Discussion:
EINSTEIN'S SPACETIME AS CAMOUFLAGE
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Pentcho Valev
2015-06-11 06:46:11 UTC
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http://community.bowdoin.edu/news/2015/04/professor-baumgarte-describes-100-years-of-gravity/
"Baumgarte began by discussing special relativity, which Einstein developed, 10 years earlier, in 1905, while he was employed as a patent officer in Bern, Switzerland. Special relativity is based on the observation that the speed of light is always the same, independently of who measures it, or how fast the source of the light is moving with respect to the observer. Einstein demonstrated that as an immediate consequence, space and time can no longer be independent, but should rather be considered a new joint entity called "spacetime."

There was no "observation that the speed of light is always the same, independently of who measures it". Rather, Einstein knew that the constancy of the speed of light was absurd but also knew that this absurdity could make him famous. So he decided to disfigure space and time in order to vindicate the absurd but precious constancy (that is, decided to explain the absurd in terms of the more absurd):

http://www.aip.org/history/exhibits/einstein/essay-einstein-relativity.htm
John Stachel: "But here he ran into the most blatant-seeming contradiction, which I mentioned earlier when first discussing the two principles. As noted then, the Maxwell-Lorentz equations imply that there exists (at least) one inertial frame in which the speed of light is a constant regardless of the motion of the light source. Einstein's version of the relativity principle (minus the ether) requires that, if this is true for one inertial frame, it must be true for all inertial frames. But this seems to be nonsense. How can it happen that the speed of light relative to an observer cannot be increased or decreased if that observer moves towards or away from a light beam? Einstein states that he wrestled with this problem over a lengthy period of time, to the point of despair. We have no details of this struggle, unfortunately. Finally, after a day spent wrestling once more with the problem in the company of his friend and patent office colleague Michele Besso, the only person thanked in the 1905 SRT paper, there came a moment of crucial insight. In all of his struggles with the emission theory as well as with Lorentz's theory, he had been assuming that the ordinary Newtonian law of addition of velocities was unproblematic. It is this law of addition of velocities that allows one to "prove" that, if the velocity of light is constant with respect to one inertial frame, it cannot be constant with respect to any other inertial frame moving with respect to the first. It suddenly dawned on Einstein that this "obvious" law was based on certain assumptions about the nature of time always tacitly made."

Pentcho Valev
Pentcho Valev
2015-06-11 07:51:31 UTC
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Einsteinians do know that Einstein's spacetime is absurd:

https://edge.org/response-detail/25477
What scientific idea is ready for retirement? Steve Giddings: "Spacetime. Physics has always been regarded as playing out on an underlying stage of space and time. Special relativity joined these into spacetime... (...) The apparent need to retire classical spacetime as a fundamental concept is profound..."


Nima Arkani-Hamed (06:11): "Almost all of us believe that space-time doesn't really exist, space-time is doomed and has to be replaced by some more primitive building blocks."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/jun/10/time-reborn-farewell-reality-review
"And by making the clock's tick relative - what happens simultaneously for one observer might seem sequential to another - Einstein's theory of special relativity not only destroyed any notion of absolute time but made time equivalent to a dimension in space: the future is already out there waiting for us; we just can't see it until we get there. This view is a logical and metaphysical dead end, says Smolin."

http://www.amazon.com/Time-Reborn-Crisis-Physics-Universe/dp/0547511728
"Was Einstein wrong? At least in his understanding of time, Smolin argues, the great theorist of relativity was dead wrong. What is worse, by firmly enshrining his error in scientific orthodoxy, Einstein trapped his successors in insoluble dilemmas..."

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20727721.200-rethinking-einstein-the-end-of-spacetime.html
NEW SCIENTIST: "Rethinking Einstein: The end of space-time. IT WAS a speech that changed the way we think of space and time. The year was 1908, and the German mathematician Hermann Minkowski had been trying to make sense of Albert Einstein's hot new idea - what we now know as special relativity - describing how things shrink as they move faster and time becomes distorted. "Henceforth space by itself and time by itself are doomed to fade into the mere shadows," Minkowski proclaimed, "and only a union of the two will preserve an independent reality." And so space-time - the malleable fabric whose geometry can be changed by the gravity of stars, planets and matter - was born. It is a concept that has served us well, but if physicist Petr Horava is right, it may be no more than a mirage. (...) For decades now, physicists have been stymied in their efforts to reconcile Einstein's general theory of relativity, which describes gravity, and quantum mechanics, which describes particles and forces (except gravity) on the smallest scales. The stumbling block lies with their conflicting views of space and time. As seen by quantum theory, space and time are a static backdrop against which particles move. In Einstein's theories, by contrast, not only are space and time inextricably linked, but the resulting space-time is moulded by the bodies within it. (...) Something has to give in this tussle between general relativity and quantum mechanics, and the smart money says that it's relativity that will be the loser."

http://www.homevalley.co.za/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=135:its-likely-that-times-are-changing
"Einstein introduced a new notion of time, more radical than even he at first realized. In fact, the view of time that Einstein adopted was first articulated by his onetime math teacher in a famous lecture delivered one century ago. That lecture, by the German mathematician Hermann Minkowski, established a new arena for the presentation of physics, a new vision of the nature of reality redefining the mathematics of existence. The lecture was titled Space and Time, and it introduced to the world the marriage of the two, now known as spacetime. It was a good marriage, but lately physicists passion for spacetime has begun to diminish. And some are starting to whisper about possible grounds for divorce. (...) Einstein's famous insistence that the velocity of light is a cosmic speed limit made sense, Minkowski saw, only if space and time were intertwined. (...) Physicists of the 21st century therefore face the task of finding the true reality obscured by the spacetime mirage. (...) Andreas Albrecht, a cosmologist at the University of California, Davis, has thought deeply about choosing clocks, leading him to some troubling realizations. (...) "It seems to me like it's a time in the development of physics," says Albrecht, "where it's time to look at how we think about space and time very differently."

However Einsteinians also know that to dismiss spacetime means to dismiss the false but fundamental constancy of the speed of light - no Einsteinian would dare to move in that direction:

http://www.amazon.com/What-Relativity-Intuitive-Introduction-Einsteins/dp/0231167261
What Is Relativity?: An Intuitive Introduction to Einstein's Ideas, and Why They Matter, Jeffrey Bennett: "As I said above, every astounding consequence of special relativity follows directly from the two absolutes. Given that the first is unsurprising and was long suspected, all the consequences of relativity in essence stem from the single surprising idea that everyone always measures the same speed of light. In other words, if this idea is correct, then all of special relativity will make perfect sense. Conversely, if it is not correct, then the entire theory will fall apart."

http://www.amazon.com/Faster-Than-Speed-Light-Speculation/dp/0738205257
Faster Than the Speed of Light, Joao Magueijo: "If there's one thing every schoolboy knows about Einstein and his theory of relativity, it is that the speed of light in vacuum is constant. No matter what the circumstances, light in vacuum travels at the same speed - a constant that physicists denote by the letter c: 300,000 km per second, or as Americans refer to it, 186,000 miles per second. The speed of light is the very keystone of physics, the seemingly sure foundation upon which every modern cosmological theory is built, the yardstick by which everything in the universe is measured. (...) The only aspect of the universe that didn't change was the speed of light. And ever since, the constancy of the speed of light has been woven into the very fabric of physics, into the way physics equations are written, even into the notation used. Nowadays, to "vary" the speed of light is not even a swear word: It is simply not present in the vocabulary of physics."

http://www.kritik-relativitaetstheorie.de/2013/02/the-farce-of-physics-2/
Bryan Wallace: "Einstein's special relativity theory with his second postulate that the speed of light in space is constant is the linchpin that holds the whole range of modern physics theories together. Shatter this postulate, and modern physics becomes an elaborate farce! (...) The speed of light is c+v."

Pentcho Valev
Dan Christensen
2015-06-11 12:55:29 UTC
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