would be laborious functions in the same way as Einstein's
elusive "calculations"; that is, it is not an explanation but an
explanation-stopper. Sokal and Bricmont do not demonstrate how either
the special theory or the general theory explain time dilation. Nor do
they explain how their claim can be reconciled with Einstein
explicitly limiting the special theory to objects travelling at a
uniform velocity, nor account for why the circular journey of 1905
became the out and back journey of 1918. (...) Einstein's theory of
relativity fails to reconcile the contradictory principles on which it
is based. Rather than combining incompatible assumptions into an
integrated whole, the theory allows the adept to step between
incompatible assumptions in a way that hides these inconsistencies.
The clock paradox is symptomatic of Einstein's failure, and its
purported resolution is illustrative of the techniques that can be
used to mask this failure. To uncover to the logical contradictions in
the theory of relativity presents no very difficult task. However, the
theory is impervious to such attacks as it is shielded by a
professional constituency of supporters whose interests and authority
are bound up in maintaining its inflated claims. Relativity theory, in
short, is an ideology."

Pentcho Valev

Einsteiniana's high priest destroys believers' remnants of
rationality: he teaches believers how to trap a long train inside a
short tunnel but is not going to ask them to explain this "paradox" on
any exam:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSRIy...related&search

Apart from trapping arbitrarily long objects inside arbitrarily short
containers, Einsteinians can also create a situation in which a bug is
both dead and alive:

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physic...barn_pole.html
"These are the props. You own a barn, 40m long, with automatic doors
at either end, that can be opened and closed simultaneously by a
switch. You also have a pole, 80m long, which of course won't fit in
the barn. Now someone takes the pole and tries to run (at nearly the
speed of light) through the barn with the pole horizontal. Special
Relativity (SR) says that a moving object is contracted in the
direction of motion: this is called the Lorentz Contraction. So, if
the pole is set in motion lengthwise, then it will contract in the
reference frame of a stationary observer.....So, as the pole passes
through the barn, there is an instant when it is completely within the
barn. At that instant, you close both doors simultaneously, with your
switch. Of course, you open them again pretty quickly, but at least
momentarily you had the contracted pole shut up in your barn. The
runner emerges from the far door unscathed.....If the doors are kept
shut the rod will obviously smash into the barn door at one end. If
the door withstands this the leading end of the rod will come to rest
in the frame of reference of the stationary observer. There can be no
such thing as a rigid rod in relativity so the trailing end will not
stop immediately and the rod will be compressed beyond the amount it
was Lorentz contracted. If it does not explode under the strain and it
is sufficiently elastic it will come to rest and start to spring back
to its natural shape but since it is too big for the barn the other
end is now going to crash into the back door and the rod will be
trapped IN A COMPRESSED STATE inside the barn."

http://www.quebecscience.qc.ca/Revolutions
"Cependant, si une fusée de 100 m passait devant nous à une vitesse
proche de celle de la lumière, elle pourrait sembler ne mesurer que 50
m, ou même moins. Bien sûr, la question qui vient tout de suite à
l'esprit est: «Cette contraction n'est-elle qu'une illusion?» Il
semble tout à fait incroyable que le simple mouvement puisse comprimer
un objet aussi rigide qu'une fusée. Et pourtant, la contraction est
réelle... mais SANS COMPRESSION physique de l'objet! Ainsi, une fusée
de 100 m passant à toute vitesse dans un tunnel de 60 m pourrait être
entièrement contenue dans ce tunnel pendant une fraction de seconde,
durant laquelle il serait possible de fermer des portes aux deux
bouts! La fusée est donc réellement plus courte. Pourtant, il n'y a
PAS DE COMPRESSION matérielle ou physique de l'engin. Comment est-ce
possible?"

http://alcor.concordia.ca/~scol/semi...ts/Durand.html
"La contraction une longueur est un phénomène à la fois réel mais sans
déformation structurelle. C'est un phénomène réel (et non pas une
illusion) car, par exemple, une perche dont la longueur au repos est
plus grande que la longueur au repos d'une grange peut réellement être
contenue dans cette dernière si elle se déplace assez rapidement. Par
contre, il ne peut y avoir de contraction structurelle de la perche,
i.e de déformation matérielle de l'objet, car la contraction de sa
longueur aurait aussi lieu si c'était plutôt l'observateur qui se
mettait en mouvement sans changer l'état de mouvement de la perche.
Autrement dit, sans changer l'état de la perche, en se mettant soi-
même en mouvement, on change sa longueur: ce n'est donc clairement pas
une contraction matérielle (l'état de la perche est le même dans les
deux cas)."

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu.../bugrivet.html
"The bug-rivet paradox is a variation on the twin paradox and is
similar to the pole-barn paradox.....The end of the rivet hits the
bottom of the hole before the head of the rivet hits the wall. So it
looks like the bug is squashed.....All this is nonsense from the bug's
point of view. The rivet head hits the wall when the rivet end is just
0.35 cm down in the hole! The rivet doesn't get close to the
bug....The paradox is not resolved."

Pentcho Valev

After 100 years of fierce worship of Einstein's 1905 false constant-
speed-of-light postulate, Einsteiniana's priests ultimately destroy
scientific rationality by informing believers that "the constant speed
of light is unnecessary for the construction of the theories of
relativity, but overwhelmingly more, there is no room for it in the
theory" and that "WE NEED TO DROP A POSTULATE, PERHAPS THE CONSTANCY
OF THE SPEED OF LIGHT":

http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/a...ls.php?id=5538
Paul Davies: "Was Einstein wrong? Einstein's famous equation E=mc2 is
the only scientific formula known to just about everyone. The "c" here
stands for the speed of light. It is one of the most fundamental of
the basic constants of physics. Or is it? In recent years a few
maverick scientists have claimed that the speed of light might not be
constant at all. Shock, horror! Does this mean the next Great
Revolution in Science is just around the corner?"

http://www.lauralee.com/news/relativitychallenged.htm
Question: Jumping off a bandwagon is risky - surely you could have
committed career suicide by suggesting something as radical as a
variable speed of light?
Magueijo: That's true. Maybe I wouldn't have been so carefree if I
hadn't had this Royal Society fellowship: it gives a safety net for 10
years. You can go anywhere and do whatever you want as long as you're
productive.
Question: So you're free to be the angry young man of physics?
Magueijo: Maybe it comes across that I'm bitter and twisted, but if
you're reading a book, the body language is lost. You're talking to me
face to face: you can see I'm really playing with all this. I'm not an
angry young man, I'm just being honest. There's no hard feelings. I
may say offensive things, but everything is very good natured.
Question: So why should the speed of light vary?
Magueijo: It's more useful to turn that round. The issue is more why
should the speed of light be constant? The constancy of the speed of
light is the central thing in relativity but we have lots of problems
in theoretical physics, and these probably result from assuming that
relativity works all the time. Relativity must collapse at some
point...

http://www.rense.com/general13/ein.htm
Einstein's Theory Of Relativity Must Be Rewritten
By Jonathan Leake, Science Editor
The Sunday Times - London
"A group of astronomers and cosmologists has warned that the laws
thought to govern the universe, including Albert Einstein's theory of
relativity, must be rewritten. The group, which includes Professor
Stephen Hawking and Sir Martin Rees, the astronomer royal, say such
laws may only work for our universe but not in others that are now
also thought to exist. "It is becoming increasingly likely that the
rules we had thought were fundamental through time and space are
actually just bylaws for our bit of it," said Rees, whose new book,
Our Cosmic Habitat, is published next month. "Creation is emerging as
even stranger than we thought." Among the ideas facing revision is
Einstein's belief that the speed of light must always be the same -
186,000 miles a second in a vacuum. There is growing evidence that
light moved much faster during the early stages of our universe. Rees,
Hawking and others are so concerned at the impact of such ideas that
they recently organised a private conference in Cambridge for more
than 30 leading cosmologists."

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/31/sc...-relative.html
"As propounded by Einstein as an audaciously confident young patent
clerk in 1905, relativity declares that the laws of physics, and in
particular the speed of light -- 186,000 miles per second -- are the
same no matter where you are or how fast you are moving. Generations
of students and philosophers have struggled with the paradoxical
consequences of Einstein's deceptively simple notion, which underlies
all of modern physics and technology, wrestling with clocks that speed
up and slow down, yardsticks that contract and expand and bad jokes
using the word "relative."......"Perhaps relativity is too restrictive
for what we need in quantum gravity," Dr. Magueijo said. "WE NEED TO
DROP A POSTULATE, PERHAPS THE CONSTANCY OF THE SPEED OF LIGHT."

http://o.castera.free.fr/pdf/Chronogeometrie.pdf
Jean-Marc Lévy-Leblond "De la relativité à la chronogéométrie ou: Pour
en finir avec le "second postulat" et autres fossiles": "D'autre part,
nous savons aujourd'hui que l'invariance de la vitesse de la lumière
est une conséquence de la nullité de la masse du photon. Mais,
empiriquement, cette masse, aussi faible soit son actuelle borne
supérieure expérimentale, ne peut et ne pourra jamais être considérée
avec certitude comme rigoureusement nulle. Il se pourrait même que de
futures mesures mettent en évidence une masse infime, mais non-nulle,
du photon ; la lumière alors n'irait plus à la "vitesse de la
lumière", ou, plus précisément, la vitesse de la lumière, désormais
variable, ne s'identifierait plus à la vitesse limite invariante. Les
procédures opérationnelles mises en jeu par le "second postulat"
deviendraient caduques ipso facto. La théorie elle-même en serait-elle
invalidée ? Heureusement, il n'en est rien ; mais, pour s'en assurer,
il convient de la refonder sur des bases plus solides, et d'ailleurs
plus économiques. En vérité, le premier postulat suffit, à la
condition de l'exploiter à fond."

http://www.hep.princeton.edu/~mcdona..._44_271_76.pdf
Jean-Marc Levy-Leblond: "This is the point of view from wich I intend
to criticize the overemphasized role of the speed of light in the
foundations of the special relativity, and to propose an approach to
these foundations that dispenses with the hypothesis of the invariance
of c. (...) We believe that special relativity at the present time
stands as a universal theory discribing the structure of a common
space-time arena in which all fundamental processes take place. (...)
The evidence of the nonzero mass of the photon would not, as such,
shake in any way the validity of the special relalivity. It would,
however, nullify all its derivations which are based on the invariance
of the photon velocity."

http://groups.google.ca/group/sci.ph...1ebdf49c012de2
Tom Roberts: "If it is ultimately discovered that the photon has a
nonzero mass (i.e. light in vacuum does not travel at the invariant
speed of the Lorentz transform), SR would be unaffected but both
Maxwell's equations and QED would be refuted (or rather, their domains
of applicability would be reduced)."

http://www.amazon.com/Einsteins-Rela.../dp/9810238886
Jong-Ping Hsu: "The fundamentally new ideas of the first purpose are
developed on the basis of the term paper of a Harvard physics
undergraduate. They lead to an unexpected affirmative answer to the
long-standing question of whether it is possible to construct a
relativity theory without postulating the constancy of the speed of
light and retaining only the first postulate of special relativity.
This question was discussed in the early years following the discovery
of special relativity by many physicists, including Ritz, Tolman,
Kunz, Comstock and Pauli, all of whom obtained negative answers."

http://www.newscientist.com/article/...elativity.html
Why Einstein was wrong about relativity
29 October 2008, Mark Buchanan, NEW SCIENTIST
"This "second postulate" is the source of all Einstein's eccentric
physics of shrinking space and haywire clocks. And with a little
further thought, it leads to the equivalence of mass and energy
embodied in the iconic equation E = mc2. The argument is not about the
physics, which countless experiments have confirmed. It is about
whether we can reach the same conclusions without hoisting light onto
its highly irregular pedestal. (...) But in fact, says Feigenbaum,
both Galileo and Einstein missed a surprising subtlety in the maths -
one that renders Einstein's second postulate superfluous. (...) The
idea that Einstein's relativity has nothing to do with light could
actually come in rather handy. For one thing, it rules out a nasty
shock if anyone were ever to prove that photons, the particles of
light, have mass. We know that the photon's mass is very small - less
than 10-49 grams. A photon with any mass at all would imply that our
understanding of electricity and magnetism is wrong, and that electric
charge might not be conserved. That would be problem enough, but a
massive photon would also spell deep trouble for the second postulate,
as a photon with mass would not necessarily always travel at the same
speed. Feigenbaum's work shows how, contrary to many physicists'
beliefs, this need not be a problem for relativity."

http://groups.google.com/group/sci.p...d3ebf3b94d89ad
Tom Roberts, Aug 16, 2010: "As I said before, Special Relativity would
not be affected by a non-zero photon mass, as Einstein's second
postulate is not required in a modern derivation (using group theory
one obtains three related theories, two of which are solidly refuted
experimentally and the third is SR). So today's foundations of modern
physics would not be threatened.

http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/...806.1234v1.pdf
Mitchell J. Feigenbaum: "In this paper, not only do I show that the
constant speed of light is unnecessary for the construction of the
theories of relativity, but overwhelmingly more, there is no room for
it in the theory. (...) We can make a few guesses. There is a
"villain" in the story, who, of course, is Newton."

The scientific rationality is so devastated (theoretical physics is
virtually dead) that Einsteiniana's priests find it safe to describe
the aftermath of their centenary activity:

http://www.autodidactproject.org/oth...deology_2.html
Ideology of/in Contemporary Physics
Jean-Marc Lévy-Leblond
"In this way, major advances in modern physics, especially in
relativity and quantum mechanics, have paradoxically fed an intensely
irrational current. (...) Modern physics appears as a collection of
mathematical formulae, whose only justification is that 'they work'.
Moreover, the 'examples' used to 'concretise' the knowledge are often
totally unreal, and actually have the effect of making it even more
abstract. Such is the case when the explanation of special relativity
is based on the consideration of the entirely fictitious spatial and
temporal behaviour of clocks and trains (today sometimes one speaks of
rockets . . . it sounds better . . . but it is as stupid!). (...) This
crisis is particularly obvious in the field of physics. (...) Average
scientists do not even control the meaning of their own work. Very
often, they are obscure labourers in theoretical computation or
experimentation; they only have a very narrow perspective of the
global process to which their work is related. Confined to a limited
subject, in a specialised field, their competence is extremely
restricted. It is only necessary to listen to the complaints of the
previous generations' scientists on the disappearance of 'general
culture' in science. In fact, the case of physics is eloquent on the
subject. One can say that, until the beginning of this century, the
knowledge of an average physicist had progressed in a cumulative way,
including progressively the whole of previous discovery. The training
of physicists demanded an almost universal knowledge in the various
spheres of physics. The arrival of 'modern' physics has brought about
not only the parcelling of fields of knowledge, but also the
abandonment of whole areas. I have already said that important
sections of nineteenthcentury physics are today excluded from the
scientific knowledge of many physicists. Therefore the fields of
competence are not only getting narrower, but some of them are
practically vanishing altogether. If physicists no longer know about
physics, a fortiori they know nothing about science! The idea of a
'scientific culture', of a 'scientific method', of a 'scientific
spirit', which were common to all scientists and used to give them a
large capacity for the rational understanding of all reality, have
turned into huge practical jokes. True, some scientists have access to
a global vision of their field or even of the social organisation of
science and social ties, but that tends to depend solely on the
position of power they occupy. The others, massively, are dispossessed
of all mastery over their activity. They have no control, no
understanding of its direction."

Pentcho Valev

On Sun, 6 Mar 2011 23:59:18 -0800 (PST), Pentcho Valev
wrote:

Einsteiniana's high priest destroys believers' remnants of
rationality: he teaches believers how to trap a long train inside a
short tunnel but is not going to ask them to explain this "paradox" on
any exam:

Pentcho, it's no good trying to teach these people anything . Andro is OK, when
he's sober but the rest are completely brainwashed.

I have tidied up some of the loose ends that have prevented Ballistic theory
from taking off again.

You might like to read my paper. It is radical and revealing.

http://www.scisite.info/The_new_ball..._of_light.html

Albert Einstein: The principle of constancy of the speed of light is a
consequence of the principle of relativity:

http://bartleby.net/173/7.html
Albert Einstein: "THERE is hardly a simpler law in physics than that
according to which light is propagated in empty space. Every child at
school knows, or believes he knows, that this propagation takes place
in straight lines with a velocity c = 300,000 km./sec. (...) If a ray
of light be sent along the embankment, we see from the above that the
tip of the ray will be transmitted with the velocity c relative to the
embankment. 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. For,
like every other general law of nature, the law of the transmission of
light in vacuo must, according to the principle of relativity, be the
same for the railway carriage as reference-body as when the rails are
the body of reference. But, from our above consideration, this would
appear to be impossible. If every ray of light is propagated relative
to the embankment with the velocity c, then for this reason it would
appear that another law of propagation of light must necessarily hold
with respect to the carriage - a result contradictory to the principle
of relativity."

David Morin: The principle of constancy of the speed of light is NOT a
consequence of the principle of relativity:

http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~djmorin/book.html
Introduction to Classical Mechanics With Problems and Solutions
David Morin, Cambridge University Press
Chapter 11: "Given the second postulate [the principle of relativity],
you might wonder if we even need the first [the principle of constancy
of the speed of light]. If all inertial frames are equivalent,
shouldn't the speed of light be the same in any frame? Well, no. For
all we know, light might behave like a baseball. A baseball certainly
doesn't have the same speed with respect to different frames, and this
doesn't ruin the equivalence of the frames."

Believers react to Albert Einstein's and David Morin's teachings:

http://www.haverford.edu/physics/songs/divine.htm
No-one's as dee-vine as Albert Einstein
Not Maxwell, Curie, or Bohr!
He explained the photo-electric effect,
And launched quantum physics with his intellect!
His fame went glo-bell, he won the Nobel --
He should have been given four!
No-one's as dee-vine as Albert Einstein,
Professor with brains galore!
No-one could outshine Professor Einstein --
Egad, could that guy derive!
He gave us special relativity,
That's always made him a hero to me!
Brownian motion, my true devotion,
He mastered back in aught-five!
No-one's as dee-vine as Albert Einstein,
Professor in overdrive!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PkLLXhONvQ
We all believe in relativity, relativity, relativity.
Yes we all believe in relativity, 8.033, relativity.
Einstein's postulates imply
That planes are shorter when they fly.
Their clocks are slowed by time dilation
And look warped from aberration.
We all believe in relativity, relativity, relativity.
Yes we all believe in relativity, 8.033, relativity.

Pentcho Valev

David Morin: The intrinsic rate of clocks does vary with the
gravitational potential:

http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~djmorin/book.html
Introduction to Classical Mechanics With Problems and Solutions
David Morin, Cambridge University Press, Chapter 14:
http://student.fizika.org/~jsisko/Kn...Morin/CH13.PDF
David Morin: "The equivalence principle has a striking consequence
concerning the behavior of clocks in a gravitational field. It implies
that higher clocks run faster than lower clocks. If you put a watch on
top of a tower, and then stand on the ground, you will see the watch
on the tower tick faster than an identical watch on your wrist. When
you take the watch down and compare it to the one on your wrist, it
will show more time elapsed."

Banesh Hoffmann: The intrinsic rate of clocks does NOT vary with the
gravitational potential:

http://www.amazon.com/Relativity-Its.../dp/0486406768
Banesh Hoffmann: "In an accelerated sky laboratory, and therefore also
in the corresponding earth laboratory, the frequence of arrival of
light pulses is lower than the ticking rate of the upper clocks EVEN
THOUGH ALL THE CLOCKS GO AT THE SAME RATE. (...) As a result the
experimenter at the ceiling of the sky laboratory will see with his
own eyes that the floor clock is going at a slower rate than the
ceiling clock - EVEN THOUGH, AS I HAVE STRESSED, BOTH ARE GOING AT THE
SAME RATE. (...) THE GRAVITATIONAL RED SHIFT DOES NOT ARISE FROM
CHANGES IN THE INTRINSIC RATES OF CLOCKS. It arises from WHAT BEFALLS
LIGHT SIGNALS AS THEY TRAVERSE SPACE AND TIME IN THE PRESENCE OF
GRAVITATION."

Believers react to David Morin's and Banesh Hoffmann's teachings:

http://www.haverford.edu/physics/songs/divine.htm
No-one's as dee-vine as Albert Einstein
Not Maxwell, Curie, or Bohr!
He explained the photo-electric effect,
And launched quantum physics with his intellect!
His fame went glo-bell, he won the Nobel --
He should have been given four!
No-one's as dee-vine as Albert Einstein,
Professor with brains galore!
No-one could outshine Professor Einstein --
Egad, could that guy derive!
He gave us special relativity,
That's always made him a hero to me!
Brownian motion, my true devotion,
He mastered back in aught-five!
No-one's as dee-vine as Albert Einstein,
Professor in overdrive!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PkLLXhONvQ
We all believe in relativity, relativity, relativity.
Yes we all believe in relativity, 8.033, relativity.
Einstein's postulates imply
That planes are shorter when they fly.
Their clocks are slowed by time dilation
And look warped from aberration.
We all believe in relativity, relativity, relativity.
Yes we all believe in relativity, 8.033, relativity.

David Morin: The acceleration of the travelling twin occurring during
"the turning-around period" is essential for explaining the old age of
the sedentary twin but, on the other hand, "a discussion of
acceleration is not required to quantitatively understand the [twin]
paradox":

http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~djmorin/book.html
Introduction to Classical Mechanics With Problems and Solutions
David Morin, Cambridge University Press, Chapter 11, p. 14:
"For the entire outward and return parts of the trip, B does observe
A's clock running slow, but enough strangeness occurs during the
turning-around period to make A end up older. Note, however, that a
discussion of acceleration is not required to quantitatively
understand the paradox, as Problem 11.2 shows."

The ecstasy reaches its maximum: believers tumble to the floor, start
tearing their clothes and go into convulsions.

Pentcho Valev

John Norton teaches believers to reject Newtonian spacetime and
worship Einstein-Minkowski spacetime:

http://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/teachi...sim/index.html
John Norton: "In Newtonian spacetimes, there is only one way to do
this, so a Newtonian spacetime unstacks into a unique set of spaces.
In this sense, space and time remain distinct even if we represent the
physics in a spacetime. In a relativistic (i.e. Minkowski) spacetime,
the relativity of simultaneity tells us that there are many ways to do
this; there is no unique, preferred unstacking. In this sense, space
and time get fused together and this fusion is the real novelty of the
spacetime approach in relativity theory. This novelty is surely what
Hermann Minkowski had in mind when he wrote in the introduction to his
famous lecture "Space and Time" of 1908: "The views of space and time
which I wish to lay before you have sprung from the soil of
experimental physics and therein lies their strength. They are
radical. Henceforth space by itself and time by itself, are doomed to
fade away into mere shadows, and only a kind of union of the two will
preserve an independent reality."

John Norton teaches believers to reject Einstein-Minkowski spacetime
and worship Newtonian spacetime:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/...erse-tick.html
"General relativity knits together space, time and gravity.
Confounding all common sense, how time passes in Einstein's universe
depends on what you are doing and where you are. Clocks run faster
when the pull of gravity is weaker, so if you live up a skyscraper you
age ever so slightly faster than you would if you lived on the ground
floor, where Earth's gravitational tug is stronger. "General
relativity completely changed our understanding of time," says Carlo
Rovelli, a theoretical physicist at the University of the
Mediterranean in Marseille, France.....It is still not clear who is
right, says John Norton, a philosopher based at the University of
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Norton is hesitant to express it, but his
instinct - and the consensus in physics - seems to be that space and
time exist on their own. The trouble with this idea, though, is that
it doesn't sit well with relativity, which describes space-time as a
malleable fabric whose geometry can be changed by the gravity of
stars, planets and matter."

http://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/Goodie...age/index.html
John Norton: "A common belief among philosophers of physics is that
the passage of time of ordinary experience is merely an illusion. The
idea is seductive since it explains away the awkward fact that our
best physical theories of space and time have yet to capture this
passage. I urge that we should resist the idea. We know what illusions
are like and how to detect them. Passage exhibits no sign of being an
illusion....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 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. There are temporal orderings. We
can identify earlier and later stages of temporal processes and
everything in between. What we cannot find is a passing of those
stages that recapitulates the presentation of the successive moments
to our consciousness, all centered on the one preferred moment of
"now." At first, that seems like an extraordinary lacuna. It is, it
would seem, a failure of our best physical theories of time to capture
one of time's most important properties. However the longer one works
with the physics, the less worrisome it becomes....I was, I confess, a
happy and contented believer that passage is an illusion. It did
bother me a little that we seemed to have no idea of just how the news
of the moments of time gets to be rationed to consciousness in such
rigid doses.....Now consider the passage of time. Is there a
comparable reason in the known physics of space and time to dismiss it
as an illusion? I know of none. The only stimulus is a negative one.
We don't find passage in our present theories and we would like to
preserve the vanity that our physical theories of time have captured
all the important facts of time. So we protect our vanity by the
stratagem of dismissing passage as an illusion."

Believers react to John Norton's teaching:

http://www.haverford.edu/physics/songs/divine.htm
No-one's as dee-vine as Albert Einstein
Not Maxwell, Curie, or Bohr!
He explained the photo-electric effect,
And launched quantum physics with his intellect!
His fame went glo-bell, he won the Nobel --
He should have been given four!
No-one's as dee-vine as Albert Einstein,
Professor with brains galore!
No-one could outshine Professor Einstein --
Egad, could that guy derive!
He gave us special relativity,
That's always made him a hero to me!
Brownian motion, my true devotion,
He mastered back in aught-five!
No-one's as dee-vine as Albert Einstein,
Professor in overdrive!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PkLLXhONvQ
We all believe in relativity, relativity, relativity.
Yes we all believe in relativity, 8.033, relativity.
Einstein's postulates imply
That planes are shorter when they fly.
Their clocks are slowed by time dilation
And look warped from aberration.
We all believe in relativity, relativity, relativity.
Yes we all believe in relativity, 8.033, relativity.

Pentcho Valev