OPEN LETTER TO THE ROYAL SOCIETY

http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/con...ent=a909857880
The Ideology of Relativity: The Case of the Clock Paradox
Author: Peter Hayes
Published in: Social Epistemology, Volume 23, Issue 1 January 2009 ,
pages 57 - 78
"Even well established members of the scientific community can ill
afford to point to elementary (as opposed to recondite) problems with
the theory. When, in the 1950s and 1960s, Professor Herbert Dingle
ventured to argue that relativity theory left obvious inconsistencies
unresolved, he found that his status as a respected exponent of the
special theory changed rapidly into that of a near pariah. When
Professor Paul Marmet, a former President of the Canadian Association
of Physicists, ventured to make criticisms and call for a return to
Newtonian principles, first his funding was cut off and then, in 1999,
he was subject to constructive dismissal from his academic post and
his experimental apparatus destroyed.7 From a career perspective, the
only safe course for a sceptic within the physics profession is to
adopt a prudent silence and to busy himself or herself with other
fields of work."

No shame, Dr. Rees?

Pentcho Valev wrote:

Open Letter to: Martin Rees, President of the Royal Society

Copy to: Athene Donald FRS, Laurence Eaves Lancashire-Spencer
Professor of Physics, Prof John Peacock, Martin Taylor FRS, Lorna
Casselton FRS

Dear Dr. Rees,

Ninety years ago the Royal Society found it suitable to bury
definitively the antithesis of Einstein's 1905 light postulate - the
equation c'=c+v given by Newton's emission theory of light (v is the
speed of the light source relative to the observer) - although even
then informed scientists including Einstein knew this particular
prediction of the emission theory was correct. Since then a
schizophrenic atmosphere has been established where informed
scientists often hint at and even extract profit from the correct
equation c'=c+v (see examples of guilty conscience below) while
ordinary mortals are forced to learn by rote the absurd consequences
of Einstein's 1905 false light postulate. I think it is time for YOU
to OFFICIALLY restore the truth.

I will post this Open Letter on a few internet forums.

Pentcho Valev


Examples of guilty conscience:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/519406/posts
"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.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.logosjournal.com/issue_4.3/smolin.htm
Lee Smolin: "Quantum theory was not the only theory that bothered
Einstein. Few people have appreciated how dissatisfied he was with his
own theories of relativity. Special relativity grew out of Einstein's
insight that the laws of electromagnetism cannot depend on relative
motion and that the speed of light therefore must be always the same,
no matter how the source or the observer moves. Among the consequences
of that theory are that energy and mass are equivalent (the now-
legendary relationship E = mc2) and that time and distance are
relative, not absolute. SPECIAL RELATIVITY WAS THE RESULT OF 10 YEARS
OF INTELLECTUAL STRUGGLE, YET EINSTEIN HAD CONVINCED HIMSELF IT WAS
WRONG WITHIN TWO YEARS OF PUBLISHING IT."

Joao Magueijo, PLUS VITE QUE LA LUMIERE, Dunod, 2003, pp. 298-299:
"La racine du mal etait clairement la relativite restreinte. Tous ces
paradoxes resultaient d'effets bien connus comme la contraction des
longueurs, la dilatation du temps, ou E=mc^2, tous des predictions
directes de la relativite restreinte. (...) La consequence en etait
inevitable: pour edifier une theorie coherente de la gravite
quantique, quelle qu'elle soit, nous [Joao Magueijo et Lee Smolin]
devions commencer par abandonner la relativite restreinte. (...) Mais,
comme nous l'avons vu, celle-ci repose sur deux principes
independants. Le premier est la relativite du mouvement, le second la
constance de la vitesse de la lumiere. Une des solutions possibles a
notre probleme pouvait etre d'abandonner la relativite du mouvement.
(...) C'est une possibilite bien sur, mais nous avons choisi
l'alternative evidente: preserver la relativite du mouvement, mais
admettre qu'a de tres hautes energies, la vitesse de la lumiere ne
soit plus constante."

http://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/papers...UP_TimesNR.pdf
"What Can We Learn about the Ontology of Space and Time from the
Theory of Relativity?", John D. Norton: "In general relativity there
is no comparable sense of the constancy of the speed of light. The
constancy of the speed of light is a consequence of the perfect
homogeneity of spacetime presumed in special relativity. There is a
special velocity at each event; homogeneity forces it to be the same
velocity everywhere. We lose that homogeneity in the transition to
general relativity and with it we lose the constancy of the speed of
light. Such was Einstein's conclusion at the earliest moments of his
preparation for general relativity. ALREADY IN 1907, A MERE TWO YEARS
AFTER THE COMPLETION OF THE SPECIAL THEORY, HE HAD CONCLUDED THAT THE
SPEED OF LIGHT IS VARIABLE IN THE PRESENCE OF A GRAVITATIONAL FIELD."

http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/arch.../02/Norton.pdf
John Norton: "Einstein regarded the Michelson-Morley experiment as
evidence for the principle of relativity, whereas later writers almost
universally use it as support for the light postulate of special
relativity......THE MICHELSON-MORLEY EXPERIMENT IS FULLY COMPATIBLE
WITH AN EMISSION THEORY OF LIGHT THAT CONTRADICTS THE LIGHT
POSTULATE."

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."

http://books.google.com/books?id=JokgnS1JtmMC
"Relativity and Its Roots" By Banesh Hoffmann
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."

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.fqxi.org/data/articles/Se...lden_Spike.pdf
"Loop quantum gravity also makes the heretical prediction that the
speed of light depends on its frequency. That prediction violates
special relativity, Einstein's rule that light in a vacuum travels at
a constant speed for all observers..."

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/smol...n03_print.html
Lee Smolin: "Now, here is the really interesting part: Some of the
effects predicted by the theory appear to be in conflict with one of
the principles of Einstein's special theory of relativity, the theory
that says that the speed of light is a universal constant. It's the
same for all photons, and it is independent of the motion of the
sender or observer. How is this possible, if that theory is itself
based on the principles of relativity? The principle of the constancy
of the speed of light is part of special relativity, but we quantized
Einstein's general theory of relativity.....But there is another
possibility. This is that the principle of relativity is preserved,
but Einstein's special theory of relativity requires modification so
as to allow photons to have a speed that depends on energy. The most
shocking thing I have learned in the last year is that this is a real
possibility. A photon can have an energy-dependent speed without
violating the principle of relativity! This was understood a few years
ago by Amelino Camelia. I got involved in this issue through work I
did with Joao Magueijo, a very talented young cosmologist at Imperial
College, London. During the two years I spent working there, Joao kept
coming to me and bugging me with this problem.....These ideas all
seemed crazy to me, and for a long time I didn't get it. I was sure it
was wrong! But Joao kept bugging me and slowly I realized that they
had a point. We have since written several papers together showing how
Einstein's postulates may be modified to give a new version of special
relativity in which the speed of light can depend on energy."

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpag...pagewanted=all
"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://www.mfo.de/programme/schedule...WR_2006_10.pdf
Jean Eisenstaedt: "At the end of the 18th century, a natural extension
of Newton's dynamics to light was developed but immediately forgotten.
A body of works completed the Principia with a relativistic optics of
moving bodies, the discovery of the Doppler-Fizeau effect some sixty
years before Doppler, and many other effects and ideas which represent
a fascinating preamble to Einstein relativities. It was simply
supposed that 'a body-light', as Newton named it, was subject to the
whole dynamics of the Principia in much the same way as were material
particles; thus it was subject to the Galilean relativity and its
velocity was supposed to be variable. Of course it was subject to the
short range 'refringent' force of the corpuscular theory of light --
which is part of the Principia-- but also to the long range force of
gravitation which induces Newton's theory of gravitation. The fact
that the 'mass' of a corpuscle of light was not known did not
constitute a problem since it does not appear in the Newtonian (or
Einsteinian) equations of motion. It was precisely what John Michell
(1724-1793), Robert Blair (1748-1828), Johann G. von Soldner
(1776-1833) and Fran¸cois Arago (1786-1853) were to do at the end of
the 18th century and the beginning the 19th century in the context of
Newton's dynamics. Actually this 'completed' Newtonian theory of light
and material corpuscle seems to have been implicitly accepted at the
time. In such a Newtonian context, not only Soldner's calculation of
the deviation of light in a gravitational field was understood, but
also dark bodies (cousins of black holes). A natural (Galilean and
thus relativistic) optics of moving bodies was also developed which
easily explained aberration and implied as well the essence of what we
call today the Doppler effect. Moreover, at the same time the
structure of -- but also the questions raised by-- the Michelson
experiment was understood. Most of this corpus has long been
forgotten. The Michell-Blair-Arago effect, prior to Doppler's effect,
is entirely unknown to physicists and historians. As to the influence
of gravitation on light, the story was very superficially known but
had never been studied in any detail. Moreover, the existence of a
theory dealing with light, relativity and gravitation, embedded in
Newton's Principia was completely ignored by physicists and by
historians as well. But it was a simple and natural way to deal with
the question of light, relativity (and gravitation) in a Newtonian
context. EINSTEIN HIMSELF DID NOT KNOW OF THIS NEWTONIAN THEORY OF
LIGHT AND HE DID NOT RELY ON IT IN HIS OWN RESEARCH."

http://www.perimeterinstitute.ca/ind...ecture_id=3576
John Stachel: "Einstein discussed the other side of the particle-field
dualism - get rid of fields and just have particles."
Albert Einstein: "I consider it entirely possible that physics cannot
be based upon the field concept, that is on continuous structures.
Then nothing will remain of my whole castle in the air, including the
theory of gravitation, but also nothing of the rest of contemporary
physics."
John Stachel's comment: "If I go down, everything goes down, ha ha,
hm, ha ha ha."

http://vaghelasv.com/Documents/Steph...ry.Of.Time.pdf
Stephen Hawking: "Einsteins prediction of light deflection could not
be tested immediately in 1915, because the First World War was in
progress, and it was not until 1919 that a British expedition,
observing an eclipse from West Africa, showed that light was indeed
deflected by the sun, just as predicted by the theory. This proof of a
German theory by British scientists was hailed as a great act of
reconciliation between the two countries after the war. It is ionic,
therefore, that later examination of the photographs taken on that
expedition showed the errors were as great as the effect they were
trying to measure. Their measurement had been sheer luck, or a case of
knowing the result they wanted to get, not an uncommon occurrence in
science."

http://www.cieletespace.fr/evenement...taient-fausses
"Relativité: les preuves étaient fausses.....Le monde entier a cru
pendant plus de cinquante ans à une théorie non vérifiée. Car, nous le
savons aujourdhui, les premières preuves, issues notamment dune
célèbre éclipse de 1919, nen étaient pas. Elles reposaient en partie
sur des manipulations peu avouables visant à obtenir un résultat connu
à lavance, et sur des mesures entachées dincertitudes, quand il ne
sagissait pas de fraudes caractérisées."

http://www.cieletespaceradio.fr/inde...-la-relativite
"Au début du XXème siècle, des scientifiques comme le Britannique
Arthur Eddington avaient tant à coeur de vérifier la théorie de la
relativité qu'ils ont tout mis en oeuvre pour que leurs expériences
soient probantes." (ECOUTEZ!)

http://discovermagazine.com/2008/mar...out-relativity
"The eclipse experiment finally happened in 1919 (youre looking at it
on this very page). Eminent British physicist Arthur Eddington
declared general relativity a success, catapulting Einstein into fame
and onto coffee mugs. In retrospect, it seems that Eddington fudged
the results, throwing out photos that showed the wrong outcome. No
wonder nobody noticed: At the time of Einsteins death in 1955,
scientists still had almost no evidence of general relativity in
action."

http://www.newscientist.com/article/...to-albert.html
New Scientist: Ode to Albert
"Enter another piece of luck for Einstein. We now know that the light-
bending effect was actually too small for Eddington to have discerned
at that time. Had Eddington not been so receptive to Einstein's
theory, he might not have reached such strong conclusions so soon, and
the world would have had to wait for more accurate eclipse
measurements to confirm general relativity."

No shame, Dr. Rees?

Pentcho Valev wrote:

Open Letter to: Martin Rees, President of the Royal Society

Copy to: Athene Donald FRS, Laurence Eaves Lancashire-Spencer
Professor of Physics, Prof John Peacock, Martin Taylor FRS, Lorna
Casselton FRS

Dear Dr. Rees,

Ninety years ago the Royal Society found it suitable to bury
definitively the antithesis of Einstein's 1905 light postulate - the
equation c'=c+v given by Newton's emission theory of light (v is the
speed of the light source relative to the observer) - although even
then informed scientists including Einstein knew this particular
prediction of the emission theory was correct. Since then a
schizophrenic atmosphere has been established where informed
scientists often hint at and even extract profit from the correct
equation c'=c+v (see examples of guilty conscience below) while
ordinary mortals are forced to learn by rote the absurd consequences
of Einstein's 1905 false light postulate. I think it is time for YOU
to OFFICIALLY restore the truth.

I will post this Open Letter on a few internet forums.

Pentcho Valev


Examples of guilty conscience:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/519406/posts
"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.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.logosjournal.com/issue_4.3/smolin.htm
Lee Smolin: "Quantum theory was not the only theory that bothered
Einstein. Few people have appreciated how dissatisfied he was with his
own theories of relativity. Special relativity grew out of Einstein's
insight that the laws of electromagnetism cannot depend on relative
motion and that the speed of light therefore must be always the same,
no matter how the source or the observer moves. Among the consequences
of that theory are that energy and mass are equivalent (the now-
legendary relationship E = mc2) and that time and distance are
relative, not absolute. SPECIAL RELATIVITY WAS THE RESULT OF 10 YEARS
OF INTELLECTUAL STRUGGLE, YET EINSTEIN HAD CONVINCED HIMSELF IT WAS
WRONG WITHIN TWO YEARS OF PUBLISHING IT."

Joao Magueijo, PLUS VITE QUE LA LUMIERE, Dunod, 2003, pp. 298-299:
"La racine du mal etait clairement la relativite restreinte. Tous ces
paradoxes resultaient d'effets bien connus comme la contraction des
longueurs, la dilatation du temps, ou E=mc^2, tous des predictions
directes de la relativite restreinte. (...) La consequence en etait
inevitable: pour edifier une theorie coherente de la gravite
quantique, quelle qu'elle soit, nous [Joao Magueijo et Lee Smolin]
devions commencer par abandonner la relativite restreinte. (...) Mais,
comme nous l'avons vu, celle-ci repose sur deux principes
independants. Le premier est la relativite du mouvement, le second la
constance de la vitesse de la lumiere. Une des solutions possibles a
notre probleme pouvait etre d'abandonner la relativite du mouvement.
(...) C'est une possibilite bien sur, mais nous avons choisi
l'alternative evidente: preserver la relativite du mouvement, mais
admettre qu'a de tres hautes energies, la vitesse de la lumiere ne
soit plus constante."

http://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/papers...UP_TimesNR.pdf
"What Can We Learn about the Ontology of Space and Time from the
Theory of Relativity?", John D. Norton: "In general relativity there
is no comparable sense of the constancy of the speed of light. The
constancy of the speed of light is a consequence of the perfect
homogeneity of spacetime presumed in special relativity. There is a
special velocity at each event; homogeneity forces it to be the same
velocity everywhere. We lose that homogeneity in the transition to
general relativity and with it we lose the constancy of the speed of
light. Such was Einstein's conclusion at the earliest moments of his
preparation for general relativity. ALREADY IN 1907, A MERE TWO YEARS
AFTER THE COMPLETION OF THE SPECIAL THEORY, HE HAD CONCLUDED THAT THE
SPEED OF LIGHT IS VARIABLE IN THE PRESENCE OF A GRAVITATIONAL FIELD."

http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/arch.../02/Norton.pdf
John Norton: "Einstein regarded the Michelson-Morley experiment as
evidence for the principle of relativity, whereas later writers almost
universally use it as support for the light postulate of special
relativity......THE MICHELSON-MORLEY EXPERIMENT IS FULLY COMPATIBLE
WITH AN EMISSION THEORY OF LIGHT THAT CONTRADICTS THE LIGHT
POSTULATE."

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."

http://books.google.com/books?id=JokgnS1JtmMC
"Relativity and Its Roots" By Banesh Hoffmann
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."

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.fqxi.org/data/articles/Se...lden_Spike.pdf
"Loop quantum gravity also makes the heretical prediction that the
speed of light depends on its frequency. That prediction violates
special relativity, Einstein's rule that light in a vacuum travels at
a constant speed for all observers..."

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/smol...n03_print.html
Lee Smolin: "Now, here is the really interesting part: Some of the
effects predicted by the theory appear to be in conflict with one of
the principles of Einstein's special theory of relativity, the theory
that says that the speed of light is a universal constant. It's the
same for all photons, and it is independent of the motion of the
sender or observer. How is this possible, if that theory is itself
based on the principles of relativity? The principle of the constancy
of the speed of light is part of special relativity, but we quantized
Einstein's general theory of relativity.....But there is another
possibility. This is that the principle of relativity is preserved,
but Einstein's special theory of relativity requires modification so
as to allow photons to have a speed that depends on energy. The most
shocking thing I have learned in the last year is that this is a real
possibility. A photon can have an energy-dependent speed without
violating the principle of relativity! This was understood a few years
ago by Amelino Camelia. I got involved in this issue through work I
did with Joao Magueijo, a very talented young cosmologist at Imperial
College, London. During the two years I spent working there, Joao kept
coming to me and bugging me with this problem.....These ideas all
seemed crazy to me, and for a long time I didn't get it. I was sure it
was wrong! But Joao kept bugging me and slowly I realized that they
had a point. We have since written several papers together showing how
Einstein's postulates may be modified to give a new version of special
relativity in which the speed of light can depend on energy."

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpag...pagewanted=all
"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://www.mfo.de/programme/schedule...WR_2006_10.pdf
Jean Eisenstaedt: "At the end of the 18th century, a natural extension
of Newton's dynamics to light was developed but immediately forgotten.
A body of works completed the Principia with a relativistic optics of
moving bodies, the discovery of the Doppler-Fizeau effect some sixty
years before Doppler, and many other effects and ideas which represent
a fascinating preamble to Einstein relativities. It was simply
supposed that 'a body-light', as Newton named it, was subject to the
whole dynamics of the Principia in much the same way as were material
particles; thus it was subject to the Galilean relativity and its
velocity was supposed to be variable. Of course it was subject to the
short range 'refringent' force of the corpuscular theory of light --
which is part of the Principia-- but also to the long range force of
gravitation which induces Newton's theory of gravitation. The fact
that the 'mass' of a corpuscle of light was not known did not
constitute a problem since it does not appear in the Newtonian (or
Einsteinian) equations of motion. It was precisely what John Michell
(1724-1793), Robert Blair (1748-1828), Johann G. von Soldner
(1776-1833) and Fran¸cois Arago (1786-1853) were to do at the end of
the 18th century and the beginning the 19th century in the context of
Newton's dynamics. Actually this 'completed' Newtonian theory of light
and material corpuscle seems to have been implicitly accepted at the
time. In such a Newtonian context, not only Soldner's calculation of
the deviation of light in a gravitational field was understood, but
also dark bodies (cousins of black holes). A natural (Galilean and
thus relativistic) optics of moving bodies was also developed which
easily explained aberration and implied as well the essence of what we
call today the Doppler effect. Moreover, at the same time the
structure of -- but also the questions raised by-- the Michelson
experiment was understood. Most of this corpus has long been
forgotten. The Michell-Blair-Arago effect, prior to Doppler's effect,
is entirely unknown to physicists and historians. As to the influence
of gravitation on light, the story was very superficially known but
had never been studied in any detail. Moreover, the existence of a
theory dealing with light, relativity and gravitation, embedded in
Newton's Principia was completely ignored by physicists and by
historians as well. But it was a simple and natural way to deal with
the question of light, relativity (and gravitation) in a Newtonian
context. EINSTEIN HIMSELF DID NOT KNOW OF THIS NEWTONIAN THEORY OF
LIGHT AND HE DID NOT RELY ON IT IN HIS OWN RESEARCH."

http://www.perimeterinstitute.ca/ind...ecture_id=3576
John Stachel: "Einstein discussed the other side of the particle-field
dualism - get rid of fields and just have particles."
Albert Einstein: "I consider it entirely possible that physics cannot
be based upon the field concept, that is on continuous structures.
Then nothing will remain of my whole castle in the air, including the
theory of gravitation, but also nothing of the rest of contemporary
physics."
John Stachel's comment: "If I go down, everything goes down, ha ha,
hm, ha ha ha."

Pentcho Valev