Ant-Relativists:Salt of the Earth & hope for mankind

[Mifletz]

Some like Rosen seem to think that anti-relativists are suffering from a type of dementia for even daring to doubt STR. In fact they are the salt of the Earth! This is from the bio of George Galeczki in the article "Special Relativity RIP" in "Infinite energy" no.139, 2001, p 84: "George Galeczki received a License in Physics from Bucharest University in 1968, Msc 1975, and DSc in 1979 degrees from the Technion in Israel, for his works in the field of ordered magnets. In 1979 he received the Landau Prize for his research on HgCdTe infrared detectors, and responded to an invitation from Cologne Unversity where he researched on heterodyne HgCdTe detectors for astrophysical applications, and his critical work in fundamental physics, under the influence of Nathan Rosen and Stefan Marinov's succesful experiment to measure the absolute velocity of the Earth (note:which Gerardus Bouw PhD shows is not inconsistent with the modified Geocentric Tychonic model).He published 40 papers on magnetism,narrow-bandgap semi-conductor physics,nanoscopy,and critiques of Special & General Relativity, Copenhagen quantum mechanics, and the Big Bang theory. He is the co author with Peter Marquardt of "Requiem to Special Relativity", 1997, and organiser (with P.Marquardt and JP Weseley) of two Cologne Worskshops, 1997 & 2000: "Physics as a Science". He is president of the Society for the Advancement Physics."

[Silas]

A quick search on the name turned up this series of exchanges...

http://www.dipmat.unipg.it/~bartocci/quest.htm

Very interesting reading...but hardly an RIP for SR.

Silas

[The Bad Astronomer]

Really, I don't care if someone has ten degrees in physics and a Nobel prize. If he's wrong, he's wrong. I am not saying anything about either this guy or SR here, just that giving me his bio and saying he's smart won't give you any ground with me. Fred Hoyle revolutionized astronomy in the 1940s, but his dogmatic belief in panspermia (and several other borderline pseudoscientific enterprises) was just as wrong as his work in quantifying nucleosynthesis was right.

Oddly, I judge hypotheses on their merit, not on the authority of who backs them.

[Donnie B.]

On 2001-11-24 19:15, The Bad Astronomer wrote:
Oddly, I judge hypotheses on their merit, not on the authority of who backs them.



Jeez, Phil, what's wrong with you?? /phpBB/images/smiles/icon_lol.gif

On 2001-11-24 14:57, Mifletz wrote:
Some like Rosen seem to think that anti-relativists are suffering from a type of dementia for even daring to doubt STR.


You misquote me. If Einstein is right, STR is intrinsically an approximation for GR. Furthermore, GR may be an approximation of something else, or even be wrong. I like to play and look at nonrelativistic models. To a large extent, I have restricted my criticisms to illogical statements that criticize STR.

Of course I applaud legitimate efforts to invalidate relativity. Not all people with alternative theories are illogical.

Although some ideas from STR have merged into pop culture, a lot of people don't understand STR. I try to fix that by critiquing illogical ideas. You never come up with a logical counter argument.

In the past, I have stated that some of the ardent criticizers of STR are motivated by illogical arguments. In fact, I consider certain illogical arguments a sign of mental illness. I will stop doing so, since I am not a psychologist and have no right to throw technical psych terms around. However, that doesn't mean that I am wrong /phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Rosen1 on 2001-11-25 21:24 ]</font>

[DStahl]

Well, I've sworn a mighty oath not to get involved in pointless hollering matches on the BABB. However, here are some FAQs on the experimental basis for special relativity. (As per my usual practice I'm giving only Internet resources; there are lots of excellent books on the subject.)

Usenet page on the experimental evidence re special relativity at Iowa State (http://www.public.iastate.edu/~physics/sci.physics/faq/experiments.html)

Some inaccurate and incorrect claims about relativity are debunked on John Baez's (http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/RelWWW/wrong.html) page.

I have to say I could not find my way back to a page that I remember had a particularly detailed list of experiments including some that may cast doubt on aspects of relativity. Anyone know of a good one?

Addendum, later: I ran across this site (http://www.mpi-hd.mpg.de/ato/Rel/) in my peregrinations; it describes an experiment I had not previously read about. Teaser:

"A deviation from this relation would indicate a breakdown of the theory of special relativity....this result constrains deviations of the time dilation factor due to effects in v2/c2 to less than 8x10^-7 (R. Grieser et al., Appl. Phys. B59, 127 (1994)), which is the today's most sensitive test of the relativistic Doppler shift." (Emphasis added.)

Enjoy!


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: DStahl on 2001-11-26 03:06 ]</font>

[Iain Lambert]

Blimmin' 'Eck! Never mind the smallest constraint on SR, thats got to be among the smallest error bars I've seen for anything, ever. Wow.

[GrapesOfWrath]

On 2001-11-26 04:07, Iain Lambert wrote:
Blimmin' 'Eck! Never mind the smallest constraint on SR, thats got to be among the smallest error bars I've seen for anything, ever. Wow.


Hold it. What about the Hughes-Drever experiments? They are often said to be the most precise experiments ever--verifying a null hypothesis to one part in a hundred trillion. See link. (http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/RelWWW/tests.html)

OTOH, what is this "hope for mankind" stuff? Is ****letz saying that relativists are dooming mankind?

[The Rat]

Mifletz old boy, this section of the forum is 'Against the Mainstream.'

In this case, it appears that the stream has reached flood proportions, the levees have burst, and you're without a paddle.

[lpetrich]

Mifletz:
Some like Rosen seem to think that anti-relativists are suffering from a type of dementia for even daring to doubt STR.

LP:
Because rejecting SR in the zero-gravity limit is a bit like believing in the flatness of the Earth. And as to those reported results, I would not be surprised if they (1) had experimental errors in them or (2) were misinterpreted in some way.

And I wonder if SR-falsifying results are only observed by SR skeptics. /phpBB/images/smiles/icon_razz.gif

As to GR, it is inevitably an approximate theory, because it is a classical theory, and we know that non-gravitational theory is quantum. However, a good quantum-gravity theory has been difficult to find. It must be

mathematically self-consistent
give GR as its classical theory of gravity
be consistent with the rest of physics


Satisfying all three criteria has been very difficult; existing attempts successfully satisfy at most two of them.