Discussion:
WHY EINSTEIN POSTULATED CONSTANT SPEED OF LIGHT
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Pentcho Valev
2015-11-03 08:48:27 UTC
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_light
"The speed at which light waves propagate in vacuum is independent both of the motion of the wave source and of the inertial frame of reference of the observer. This invariance of the speed of light was postulated by Einstein in 1905, after being motivated by Maxwell's theory of electromagnetism and the lack of evidence for the luminiferous aether..."

A blatant lie. Maxwell's theory of electromagnetism had predicted that the speed of light is different for differently moving observers. Also, Einstein could not have been motivated by "the lack of evidence for the luminiferous aether" - in fact, he borrowed his postulate from the aether theory:

http://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/papers/Chasing.pdf
John Norton: "That [Maxwell's] theory allows light to slow and be frozen in the frame of reference of a sufficiently rapidly moving observer."

http://culturesciencesphysique.ens-lyon.fr/XML/db/csphysique/metadata/LOM_CSP_relat.xml
Gabrielle Bonnet, École Normale Supérieure de Lyon: "Les équations de Maxwell font en particulier intervenir une constante, c, qui est la vitesse de la lumière dans le vide. Par un changement de référentiel classique, si c est la vitesse de la lumière dans le vide dans un premier référentiel, et si on se place désormais dans un nouveau référentiel en translation par rapport au premier à la vitesse constante v, la lumière devrait désormais aller à la vitesse c-v si elle se déplace dans la direction et le sens de v, et à la vitesse c+v si elle se déplace dans le sens contraire."

http://www.printsasia.com/book/a-brief-history-of-time-stephen-hawking-0553380168
Stephen Hawking: "Maxwell's theory predicted that radio or light waves should travel at a certain fixed speed. But Newton's theory had got rid of the idea of absolute rest, so if light was supposed to travel at a fixed speed, one would have to say what that fixed speed was to be measured relative to. It was therefore suggested that there was a substance called the "ether" that was present everywhere, even in "empty" space. Light waves should travel through the ether as sound waves travel through air, and their speed should therefore be relative to the ether. Different observers, moving relative to the ether, would see light coming toward them at different speeds, but light's speed relative to the ether would remain fixed."

http://books.google.com/books?id=JokgnS1JtmMC
Relativity and Its Roots, Banesh Hoffmann, p.92: "There are various remarks to be made about this second principle. For instance, if it is so obvious, how could it turn out to be part of a revolution - especially when the first principle is also a natural one? 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://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorentz_ether_theory
Albert Einstein: "...it is impossible to base a theory of the transformation laws of space and time on the principle of relativity alone. As we know, this is connected with the relativity of the concepts of "simultaneity" and "shape of moving bodies." To fill this gap, I introduced the principle of the constancy of the velocity of light, which I borrowed from H. A. Lorentz's theory of the stationary luminiferous ether..."

Pentcho Valev
Dan Christensen
2015-11-03 14:10:40 UTC
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https://en.wikipedia.org...
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Pentcho Valev
2015-11-07 11:05:13 UTC
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Einstein explained the nonsense (the speed of light relative to the observer is independent of the speed of the observer) in terms of more nonsense (time and space are relative):

Loading Image...

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."

https://www.aip.org/history/exhibits/einstein/essay-einsteins-time.htm
Peter Galison: "First, he stipulated that all the laws of physics - including electricity and magnetism - were the same in any constantly moving frame of reference. Then he added a seemingly simple (and modest) second assumption: Light travels at the same speed no matter how fast its source is moving. To anyone thinking of ether this was not so strange: Move your hands at any reasonable speed through a room of still air; once you clap your hands the sound waves propagate through the room at the same speed - independent of the original motion of your hands. Maybe light was like that: a lamp moving in the ether simply excited light waves that radiated out at a single speed independent of the motion of the lamp. Yet these two reasonable starting assumptions appeared to contradict one another. Suppose lamps were flying this way and that at various speeds, but that in some frame the light beams from those lamps were all traveling at 186,000 miles per second, just the speed predicted by the equations of electrodynamics. Wouldn't those same beams of light appear to be traveling at different speeds when seen from a different, moving frame of reference? If that was so, then the equations of electrodynamics would only be valid in one frame of reference, violating Einstein's first principle. It was to resolve this apparent contradiction that Einstein made his single most dramatic move: he criticized the very idea of time as it was usually understood. In particular, he relentlessly pursued the meaning of "simultaneity." Only by criticizing the foundational notions of time and space could one bring the pieces of the theory - that the laws of physics were the same in all constantly moving frames; that light traveled at the same speed regardless of its source - into harmony."

By disfiguring space and time Einstein actually killed rationality in science but failed to completely camouflage the idiotic conclusion that the speed of light (relative to the observer) is independent of the speed of the observer. Any reasonable interpretation of the Doppler effect (moving observer) shows that the speed of light is different for differently moving observers, which means that Einstein's 1905 second (constant-speed-of-light) postulate is false:

http://physics.bu.edu/~redner/211-sp06/class19/class19_doppler.html
Professor Sidney Redner: "The Doppler effect is the shift in frequency of a wave that occurs when the wave source, or the detector of the wave, is moving. Applications of the Doppler effect range from medical tests using ultrasound to radar detectors and astronomy (with electromagnetic waves). (...) We will focus on sound waves in describing the Doppler effect, but it works for other waves too. (...) Let's say you, the observer, now move toward the source with velocity vO. You encounter more waves per unit time than you did before. Relative to you, the waves travel at a higher speed: v'=v+vO. The frequency of the waves you detect is higher, and is given by: f'=v'/λ=(v+vO)/λ."

"Relative to you, the waves travel at a higher speed" = Goodbye Einstein!

http://www.hep.man.ac.uk/u/roger/PHYS10302/lecture18.pdf
Professor Roger Barlow: "The Doppler effect - changes in frequencies when sources or observers are in motion - is familiar to anyone who has stood at the roadside and watched (and listened) to the cars go by. It applies to all types of wave, not just sound. (...) Moving Observer. Now suppose the source is fixed but the observer is moving towards the source, with speed v. In time t, ct/λ waves pass a fixed point. A moving point adds another vt/λ. So f'=(c+v)/λ."

That is, for all types of wave, the speed of the waves relative to the fixed point (observer) is

(ct/λ)(λ/t) = c

The speed of the waves relative to the moving point (observer) is

(ct/λ + vt/λ)(λ/t) = c + v,

in violation of Einstein's relativity.

http://www.einstein-online.info/spotlights/doppler
Albert Einstein Institute: "The frequency of a wave-like signal - such as sound or light - depends on the movement of the sender and of the receiver. This is known as the Doppler effect. (...) Here is an animation of the receiver moving towards the source:

Loading Image... (stationary receiver)

Loading Image... (moving receiver)

By observing the two indicator lights, you can see for yourself that, once more, there is a blue-shift - the pulse frequency measured at the receiver is somewhat higher than the frequency with which the pulses are sent out. This time, the distances between subsequent pulses are not affected, but still there is a frequency shift: As the receiver moves towards each pulse, the time until pulse and receiver meet up is shortened. In this particular animation, which has the receiver moving towards the source at one third the speed of the pulses themselves, four pulses are received in the time it takes the source to emit three pulses."

If the distance between subsequent pulses is d and "the time it takes the source to emit three pulses" is t, then the speed of the pulses relative to the source is

3d/t = c,

and relative to the moving receiver is

4d/t = (4/3)c,

in violation of Einstein's relativity.

Pentcho Valev
Pentcho Valev
2015-11-09 07:58:54 UTC
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0:29 : "Before Einstein was even born, physicists showed that the speed of light was one of those absolute things which can't be changed by a switcheroo. So any switcheroo we do has to keep light moving at the same speed..."

No physicist showed, both before and after Einstein was born, that the speed of light was constant - in Maxwell's 19th century electromagnetic theory, for instance, the speed of light varied with the speed of the observer. Yet, thanks to a century-long brainwashing, nowadays everybody believes that Einstein's 1905 constant-speed-of-light postulate was fully justified. And if the speed of light is constant, time should be relative in the following idiotic way:

http://www.bourbaphy.fr/damourtemps.pdf
Thibault Damour: "The paradigm of the special relativistic upheaval of the usual concept of time is the twin paradox. Let us emphasize that this striking example of time dilation proves that time travel (towards the future) is possible. As a gedanken experiment (if we neglect practicalities such as the technology needed for reaching velocities comparable to the velocity of light, the cost of the fuel and the capacity of the traveller to sustain high accelerations), it shows that a sentient being can jump, "within a minute" (of his experienced time) arbitrarily far in the future, say sixty million years ahead, and see, and be part of, what (will) happen then on Earth. This is a clear way of realizing that the future "already exists" (as we can experience it "in a minute")."

Pentcho Valev

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