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Why Lorentz Length Contraction Was Fruitful for Richard Feynman



 
 
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Old September 15th 17, 07:53 PM posted to sci.astro
Pentcho Valev
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Default Why Lorentz Length Contraction Was Fruitful for Richard Feynman

Richard Feynman: "The apparatus was amply sensitive to observe such an effect, but no time difference was found - the velocity of the earth through the ether could not be detected. The result of the experiment was null. The result of the Michelson-Morley experiment was very puzzling and most disturbing. The first fruitful idea for finding a way out of the impasse came from Lorentz. He suggested that material bodies contract when they are moving...." http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/I_15.html

How could Lorentz's ad hoc length contraction be "fruitful"? Its only purpose was to save the ether concept refuted by the experiment. However, by saving the ether concept, Lorentz also saved the false constancy of the speed of light, "the one aspect that he [Einstein] needed", and this proved extremely fruitful for Einstein and his sycophants:

Banesh Hoffmann, Relativity and Its Roots, p.92: "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. If it was so obvious, though, why did he need to state it as a principle? Because, having taken from the idea of light waves in the ether the one aspect that he needed, he declared early in his paper, to quote his own words, that "the introduction of a 'luminiferous ether' will prove to be superfluous." https://www.amazon.com/Relativity-It.../dp/0486406768

Pentcho Valev
 




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