New "discoveries" from the 2008 National Philosophy AllianceConference

On Jun 20, 2:28*am, Dono wrote in
sci.physics.relativity:
On Jun 19, 5:19 pm, Dono wrote:

Have fun, a vast assortment of crackpots and their "papers":

http://www.worldnpa.org/php/AbstractsPrettyList.php

...and here is the list of members:

http://www.worldnpa.org/php/MemberMap.php

Nothing in their papers can be sillier than this:

http://www.hawking.org.uk/lectures/dice.html
Stephen Hawking: "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://groups.google.ca/group/sci.ph...1ebdf49c012de2
Tom Roberts, Feb 1, 2006: "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://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 enévidence 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
procedures operationnelles mises en jeu par le "second postulat"
deviendraient caduques ipso facto. La theorie elle-meme en serait-elle
invalidee ? 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 economiques. En verite, le "premier postulat" suffit, a la
condition de l'exploiter a fond."

http://o.castera.free.fr/pdf/onemorederivation.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 relativity. It would, however, nullify all
its derivations which are based on the invariance of the photon
velocity."

http://streamer.perimeterinstitute.c...ldResize=False
Lee Smolin: "Newton's theory predicts that light goes in straight
lines and therefore if the star passes behind the sun, we can't see
it. Einstein's theory predicts that light is bent...."

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physic..._of_light.html
Steve Carlip: "Is c, the speed of light in vacuum, constant? At the
1983 Conference Generale des Poids et Mesures, the following SI
(Systeme International) definition of the metre was adopted: The metre
is the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time
interval of 1/299 792 458 of a second. This defines the speed of light
in vacuum to be exactly 299,792,458 m/s. This provides a very short
answer to the question "Is c constant": Yes, c is constant by
definition!"

Pentcho Valev

On Jun 20, 1:37 am, Pentcho Valev wrote:

snip

I am surprised that you are not already a member, Panko.
Either way, it is interesting to see 3 idiots in a row
(you,Albert****o, Juan****o Gonzalez) clambering over each other to
answer :-)