You don't seem so busy anymore, Sam5, but you're sure getting good at ignoring questions you're afraid to answer . . .

Do you agree or disagree that my usage of the equation in the post above for an accelerating clock (in the absence of a gravitational field) is consistent with the Theory of General Relativity?

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SeanF

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Yes, that is GR and I believe in it. But I also believe there are “motion related” effects. The motion related effects are often misunderstood and are often called “relative motion” SR effects, and many people mistake them for “relative motion” effects. I see this mistake repeated on many science message boards today. The boards are filled with comments from teenagers and adults too, who say things like, “If I were moving at 80% of the speed of light, my clock would slow down such and such amount.” And other guys on the board come on and say, “No, it’s the other frame’s clock that will slow down.”

This is probably the biggest misconception in science today, and it is even being taught by some university professors.

But just “relative motion” can not slow down any clock, just as a faster than light electric pulse in your computer can’t answer your question before you ask it.

The part of SR that is mostly correct is the Electrodynamic part, because that part is more like Lorentz’s original relativity theory. What Lorentz had in many of his late 19th and early 20th Century theories was objects traveling “through” fields, and this is what Einstein has happening in the second half of his 1904 paper.

I suppose he thought that’s what he had in the first half, since he uses the terms c – v and c + v in his “moving frame” clock synchronization experiment, but he didn’t get that one right. He wound up with the clock slowing down just due to the “relative motion” of the clock and an on-coming light beam, and that’s not right. It’s the relative speed of the beam that slows down, not the tick rate of the clock that is moving relative to it.

So, anyway, there are “electrodynamical effects” that can alter the tick rates of some types of clocks, such as electric and electronic clocks. For example, I think I’m going to buy a cheap digital watch, and figure out some way to move a magnet around it for several days, and I think that watch will either speed up or slow down. If so, that will be an electrodynamical effect (not a "relative motion" effect) caused by the constant movement of the atoms and electrons inside the watch through the magnetic field. But that is not due to “relative motion”, it’s due to the changing “flux” inside the field, the changing field strength around the electrons that are flowing inside the electronic watch. This is a Lorentz Effect, which was discovered by Lorentz between 1892 and 1895.

This Lorentz Effect is used in the second half of Einstein’s 1905 paper. In fact, the 1911 paper that describes the slowdown of an atomic clock in a gravitational field is a type of Lorentz effect. Because, even though the clock is “resting” inside the field, the atoms of the atomic clock are moving around at very high speeds, up to several hundred miles per hours (look up the Maxwell RMS speeds of molecules and atoms). So, the atoms of any atomic clock are moving around inside a gravitational field, while the clock is “resting” inside a gravitational field.

However, Lorentz never discovered this about atoms and about how they emit light of a lower frequency inside a gravitational field. So this “GR” discovery must be attributed to Einstein, because he discovered it.

So the clock at the equator is moving through the earth’s fields at 1,000 mph and this is what could cancel any “speed up” do to its slightly greater distance away from the earth's center.

In the first half of his 1905 paper, Einstein mistakenly concluded that a “balance clock” would tick more slowly at the equator, simply because of its 1,000 mph “motion”, but that is an error. Just a “relative motion” won’t do anything. But a motion of an atomic clock can change the rate, since the atoms inside the clock are feeling “electrodynamic” forces as they move through the earth’s fields. This basic effect was discovered by Lorentz, and then expanded into the full GR theory by Einstein.

So, when some physics professor says, “That is an SR effect”, then we should actually think, “That is a Lorentz Effect, caused by the motion of atoms and electrons and other atomic particles through fields”, thus the alleged “muon” “time dilation” effect is not caused by “relative motion” alone, but by acceleration and by high-speed motion of the muons through the earth’s fields. So, in a manner of speaking, it is an SR effect, but it is an Electrodynamical effect, not a Kinematical effect.

This is why Einstein changed the first half of the 1905 paper in 1918, and he added the gravitational field to the k frame, but he didn’t have to change the second half of the paper, since it did conform to the Lorentz electrodynamics theory. The first half of the paper didn’t conform to anything, and it seriously violated Newton’s First Law of Motion, and that’s why Einstein had to change it in 1918.

I think you and I are in agreement about “curved spacetime”. I just prefer to say that it is the fields that are “curved” and that “time” slows down only in the clock that slows down. All of time in your room does not “slow down”, just because one clock in your room slows down when you move your room to a lower elevation, and I can prove that by pointing to your pendulum clock that speeds up when you move your room to a lower elevation.

And if you say the pendulum clock “speed up” is merely a “mechanical effect”, I will say that the atomic clock “slow down” is merely a “mechanical effect” too. One is on the “macro scale”, and the other is on the “microscopic scale”. Just as the gradual slow down of the rotation rate of the earth is a “mechanical effect” on the larger astronomical scale. But all three effects are real, and all three conform to Newton’s First Law of Motion.

While the atoms in your body might experience a slightly slower internal harmonic oscillation rate at a lower elevation, they will experience a faster external molecular vibration rate if you turn on a heater inside your room. And the biologists judge your biological time, not by your atomic time, but by your molecular time, your “thermodynamic” time, and the heater inside your room will affect your molecular time far more than the lower elevation will affect your atomic time.

True, but not in the context of the 1905 paper. It took Einstein ten years to discover general relativity, and no one disputes that GR subsumes and extends SR. Those aren't internal inconsistencies within the paper itself.
That's your opinion, though. A lot of experiments have finished successfully basing their hypothesis on the opposite assumption. Whether we may eventually find another theory that causes us to reinterpret those results is for the future.

Phew! For a minute there I thought he was going to blame me!

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If his 1905 Kinematical conclusions are wrong, then the Kinematical part of the paper is wrong, and it does contain internal “inconsistencies”.

For example, in Section 2, he synchronizes all the “stationary frame” clocks while they are “stationary”, but he synchronizes all the “moving frame” clocks while they are moving. And in Section 4, he synchronizes BOTH of two clocks while they are both “stationary”, then he moves both of them “relatively”. This leads to the “twins paradox” and this represents an “internal inconsistency” in the Kinematical part of the 1905 paper.

That’s not just “my opinion”, that’s a Law of Nature.

Newton expressed it this way in 1687, in his “First Law of Motion”:

”Every body perseveres in its state of rest, or of uniform motion in a right line, unless it is compelled to change that state by forces impressed thereon.”

The only way to violate this Law of Nature is to evoke either “magic” or a “miracle”.

Einstein later realized his error, when he began working on the GR theory in his 1911 paper, when he discovered that what slows down an atomic clock at the sun is a “gravitational/inertial force”. Then he realized that there is no “force” in the Kinematical part of the SR paper, since he left out all considerations of “acceleration”. He realized his mistake, and that’s why he added the gravitational field to the k frame in 1918.

The “experiments” you are talking about are observing some kind of Lorentz Force, due to the motion of things through fields. That’s why NASA did NOT say the electron flow in the tether was due only to “relative motion” relative to the surface of the earth. NASA said it was due to the Lorentz Force felt by the electrons inside the tether due to the tether’s motion through the earth’s magnetic field.

Some physicists and physics professors misinterpret the reason for the effect they are observing, just as I explained about the rapidly accelerating and rapidly moving muon.

I'm sure he will when he gets around to reading it. In the meantime, you'll have to make do with the novices and amateurs.

You clearly don't understand what the term gravitational potential means. You seem to think that the potential at the top of a mountain is higher than that at the bottom because the acceleration due to gravity increases as you descend the mountain. That's incorrect. Even if the gravitational field were homogeneous - with the same acceleration at every point - the mountain-top would still be at a higher potential. In order to raise a mass from the bottom to the top of the mountain you must expend energy - you must do work against the gravitational field. The difference in potential is the energy expended per unit mass (Joules per kilogram).

The same applies to the accelerated frame of reference. Energy must be expended to raise a mass from the bottom of your box to the top. So the potential at the top of the box is higher than at the bottom.

If the difference in the tick-rates of the two mountain clocks is due to a difference in gravitational potential, then the same should apply to two clocks at different "altitudes" in your accelerated box.

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That's not necessarily true. Newton's conclusions were wrong, but his work doesn't contain internal consistencies--it just disagrees with reality.
I'll trust you there without checking.
That is not an internal inconsistency. It follows directly, and is not inconsistent. It's not even called a paradox in the paper. There's no way to analyze it using the logic of the paper and come up with a different (contradictory) answer.
We've known for almost ninety years that at a certain level (the level that we are discussing), Newton's laws are wrong. Not because of magic or a miracle, but because of improved theories.
That's your theory. But it is clearly wrong--as I pointed out before concerning the accelerated box and force/potential analysis.

As I’ve said before, there are a whole lot of “working physicists” who know very well that clock rate slowdowns are NOT due only to “relative motion”.

While there are a lot of theoretical physicists and physics professors who insist that the clock rates slow down due ONLY TO “relative motion”.

These guys usually do not express their differences in public, because if they did, they’d constantly be engaged in big open public theoretical fights, and the entire general public of the world would think that the physicists don’t know what they are talking about.

You can see the very same phenomenon in the field of medicine. If you go to a doctor and he doesn’t know what’s wrong with you, he almost never says, “I don’t know what’s wrong with you”. Instead, he will say, “I want to refer you to a specialist,” and he sends you to a different doctor. If all the medical doctors freely admitted that they, “don’t know what’s wrong with you”, when they really don’t know, then all the general public would quickly lose faith in their doctors.

But, I’m different. When an occasional doctor says to me, “I don’t know what’s wrong with you, so I’m going to refer you to another doctor,” then I think, “Thank God! I’ve got an HONEST doctor!”

It’s just like going to an auto mechanic. Very few will say, “I don’t know what’s wrong with your car, and I don’t know how to fix it.” What they usually do is change out some parts, and charge you a lot of money, but sometimes your car remains broken, so eventually you realize you’ve got to take it to an auto mechanic who actually knows what is wrong with it.

So, the “working physicists” just go about their business describing the Lorentz Effect (as the NASA physicists did about the tether experiment), because they knew exactly what caused the electron flow inside the tether. But many Einstein-oriented and curved-space-oriented theoretical physicists keep yapping about the “relative motion” causing all different kinds of effects, and the working physicists just don’t publicly expose the errors of those theoretical guys.

The only way that Davis and Lineweaver got their historic paper published three years ago, about the “speed of light” changing while it travels between a distant high-c galaxy and the earth, was because they did not actually say, “The speed of light changes,” because that would have upset all the SR Einstein guys, and they couldn’t have gotten their paper published.

So they said in their paper:

”Thus, galaxies with distances greater than D = c/H are receding from us with velocities
greater than the speed of light and superluminal recession is a fundamental part of the
General Relativistic description of the expanding universe. This apparent contradiction
of Special Relativity (SR) is often mistakenly remedied by converting redshift to velocity
using SR.


The relevant quantity for understanding this behaviour is
the total velocity of a photon that is heading towards us: vtot = vrec -c = HD -c =
aXy-c. The total velocity of distant photons is not constant because it is the sum of
the distance-dependent recession velocity (vrec) and the constant peculiar velocity,
c. When aXy > c the distance between us and the photon increases.”

So, this is exactly what I’ve been saying, but this version of their text got past all the Einstein thought police and past all the Einsteinian censors who eventually published their paper.

Take this sentence for example:

”When aXy > c the distance between us and the photon increases.

What this means in classical terms, is that when a galaxy is moving away from the earth at a speed faster than “c”, then the photons emitted by that galaxy, that are aimed in our direction, are moving BACKWARDS and AWAY from us, while they are still traveling inside that galaxy. So, those photons are not only moving at less than c relative to the earth, they are moving at –c relative to the earth.

The entire Davis-Lineweaver paper explains how the photons emitted by a high-c galaxy SPEED UP as they travel through space on the way toward the earth.

The “comoving space” of the Davis-Lineweaver paper and in the Ned Wright website, is merely the local “gravitational fields” of all the individual stars in a galaxy, and in the galaxies, and in the “blended gravitational fields” that are in the space between the galaxies. This information is implicit, and in fact, explicit, in the 1911 Einstein gravitational redshift theory. But it can not YET be expressed in scientific papers in the Classical terms that I have just used, since my kind of a Classical way of expressing the very same thing is currently not allowed to be published in scientific papers today, and that is just a custom of the industry today, just as no physicist is allowed to say in a scientific paper that the laws of nature were, “Created by God”, or, “Were conjured up by some cosmic magician.” If anyone said that in a paper, the paper would be censored or totally rejected.

Certain special high-level theorists like Schrodenger can say that, theoretically, “The cat is in a condition of being both ‘alive’ and ‘dead’ at the same time,” but he can NOT say, “and this is a ‘miracle’.”

---------

added material:

Einstein could say, “God does not play dice with the universe,” ONLY as long as we understand that Einstein believed in “the God of Spinoza”, and Spinoza believed that “God” created the universe the way he did, because he observed “the laws of physics” when he created it. Spinoza didn’t seem to believe that God “invented” or “devised” the “laws of physics”, and he didn’t think that God could “change” the laws of physics, and that’s why a bunch of European Rabbis excommunicated Spinoza from the Jewish faith in 1656.

So, amazingly, we’ve still got this “church/science” conflict still going on in the world today.

My attitude is that, EINSTEIN can’t disobey the “laws of physics” with his “clock slowdown” due only to “relative motion”. And Einstein finally realized that too, and THAT is why he added the “gravitational field” to the k frame in 1918.

Eroica, this post kind of got ignored in all that's been going on here, but I wanted to applaud you for it. You've exactly hit the nail on the head of what people who think SR is inconsistent are missing.

Another way to look at it is this:

Just about everybody understands that "relative motion" means (within SR) that we can say, "Clock A right now has relative motion compared to Clock B right now, so let's discuss how things are different for Clock A than they are for Clock B."

What a lot of people fail to understand is that it also means we can say, "Clock A right now has relative motion compared to Clock A previously, so let's discuss how things are different for Clock A than they were for Clock A."

It's actually the same thing - we're still just talking about relative motion - but for some reason, people like to say, "that's acceleration and SR doesn't allow acceleration." That argument doesn't make any sense once you realize that a "difference in relative motion," by definition, is acceleration.

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SeanF

"Ask to understand, but don't challenge unless you have the knowledge."--NEOWatcher

The contents of this post are ©2010 by SeanF and may not be copied or retransmitted in any form without the express written consent of SeanF

Let's see. "...this apparent contradiction of Special Relativity..." and "...the constant peculiar velocity, c." Yes, once again, Sam5 has posted a cite that specifically says SR isn't wrong as evidence that SR is wrong.

Yeah, those sneaky guys got that "Einstein was right" text past the Einstein supporters! Boy, aren't they clever?

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SeanF

"Ask to understand, but don't challenge unless you have the knowledge."--NEOWatcher

The contents of this post are ©2010 by SeanF and may not be copied or retransmitted in any form without the express written consent of SeanF

Ok, ok, I freely admit, I sometimes get the “potential” thing backwards, and I apologize. I feel more comfortable when I talk about the gravitational field being “stronger” at the surface of the earth and “weaker” on the mountain, and I admit that I sometimes say this just backwards when I use the “potential” term.

So, my two main errors in this thread are: 1) when I sometimes say an observer that is accelerating due to motion will see a “diagonal” beam, when the truth is that he will see a “curved” beam. 2) I sometimes say “higher potential” when I mean a “lower potential”.

I figure that two mistakes in 40 pages of text isn’t a bad record.

I hope you guys won’t tar and feather me for those two errors. Especially since I know why there are locks on the Panama Canal!!

In his 1911 paper, Einstein said:

”By equation 4 a ray of light passing along by a heavenly body suffers a deflection to the side of the diminishing gravitational potential, that is, on the side directed toward the heavenly body..”

I’m going to print that out right now and stick it on my bulletin board so I won’t get it mixed up next time. ops:

LOL, and you again don’t understand what we are talking about. If they had said, "SR is wrong," they couldn't have gotten their paper published, so they said that the usual interpretation is wrong. They said stop using SR for the interpretation [psst, hey, because it is "wrong"] and start using GR, since it is "right".

We are saying that the overall “universal light speed limit of c” is WRONG in the SR paper, because GR allows for unlimited positive and negative light and mass RELATIVE speeds on a universal scale, as long as the light and the masses are not moving through local fields at those high or low speeds.

The reason the distant galaxy photons can move at the relative speed of less than c relative to the earth is because, when emitted, their local speeds are being regulated by the fields of the galaxy that emits them, and NOT by the fields of our galaxy or the earth.

By the time the photons get into our galaxy, then our galaxy’s fields regulate the local speed of the photons, and the earth’s gravity field regulates the local speed of the photons at the earth.

Einstein basically said this in his 1911 paper, but he didn’t say it outright as I’ve said it, because in 1911 he thought all the stars and galaxies were “fixed” in space, and even when he died in 1955, he did not know that there were any superluminal galaxies.

What I said is exactly what he meant in his 1916 book when he said:

”In the second place our result shows that, according
to the general theoryof relativity, the law of the con-
stancy of the velocity of light in vacuo, which consti-
tutes one of the two fundamental assumptions in the
special theory of relativity and to which we have
already frequently referred, 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.”

And this is exactly what Davis and Lineweaver say in their paper, when they say:

”Thus, vtot of these photons evolves from positive to negative, and the teardrop shape of our physical past lightcone is ubiquitous to all times.”

The “vtot” speed of the moving photons is the earth-relative speed, and that “evolves”, ie it “changes” as the light moves through space toward the earth.

And I already figured this out before they published their paper, and that's why I understood their paper when it was first published, and I figured it out because of what Einstein had said in his 1911 paper and in his 1916 book, such as:

”the velocity of propagation of light varies with position”

And in the 1911 paper, he said why it "varies with position".

In 50 years, this stuff will be taught in Physics 101 courses, and even in high school courses.

I’ve explained to you a million times: “Einstein was right in GR and in the Electrodynamical part of SR”, but he WAS NOT right in the Kinematical part of SR, and THAT is why Davis-Lineweaver said that everybody has got to stop using the Kinematical part of SR when they consider superluminal galaxies and the light coming to us from those galaxies.

Oh, moan, groan, #-o all of this is so simple!

Oh, phooey!

You’ve been reading too many “Bob and Ann” websites. [-X

Look at what this NASA website says about Newton’s three Laws of Motion:


”To understand how space travel is possible requires an understanding of the concept of mass and Isaac Newton's Three Laws of Motion.”

LINK TO NASA

Davis and Lineweaver, in their paper "Expanding Confusion," summarized among their other papers here: http://bat.phys.unsw.edu.au/~charley/research.html state that the superluminal galaxies they researched "do not violate Special Relativity". :wink:

Of course NASA is going to say that we must understand Newton's Laws for space travel, since current space travel technology doesn't come anywhere near the speed of light! It is only at those speeds that Newton's Laws fail, not at the speeds at which our current spacecraft travel.

Excuse me, [-X but you mislead all our readers when you quote only Eroica’s statements about the 1905 paper and the subject of “acceleration”, because after those statements were posted, I posted Einstein’s actual statements in his 1905 paper in which he said there was no acceleration of either frame:

Einstein, 1905:


“let a constant velocity c be imparted”

“two systems of coordinates in uniform translatory motion”

“and that a uniform motion of parallel translation with velocity v along the axis of x”

“with velocity v relatively to system K”

“moves with velocity - v on the axis of X”

“must depend only on the velocity”

“moving relatively to the system K with velocity v”

“viewed from a system in uniform motion”

“the clock at A is moved with the velocity v”

LOL!

You guys sure seem to know more than NASA knows about high-speed space travel! Have you called NASA and told them your theories?

I think you are probably talking about this statement of theirs:

”Peculiar velocity (vpec) is unassociated with the expansion of the universe
and corresponds more closely to common usage of the word `velocity'. For example
setting ds = 0 for a photon in the FRW metric gives a radial peculiar velocity
aXy = c.”

Einstein covered that in his 1911 paper when he said:

”For if we measure the velocity of light at different places in the accelerated, gravitation-free system K’, employing clocks U of identical constitution, we obtain the same magnitude at all these places.”

Then he went on to explain that to measure the total velocity of a distant photon, relative to us, we must use an atomic clock that is at us, rather than at the photon. So, when he obtains the “same magnitude” at “different places in the accelerated, gravitation-free system K’”, or at different places inside a gravitational field , he’s saying we must use a local atomic clock that is resting at those places.

He is talking about aXy=c, which is the “peculiar” velocity of the photon through the local field (ie through the "comoving space" in which the photon is moving at the moment), as measured by an atomic clock resting inside that field through which the photon is passing at the moment, the local speed of which will always be measured at “c” as the local speed of light. But when we want to find the current “vtot” of a distant photon, emitted by a distant galaxy and moving relative to the earth, that is, its “earth relative” speed, then we must use the Davis-Lineweaver equation: vtot = vrec -c = HD -c = aXy-c. Einstein explained that in the 1911 paper in terms of his “dt” clocks and the two different distant speeds of light, “c1dt” and “c2dt”.

So, this is a serious modification of the Kinematical part of the 1905 paper, although it conforms to the Electrodynamical part of the 1905 paper.

I’m a little surprised you didn’t notice that.

Sam5,

Do you agree or disagree that my usage of the equation in the post above for an accelerating clock (in the absence of a gravitational field) is consistent with the Theory of General Relativity?

__________________
SeanF

"Ask to understand, but don't challenge unless you have the knowledge."--NEOWatcher

The contents of this post are ©2010 by SeanF and may not be copied or retransmitted in any form without the express written consent of SeanF

Sam5,

Since you don't seem as busy, could you now answer this question.

__________________
Some try to tell me, thoughts they cannot defend,... - Moody Blues.

Neptune- The original Dark Matter.

The author feels that this technique of deliberately lying will actually make it easier for you to learn the ideas. - Donald Knuth

If this is the case, then why do the mu-meson observations match the SR time dilation predictions?

__________________
Some try to tell me, thoughts they cannot defend,... - Moody Blues.

Neptune- The original Dark Matter.

The author feels that this technique of deliberately lying will actually make it easier for you to learn the ideas. - Donald Knuth

The “time dilation” predictions and math regarding mu-mesons often claim to be based on SR “relative motion” theory, but the math and theory are actually based on predictions began by Lorentz in the late 19th Century, regarding atoms and particles moving through fields. That’s what involves the “Lorentz Transformation” equation, which Lorentz invented in 1895, about the time he announced the discovery of the “Lorentz Force” to the world. NASA used the “Lorentz Force” (not “relative motion”) to cause the electron flow in their tether experiment.

The muons are doing two things when they fall to earth: accelerating, and moving rapidly through the earth’s fields. Both of these phenomena use the Lorentz Transformation equations.

Einstein incorporated the Lorentz Transformation equations into both part of his 1905 theory, the Kinematical part and the Electrodynamical part. The Kinematical part contains the “relative motion” error. The Electrodynamical part contains the Lorentz Force.

So, the muons “time dilate” not due to “relative motion” but due to acceleration and due to motion through the earth’s fields.

People should stop attributing the “muon” time dilation to “relative motion”. They should attribute to Lorentz type forces, and/or, to Einstein’s 1911 gravitational redshift theory. Both are correct. But just “relative motion” is not correct, and Einstein corrected that error in 1918.

Actually, though it goes deeper than that. You were saying two points had equal potential, when they did not--and it appears that in the accelerating box, you were assuming that every point in the box was at the same potential, because they were all experiencing the same force. That undermines your version of time dilation.
Well, it's not because the water on one side of the Canal is higher than the other side.

Here is what Einstein said about the accelerating box in 1911:

”For if we measure the velocity of light at different places in the accelerated, gravitation-free system K’, employing clocks U of identical constitution, we obtain the same magnitude at all these places.”

That’s what I said. If I didn’t say it as well as he did, then I’m sorry. But he doesn’t use the word “potential” in reference to the moving box. He uses it only in reference to the gravitational field of an astronomical body. You are trying to use the word “potential” in reference to the moving box, but he didn’t and I don’t want to either.

I suggest that you read the 1911 theory so you can understand what I am talking about.

Look, I explained it the way Einstein explained it in 1911. You are the one who brought up "potential" inside the moving box. If that's what you beleive, then go ahead, but keep me out of it.

I may get around to it this lifetime yet.

I have less money to spend on the Einstein project than you even, but the libraries here are pretty good. They have some copies.

You're aware that the 1911 work was superceded by the later theories? That is, even Einstein said it was wrong? I'm not pulling out individual results as wrong, it's just a general comment.

Hey, you can believe what ever you want to believe.

"The average tidal range on the Atlantic side is less than a foot (.3 m); that on the Pacific side is 12.6 ft (3.8 m)."

www.encyclopedia.com/html/P/PanC1anl.asp+panama+canal+sea+level&hl=en& start=6&ie=UTF-8]LINK TO SOURCE[/url]

I've already said something like that here. I've said that the more he worked on the relativity theories, the more he got things right. He added gravitation to the 1905 theory in 1918, and he added the "ether" to it in 1920.

No, I'm not arguing against that. That would have been important if they had built the canal as they originally intended--just a canal from one side to the other. However, they never cut it down that far. Ran out of money I think. The locks actually raise the ships up over the isthmus--the locks would be needed even if the waters on both sides were at the same level.