DERANGED EINSTEINIANS

[Pentcho Valev]

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, and general relativity taught us that this spacetime itself bends and ripples - but it has remained part of the foundations of physics. (...) The apparent need to retire classical spacetime as a fundamental concept is profound..."

https://www.edhat.com/site/tidbit.cfm?nid=156976
"The current scientific description of space-time - a cornerstone of such a theory - is inadequate because quantum mechanics is at odds with general relativity. To explore deep questions that may one day help resolve this longstanding paradox, UC Santa Barbara theoretical physicist Steven Giddings has received a $100,000 two-year grant from the Foundational Questions Institute (FQXi). (...) Although the concepts of special relativity and quantum mechanics fit together nicely, general relativity and quantum mechanics are much less harmonious."

So the spacetime of Einstein's special relativity should be retired, according to the first quotation. The need for that is profound. According to the second quotation, spacetime is inadequate but this time only general relativity is to blame while "special relativity and quantum mechanics fit together nicely".

FQXi should be renamed MFDF ("Money For Deranged Friends").

Pentcho Valev

[Dan Christensen]

https://edge.org/response...

Pentcho Valev FAQ

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John Baez, "The Crackpot Index"

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html

[Pentcho Valev]

Deranged Einsteinians try to convince themselves that Einstein's 1905 second (constant-speed-of-light) postulate is not false by declaring it a consequence of the correct first postulate (the principle of relativity):

http://www.forbes.com/sites/chadorzel/2015/05/29/four-reasons-to-not-fear-physics/
Chad Orzel: "The core idea of Einstein's theory of relativity can fit on a bumper sticker: The Laws Of Physics Do Not Depend On How You're Moving. Absolutely everything else follows from the simple realization that physics must appear exactly the same to person in motion as to a person at rest - the constant speed of light, the slowing of time for moving observers, E=mc2, black holes, even the expanding universe (I've written a whole book about this, explained through imaginary conversations with my dog)."

http://motls.blogspot.com/2006/12/lorentz-violation-and-deformed-special.html
Lubos Motl: "The second postulate of special relativity morally follows from the first one once you promote the value of the speed of light to a law of physics which is what Einstein did."

http://webs.morningside.edu/slaven/Physics/relativity/relativity3.html
Dave Slaven: "Einstein's first postulate seems perfectly reasonable. And his second postulate follows very reasonably from his first. How strange that the consequences will seem so unreasonable."

http://galileoandeinstein.physics.virginia.edu/lectures/spec_rel.html
Michael Fowler: "We now come to Einstein's major insight: the Theory of Special Relativity. It is deceptively simple. Einstein first dusted off Galileo's discussion of experiments below decks on a uniformly moving ship, and restated it as: The Laws of Physics are the same in all Inertial Frames. Einstein then simply brought this up to date, by pointing out that the Laws of Physics must now include Maxwell's equations describing electric and magnetic fields as well as Newton's laws describing motion of masses under gravity and other forces. (...) Demanding that Maxwell's equations be satisfied in all inertial frames has one major consequence as far as we are concerned. As we stated above, Maxwell's equations give the speed of light to be 3×10^8 meters per second. Therefore, demanding that the laws of physics are the same in all inertial frames implies that the speed of any light wave, measured in any inertial frame, must be 3×10^8 meters per second. This then is the entire content of the Theory of Special Relativity: the Laws of Physics are the same in any inertial frame, and, in particular, any measurement of the speed of light in any inertial frame will always give 3×10^8 meters per second."

http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/9909081
Vesselin Petkov: "One of the fundamental facts of modern physics is the constancy of the speed of light. Einstein regarded it as one of the two postulates on which special relativity is based. So far, however, little attention has been paid to the status of this postulate when teaching special relativity. It turns out that the constancy of the speed of light is a direct consequence of the relativity principle, not an independent postulate. To see this let us consider the two postulates of special relativity as formulated by Einstein in his 1905 paper "On the electrodynamics of moving bodies": "the same laws of electrodynamics and optics will be valid for all frames of reference for which the equations of mechanics hold good. We will raise this conjecture (the purport of which will hereafter be called the "Principle of Relativity") to the status of a postulate, and also introduce another postulate, which is only apparently irreconcilable with the former, namely, that light is always propagated in empty space with a definite velocity c which is independent of the state of the motion of the emitting body". As the principle of relativity states that "the laws of physics are the same in all inertial reference frames" and the constancy of the speed of light means that "the speed of light is the same in all inertial reference frames (regardless of the motion of the source or the observer)" it follow that the second postulate is indeed a consequence of the first - the law describing the propagation of light is the same for all inertial observers."

Pentcho Valev

[Pentcho Valev]

Deranged Einsteinians try to convince themselves that, even if the speed of light is variable, Einstein's relativity gloriously remains unaffected, Divine Einstein, yes we all believe in relativity, relativity, relativity:

http://groups.google.ca/group/sci.physics.relativity/msg/dc1ebdf49c012de2
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://groups.google.com/group/sci.physics.research/msg/44d3ebf3b94d89ad
Tom Roberts: "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/0806/0806.1234v1.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."

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20026801.500-why-einstein-was-wrong-about-relativity.html
Why Einstein was wrong about relativity, 29 October 2008, Mark Buchanan, NEW SCIENTIST: "...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://o.castera.free.fr/pdf/Chronogeometrie.pdf
Jean-Marc Lévy-Leblond: "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..."

http://o.castera.free.fr/pdf/One_more_derivation.pdf
Jean-Marc Levy-Leblond: "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://o.castera.free.fr/pdf/bup.pdf
Jean-Marc Lévy-Leblond: "Supposez que demain un expérimentateur soit capable de vraiment mettre la main sur le photon, et de dire qu'il n'a pas une masse nulle. Qu'il a une masse de, mettons 10^(-60)kg. Sa masse n'est pas nulle, et du coup la lumière ne va plus à la "vitesse de la lumière". Vous pouvez imaginer les gros titres dans les journaux : "La théorie de la relativité s'effondre", "Einstein s'est trompé", etc. Or cette éventuelle observation ne serait en rien contradictoire avec la théorie de la relativité ! Einstein a certes construit sa théorie en analysant des échanges de signaux lumineux propagés à la vitesse limite. Si on trouve que le photon a une masse non-nulle, ce sera que cette vitesse n'est pas la vitesse limite, et la démonstration initiale s'effondre donc. Mais ce n'est pas parce qu'une démonstration est erronée que son résultat est faux ! Quand vous avez une table à plusieurs pieds, vous pouvez en couper un, elle continue à tenir debout. Et heureusement, la théorie de la relativité a plusieurs pieds."

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Pentcho Valev

[Pentcho Valev]

Can absolute simultaneity be restored without abandoning Einstein's 1905 false constant-speed-of-light postulate? Yes, in Einstein's schizophrenic world. Julian Barbour and Lee Smolin know how to trade the relativity of time for a relativity of space:

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/ias/earlycareer/events/time/programme/julian_barbour.pdf
Aspects of Time, Julian Barbour, Warwick, August 24th 2011: "Was Spacetime Glorious Historical Accident? Time will not be fused with space but emerge from the timeless shape dynamics of space. Absolute simultaneity restored!"

The Singular Universe and the Reality of Time, Roberto Mangabeira Unger, Harvard Law School, Massachusetts, Lee Smolin, Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, Canada, pp. 386-387: "In general relativity two clocks traveling different paths through spacetime will not stay synchronized. But their sizes will be preserved... (...) But the amazing thing is you can get to general relativity by trading the relativity of time of that theory for a relativity of spacial scale... (...) The resulting theory is called shape dynamics. (...) This means that there is now a physical meaning to the simultaneity of distant events."

Pentcho Valev

[Pentcho Valev]

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/Our-Mathematical-Universe-Max-Tegmark/1115123577?ean=9780307599803
Max Tegmark, Our Mathematical Universe: My Quest for the Ultimate Nature of Reality, p. 198: "He [Einstein] taught us that there are two equivalent ways of thinking about our physical reality: either as a three-dimensional place called space, where things change over time, or as a four-dimensional place called spacetime that simply exists, unchanging, never created and never destroyed."

Einstein was not so deranged as to teach that his spacetime was "equivalent" to the Newtonian space and time. In "spacetime" the speed of light is constant; in "space and time" the speed of light is variable:

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."

Max Tegmark is perhaps the silliest high priest in Einsteiniana (only Michio Kaku seems to be sillier than him).

Pentcho Valev

[Pentcho Valev]

Deranged Lee Smolin teaches that only Einstein's theory predicts bending of light - Newton's theory doesn't:

http://streamer.perimeterinstitute.ca/Flash/4ea02fea-d818-4c2a-9024-f2ed00cbe339/viewer.html
Lee Smolin (1:06:36) : "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...."

Students don't protest - they are going to become deranged Einsteinians as well.

Pentcho Valev

[Pentcho Valev]

Deranged Steven Carlip teaches that Einstein's variable speed of light "is perfectly valid and makes good physical sense" but then informs the gullible world that after Einstein the speed of light in a gravitational field somehow became constant (and is going to remain so forever):

http://www.desy.de/user/projects/Physics/Relativity/SpeedOfLight/speed_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]

Steven Carlip's "Is The Speed of Light Constant?" is perhaps the most idiotic text written by Einsteiniana's high priest. Initially he informs the gullible world that the speed of light is constant by definition! Breathtaking, but the biggest shock is yet to come: Although Einstein's variable speed of light "is perfectly valid and makes good physical sense", after Einstein the speed of light in a gravitational field has somehow become constant. So constant that nowadays "it does not even make any sense to say that it varies":

http://www.desy.de/user/projects/Physics/Relativity/SpeedOfLight/speed_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! (...) 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. (...) Finally, we come to the conclusion that the speed of light is not only observed to be constant; in the light of well tested theories of physics, it does not even make any sense to say that it varies."

Pentcho Valev

[Pentcho Valev]

Deranged Philip Ball and Hans Ohanian teach that the celebrated relation E = mc^2 has "virtually nothing to do with special relativity"... and remain faithful Einsteinians:

http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/46941
Philip Ball: "Did Einstein discover E = mc^2? Who discovered that E = mc^2? It's not as easy a question as you might think. Scientists ranging from James Clerk Maxwell and Max von Laue to a string of now-obscure early 20th-century physicists have been proposed as the true discovers of the massenergy equivalence now popularly credited to Einstein's theory of special relativity. These claims have spawned headlines accusing Einstein of plagiarism, but many are spurious or barely supported. Yet two physicists have now shown that Einstein's famous formula does have a complicated and somewhat ambiguous genesis which has little to do with relativity. (...) While Einstein's celebrated 1905 paper, "On the electrodynamics of moving bodies", clearly laid down the foundations of relativity by abandoning the ether and making the speed of light invariant, his derivation of E = mc2 did not depend on those assumptions. You can get the right answer with classical physics, says Rothman, all in an ether theory without c being either constant or the limiting speed."

http://philipball.blogspot.com/2011/08/did-einstein-discover-emc2.html
Philip Ball: "The biggest revelation for me was not so much seeing that there were several well-founded precursors for the equivalence of mass and energy, but finding that this equivalence seems to have virtually nothing to do with special relativity. Tony Rothman said to me that "I've long maintained that the conventional history of science, as presented in the media, textbooks and by the stories scientists tell themselves is basically a collection of fairy tales." I'd concur with that."

http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0805/0805.1400.pdf
Hans C. Ohanian: "Although Einstein's name is closely linked with the celebrated relation E = mc^2 between mass and energy, a critical examination of the more than half dozen "proofs" of this relation that Einstein produced over a span of forty years reveals that all these proofs suffer from mistakes. Einstein introduced unjustified assumptions, committed fatal errors in logic, or adopted low-speed, restrictive approximations. He never succeeded in producing a valid general proof applicable to a realistic system with arbitrarily large internal speeds."

Pentcho Valev

[Pentcho Valev]

Deranged Nima Arkani-Hamed rejects the conclusion (Einstein's idiotic spacetime) but worships the premise (Einstein's 1905 false constant-speed-of-light postulate) from which the conclusion has been derived:

The Doom of Space Time by Nima Arkani-Hamed: "Back then it was determinism that had to be lost. Today it is spacetime that has to be lost, and we have to figure out how to make do without spacetime. (...) By insisting on describing the physics in the way that makes spacetime front and center, we hide things, we obscure things, we make things that are simple complicated... (...) The structure of standard physics are clues to a new way of thinking about physics without spacetime."

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.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/einstein/expe-text.html
Nima Arkani-Hamed: "When first encountering relativity, what really struck me about it more than anything else was actually how incredibly simple the underlying ideas were. The big point wasn't hidden in some minutiae of some deep mathematics, or these stunning, very striking assumptions - that the speed of light is constant and that physics looks the same in all frames of reference - and from these two seemingly innocuous assumptions come this incredibly different worldview than the standard Newtonian picture of the world."

Pentcho Valev

[Pentcho Valev]

Just like Nima Arkani-Hamed, deranged Lee Smolin rejects the conclusion (Einstein's idiotic relative time) but worships the premise (Einstein's 1905 false constant-speed-of-light postulate) from which the conclusion has been derived:

http://www.fqxi.org/community/articles/display/148
"Many physicists argue that time is an illusion. Lee Smolin begs to differ. (...) Smolin wishes to hold on to the reality of time. But to do so, he must overcome a major hurdle: General and special relativity seem to imply the opposite. In the classical Newtonian view, physics operated according to the ticking of an invisible universal clock. But Einstein threw out that master clock when, in his theory of special relativity, he argued that no two events are truly simultaneous unless they are causally related. If simultaneity - the notion of "now" - is relative, the universal clock must be a fiction, and time itself a proxy for the movement and change of objects in the universe. Time is literally written out of the equation. Although he has spent much of his career exploring the facets of a "timeless" universe, Smolin has become convinced that this is "deeply wrong," he says. He now believes that time is more than just a useful approximation, that it is as real as our guts tell us it is - more real, in fact, than space itself. The notion of a "real and global time" is the starting hypothesis for Smolin's new work, which he will undertake this year with two graduate students supported by a $47,500 grant from FQXi."

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.bookdepository.com/Time-Reborn-Professor-Physics-Lee-Smolin/9780547511726
"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.independent.com/news/2013/apr/17/time-reborn/
QUESTION: Setting aside any other debates about relativity theory for the moment, why would the speed of light be absolute? No other speeds are absolute, that is, all other speeds do indeed change in relation to the speed of the observer, so it's always seemed a rather strange notion to me.
LEE SMOLIN: Special relativity works extremely well and the postulate of the invariance or universality of the speed of light is extremely well-tested. It might be wrong in the end but it is an extremely good approximation to reality.
QUESTION: So let me pick a bit more on Einstein and ask you this: You write (p. 56) that Einstein showed that simultaneity is relative. But the conclusion of the relativity of simultaneity flows necessarily from Einstein's postulates (that the speed of light is absolute and that the laws of nature are relative). So he didn't really show that simultaneity was relative - he assumed it. What do I have wrong here?
LEE SMOLIN: The relativity of simultaneity is a consequence of the two postulates that Einstein proposed and so it is deduced from the postulates. The postulates and their consequences are then checked experimentally and, so far, they hold remarkably well.

Pentcho Valev

[Pentcho Valev]

Just like Nima Arkani-Hamed and Lee Smolin, deranged George Ellis rejects the conclusion (the idiotic block universe) but worships the premise (Einstein's 1905 false constant-speed-of-light postulate) from which the conclusion has been derived:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22029410.900
New Scientist: "Saving time: Physics killed it. Do we need it back? (...) Einstein landed the fatal blow at the turn of the 20th century. According to his special theory of relativity, there is no way to specify events that everyone can agree happen simultaneously. Two events that are both "now" to you will happen at different times for anyone moving at another speed. Other people will see a different now that might contain elements of yours - but equally might not. "You can define it, but people won't necessarily agree," says physicist Sean Carroll of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. The result is a picture known as the block universe: the universe seen from that impossible vantage point outside space and time. You can by all means mark what you think is "now" with a red dot, but there is nothing that distinguishes that place from any other, except that you are there. Past and future are no more physically distinguished than left and right. There are things that are closer to you in time, and things that are further away, just as there are things that are near or far away in space. But the idea that time flows past you is just as absurd as the suggestion that space does. George Ellis, a cosmologist at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, does not buy any of that. THE BLOCK UNIVERSE CONTRADICTS EVERY SINGLE EXPERIENCE WE HAVE, he says."

Pentcho Valev

[Pentcho Valev]

Deranged Kip Thorne informs the gullible world that in 1905 Einstein disproved... Newton's law of gravity, and that Newton's law predicted no deflection of light. Divine Albert's Divine Theory, however, predicted the correct deflection, Divine Einstein, yes we all believe in relativity, relativity, relativity, and Honest Sir Arthur Eddington's observations gloriously confirmed Divine Albert's prediction in 1919:

http://commons.erau.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3169&context=space-congress-proceedings
Kip Thorne: "Despite its great successes, Newton's law of gravity is not correct. This was first recognized by Albert Einstein in 1905. At that time he had just formulated his special theory of relativity, and had discovered a logical incompatibility between it and Newtonian gravity. (...) A second crucial proof of the breakdown in Newtonian gravity was the relativistic bending of light. Einstein's theory predicted that starlight passing near the limb of the sun should be deflected by 1.75 seconds of arc, whereas Newton's law predicted no deflection. Observations during the 1919 eclipse of the sun in Brazil, carried out by Sir Arthur Eddington and his British colleagues, brilliantly confirmed Einstein's prediction to an accuracy of about 20 percent. This dealt the final death blow to Newton's law and to most other relativistic theories of gravity."

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