The claims of the author after a mathematical demonstration are:
http://au.geocities.com/psyberplasmic/ccX-5.html
http://au.geocities.com/psyberplasmic/ccX-5.html

Comments?

What... What does that...all...mean...?

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From your link:

In a biography written just before his death, Professor Einstein is quoted as admitting he had a fundamental error in Relativity.

Ahh, a death-bed confession!

Death-bed confession, the most valuble of all pieces of evidence!

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þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon,
hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon.

I had a quick look at the page, and the first impression is that his conclusions are based on misconceptions and wishful thinking (he seems to like the analogy between sound waves and electromagnetic waves, which can be misleading).

He seems to ignore the reasons why physiciists accept Relativity and its conclusions.

And the idea that an "Unified Theory" has been developed by physicists, but has not been disclosed to the public yet, is just ridiculous.

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papageno


"Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" - Hobbes (Calvin and Hobbes)

"It's all about context!" - Vince Noir (The Mighty Boosh)

"I've never heard of such a brutal and shocking injustice that I cared so little about!" - Zapp Brannigan (Futurama)

Because the public really gives a care when it comes to the UFT...

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"I'm making wheatloaf. It's like meatloaf, only with wheat"
"Isn't that just...bread?"

To its credit though the webpage does have math, something usually lacking from most people attacking Einstein. Hopefully a poster here can highlight if there are any errors in the equations.

I've run into many people who "claim" to have evidence demonstrating that relativity or quantum mechanics is false. It bugs me every time. Even if you could prove them to be wrong, it would be a worthless proof. Mainly, because both predict many things that have been verified countless times. If you were to prove that they were wrong, then at the same time, you would have to present your own theory, that is different, but comes to the EXACT same conclusions. The people making these claims never seem to realize this. It seems to me that most of the general public considers these "theories" (quantum especially) to be completely theoretical in nature, and don't realize that a lot of our modern technology and most of the information age wouldn't be possible if quantum mechanics weren't true.

When Einstein wrote the SR theory in 1905, he still thought the universe was “fixed” and that the highest speeds of astronomical bodies were the speeds of the planets and comets in their orbits, and those speeds were very slow, when compared to the speed of light.

So he postulated the speed of light to be “c” relative to “empty space”, thinking that “empty space” was pretty much “stationary” with all the stationary and “fixed” stars.

When he assumed this about light speed, and considered the motion of the planets and observers on the planets, then he had to alter the rates of the observers’ clocks in order to keep the speed of light always at “c”, relative to all observers.

You can do one or the other, admit that the speed of light changes as it travels through different areas of space, or claim that all the clock rates change so that light speed will always remain “c”, relative to all observers.

But, the entire situation is a little more complicated than that. Turns out that light speed changes in space, AND clock rates change due to different environmental factors.

First, all the electrodynamics experiments of the 19th Century were conducted at the surface of the earth. That means that some of the results might have been influenced by the earth’s local “fields”, such as the electric, magnetic, and gravitational fields, and, thus, some of Maxwell’s equations and theories might have reflected that fact. In other words, all of the 19th Century electrical and mechanical experiments produced “geocentric” results. This is why several nations are having many specific scientific experiments conducted on the International Space Station, so they can be conducted outside the direct “pulling” influence of the earth’s gravitational field.

Normally, we don’t think of the earth’s fields putting up any “resistance” to our motion through them. In fact, the urban legend is that anything that moves through “space” in orbit above the earth, will feel no “resistance” to its motion through any of the fields, but that’s not always true, as revealed in the NASA tether experiment.

The long wire of the tether feels a “drag effect” on it, caused by the wire moving through the earth’s magnetic field. This drag effect is what caused the NASA tether to fall behind the space shuttle after it snapped (you can find this information on several science websites).

It was Lorentz who first predicted that such a “force” existed when atoms moved through fields. In fact, this was the basis of his “speed limit of c” hypothesis, which Einstein later made famous.

Lorentz thought there was a “universe stationary ether”, and in his theories he treated the ether as a kind of “field”. He hypothesized that “c” was the “speed limit” for objects (“ponderablen Körpern”, “ponderable bodies”) moving through that “field”, and he also hypothesized that atoms would “shrink” in the direction of motion through that “field”. This was the origin of the “length contraction” concept, and the “speed limit of c”, since at the speed of “c”, he thought all bodies would shrivel up to “plane figures”.

A modern interpretation of the results of the Michelson Morley experiment suggests that the MM apparatus was NOT moving through any “universal ether”, but it was stationary inside the earth’s own “local ether”, which some people think might be the earth’s own local gravity field.

In fact, after developing his 1911 gravitational redshift theory, Einstein began to think of local gravity fields as a kind of light-speed-regulating “ether”. As he said in one of his 1918 papers:

“There, empty space in the previous sense has physical qualities, mathematically characterized by the components of the potential of gravitation that determine the metrical behavior of that portion of space as well as its gravitational field. This situation can very well be interpreted by speaking of an ether whose state varies from point to point.”

And also in one of his 1920 papers:

“Recapitulating, we may say that according to the general theory of relativity space is endowed with physical qualities; in this sense, therefore, there exists an ether. According to the general theory of relativity space without ether is unthinkable; for in such space there not only would be no propagation of light, but also no possibility of existence for standards of space and time (measuring-rods and clocks), nor therefore any space-time intervals in the physical sense.”

One of the top urban legends in science today is the belief that Einstein never admitted to the possible existence of an “ether”. This legend persists because so many people who believe it have never read his papers in which he discussed the “fields” of space acting as a kind of light propagating “ether”.

And he continued to assume the same while formulating GR as well. You implied in the Doppler shift thread that GR was a sort of apology for SR's postulate of c being a universal constant. Edwin Hubble didn't show the universe to be expanding until the late 1920's, more than 10 years after General Relativity.

No. No no no no no. SR doesn't say anything about space. Einstein still considered space to be nothing but emptiness in 1905, i.e. the "fabric of space-time" hadn't even been thought of. So, what's the speed of anything relative to nothing? Einstein's postulate is, very simply, that the speed of light is a constant for all observers in an inertial (i.e. unaccelerating) frame.

And Einstein chose to advance both physics and philosophy by choosing the latter. Subsequent experiments have since validated his choice.

Yes, the speed of light depends on the medium through which it passes. A body's clock speed depends on both the speed and acceleration (or an equivalent external gravitational field) of said body.

That's some urban legend. Usually, they involve people dying, disappearing, or something else spooky, not fully predictable phenomena. In fact, I performed a rather simple experiment in the lab this year dealing with electromagnetic induction and drag.

Stellar aberration is widely considered to be the downfall of the "local aether" or "aetheral dragging" hypotheses. Basically, if there was a stationary aether surrounding the Earth which passed with it through a universal aether, starlight would be refracted in such a way as to cancel out stellar aberration.

And if you want to think of the gravitational field as some sort of medium for the passage of light waves, then you'd have to expect the speed of light to depend on gravitational field strength. The stronger the field, the more quickly one would expect light to propagate. As such, one would expect any light coming from a deep gravitational well to be blue shifted. I don't think that agrees with observations...

Err, ignore that bit. I really need to learn to not do any thinking before my morning tea.


From superstringtheory.com's forum:

So, as far as ol' Al goes, you seem to be getting hung up on a word which was used as an analogy to demonstrate his concept of space-time.

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"I'm making wheatloaf. It's like meatloaf, only with wheat"
"Isn't that just...bread?"

Here’s a direct quote of the original “constancy” postulate, from “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies”, 1905:

”light is always propagated in empty space with a definite velocity c which is independent of the state of motion of the emitting body.”

You should say “atomic clock rate”. The Lorentz-force atomic clock rule, as used by Einstein, applies to atomic clocks only, i.e. to atomic oscillation rates. It does not apply to pendulum clocks, mechanical clocks, balance wheel clocks, thermodynamic clocks, etc., etc.

Geepers, go read the original papers and books on this subject.

Well, tell us what you found out from your experiment.

No, the stronger the field, the more slowly light propagates, and the stronger the field the more slowly the atoms oscillate, and they emit light at a lower frequency. The “redshift” occurs as the light is being emitted by a slowly oscillating atom. The slow speed of the light emerging from a gravity well does not contribute to the redshift. The light is emitted already redshifted. Read Einstein’s 1911 theory about this. He explains it.

Do you know who called it the “aether” first, in relation to gravity fields? Do you know who first said that light beams will bend when they pass near astronomical bodies? Do you know who said that the “gravity fields” are responsible for such bending?

Newton.

Read his “Optics”, 1704 edition.

Geepers! Go to a big library and read some good books, instead of getting all your information off the internet. Turn your computer off and go to a library.

sam, you are so off base it isn't even funny.

Sure, einstien thought the universe was fixed, in a steady state situation. However SR had NOTHING to do with that!

As for his concept of how fast things went. Thats pure BS. SR's entire purpose was to create a system for which all physical laws hold for everyone. So people going at different speeds didn't have to use different laws. This is needed because various physical laws, especially electromagnetism, said a stationary observer would see an unbroken set of magnetic field lines, while a moving one would see discontinuities (and discontinuities don't even make sense!). I.e. the laws of physics should hold for everyone, regardless of their motion or situation. Therefore they need to be re-written in a format that allows that to work.

Einstein postulated that C was relative to EVERYTHING, not just empty space. Otherwise different people could get different values for C, which would violate the expression for the speed of light derived from Maxwell's equations. I.e. their expressions for the speed of light would have to be entirely different, just because they're moving.

Classical Electrodynamics were very well understood in the 19th century, notice I said classical, which refers to the general realm of macroscopic, slow, low gravity (notice low like earths, not zero-g). Most of the experiments held were either 1) Not sensitive to gravity or 2) took that into account. Same goes for ambient magnetic and electrical fields.

As such the "enviromental" factors you rest your case on are considered, and mitigated. I.e. they found ways to make their clocks robust and accurate in the conditions at hand. What standard enviromental effect can you think of thats going to disturb an atomic clock (which is found to be accurate to 1 nanosecond per 1000 years or somesuch figure).

The "speed limit of c" was founded by Maxwell, not Lorentz.

The michelson morely experiment said a) the light was moving in a local ether around earth or b) there was no ether. It turns out to be B because A would cause difflection of starlight (and thus a stars positon would shift) as the ligth entered the non-moving ether and intot he ether that follows earth. This is analogous to how an object appears "bent" when you put it in water.

The ether you quote einstien about is not the Ether of electromagnetics. It is instead that of space-time, which he describes as being everywhere, and is a maleable medium. This space-time ether, however, does not have many of the attributes of the electromagnetic ether. Such as light is its basis, not the otherway around. It is not variations in the space-time ether that cause light. Light uses it as a medium no more than sound does.


UT, in 1905 einstien didn't consider space empty, but he did not then understand how to treat gravity, so he started with a simpler, more restriction (therefore special) relativity theory.

That empty space bit does not say relative to empty space. What he means, and it's taken to mean by every other person, and physicist (you know, people who learned this from him and his students?) was:

Empty space = VACUUM.

There is no magnetic or electrical resistance, so you use the permisivity and permeability of free space constants. This is as opposed to the values for those constant when measure in say, ohh, a dielectric (aka electrically insulating material). The change in these constants is the entire reason why light undergoes refraction through various materials.

Atomic clocks measure time, and so do all those other you mentioned. Atomic clocks are merely the most accurate clocks we've ever made.

So what is this gibberish about the lorentz atomic clock rule? I've never, ever heard of that.

Great, newton labeled a medium called Aether in 1704, and einstein said his space-time had some properties (in a very specific sense, did you catch that part of the quote: in this sense...) similar to that.


Just like someone can say: The earth is round, like an orange. It doesn't mean the earth is an orange, just that it shares some qualities.

Oh yea, and Of all the newtonian and classical mechanics I've studied over the years, not once has "gravity bending light" been attributed to any of Newtons work.

Okay, how can you understand and accept that, but get so much of his other stuff wrong?

BTW, the speed of light is constant, even in a gravity well. Its the fact that time is so distorted that the osscillation rate is percieved as all screwed up.

Einstein was a little surprised in 1911 when he discovered that the gravity fields in space could control the local speed of light through them. It was after this that he started talking about the “ether” qualities of gravity fields.

Although he called space “empty” in his 1905 theory, in the 1952 appendix to his 1916 book he said:

”There is no such thing as an empty space, i.e. a space without field.”

By then he knew that the gravity fields of space have some influence on the local speed of light.

There is quite a big difference between his “empty space” opinion of his 1905 theory and his “no empty space” opinion of 1952. He had learned a lot during those 47 years.