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"Einstein was the cleverest in riding that wave. He took Minkovski's four-dimensional time-space symmetry, mixed it with Poincare's "Lorentz transformations" and relativity, added some self-invented new vector addition law and published this in 1905 as his special Relativity Theory. Being a physicist it did not bother him that no positive experiments were available as a...

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"Einstein was the cleverest in riding that wave. He took Minkovski's four-dimensional time-space symmetry, mixed it with Poincare's "Lorentz transformations" and relativity, added some self-invented new vector addition law and published this in 1905 as his special Relativity Theory. Being a physicist it did not bother him that no positive experiments were available as a foundation."

Correct, but the everything-derived-from-two-simple-postulates trick should be emphasized. Initially Einstein derived the constancy of the speed of light from the Lorentz transforms, then called it "postulate" and finally derived the Lorentz transforms from the postulate (the gullible world was stunned):

Albert Einstein, What Is The Theory Of Relativity? (November 28, 1919): "The second principle, on which the special theory of relativity rests, is the "principle of the constant velocity of light in vacuo." This principle asserts that light in vacuo always has a definite velocity of propagation (independent of the state of motion of the observer or of the source of the light). The confidence which physicists place in this principle springs from the successes achieved by the electrodynamics of Maxwell and Lorentz."

Introduction to Special Relativity, James H. Smith, p. 42: "We must emphasize that at the time Einstein proposed it [his second postulate], there was no direct experimental evidence whatever for the speed of light being independent of the speed of its source. He postulated it out of logical necessity."

The truth is that, in 1887 (prior to FitzGerald and Lorentz advancing the ad hoc length contraction hypothesis), the Michelson-Morley experiment unequivocally confirmed the variable speed of light predicted by Newton's emission theory of light and refuted the constant (independent of the speed of the source) speed of light predicted by the immobile ether theory and later adopted by Einstein as his special relativity's second postulate:

Alberto Martinez: "In sum, Einstein rejected the emission hypothesis prior to 1905 not because of any direct empirical evidence against it, but because it seemed to involve too many theoretical and mathematical complications. By contrast, Ritz was impressed by the lack of empirical evidence against the emission hypothesis, and he was not deterred by the mathematical difficulties it involved. It seemed to Ritz far more reasonable to assume, in the interest of the "economy" of scientific concepts, that the speed of light depends on the speed of its source, like any other projectile, rather than to assume or believe, with Einstein, that its speed is independent of the motion of its source even though it is not a wave in a medium; that nothing can go faster than light; that the length and mass of any body varies with its velocity; that there exist no rigid bodies; that duration and simultaneity are relative concepts; that the basic parallelogram law for the addition of velocities is not exactly valid; and so forth. Ritz commented that "it is a curious thing, worthy of remark, that only a few years ago one would have thought it sufficient to refute a theory to show that it entails even one or another of these consequences...."

John Norton: "These efforts were long misled by an exaggeration of the importance of one experiment, the Michelson-Morley experiment, even though Einstein later had trouble recalling if he even knew of the experiment prior to his 1905 paper. This one experiment, in isolation, has little force. Its null result happened to be fully compatible with Newton's own emission theory of light. Located in the context of late 19th century electrodynamics when ether-based, wave theories of light predominated, however, it presented a serious problem that exercised the greatest theoretician of the day."

John Norton: "In addition to his work as editor of the Einstein papers in finding source material, Stachel assembled the many small clues that reveal Einstein's serious consideration of an emission theory of light; and he gave us the crucial insight that Einstein regarded the Michelson-Morley experiment as evidence for the principle of relativity, whereas later writers almost universally use it as support for the light postulate of special relativity. Even today, this point needs emphasis. The Michelson-Morley experiment is fully compatible with an emission theory of light that CONTRADICTS THE LIGHT POSTULATE."

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."

Pentcho Valev

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Dear Mr. Blumschein

You have attentively read my essay and even found an error: Mea culpa; in the Kepler citation must read: “the reciprocal of distance squared”. Thanks.

Kopernik was indeed born in Schlesien but was later Domherr in Ost-Preussen. I wanted to stress the apprehension of natural philosophers in the Middle Ages to publish to avoid the wrath of the mainstream...

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Dear Mr. Blumschein

You have attentively read my essay and even found an error: Mea culpa; in the Kepler citation must read: “the reciprocal of distance squared”. Thanks.

Kopernik was indeed born in Schlesien but was later Domherr in Ost-Preussen. I wanted to stress the apprehension of natural philosophers in the Middle Ages to publish to avoid the wrath of the mainstream authorities. Maybe Patcho does not write essays anymore for that reason.

I read with interest your essay and like a few remarks such as “Moreover, they use Heaviside’s trick which tempts to unwarrantedly interpret results of complex calculations”. This is right. He, not Maxwell coined the “Maxwell Equations” with a wrong Ampere’s law and a nonexistent “displacement current”

Another good part is “Leibniz and Newton merely agreed on that acceleration is an absolute quality. Let’s show Newton’s mistake with the metaphor of an unlimited to both sides box [14]. Only if there is a preferred point of reference, it is possible to attribute a position to it. In space, such point is usually missing.” However, I think you are helping the relativists defending their ideology. Newton was perfect in insisting on absolute velocities with reference to space. All astronomers are measuring peculiar motions of stars and galaxies. And we know that we are travelling through space with an absolute velocity of 371000 m/s towards the Virgo cluster. With the CMB zero this discussion is finally closed and relativity is dead.

You also warn about the mindless use of singularities in math. But you fail to mention that these singularities created by illegal divide by zero operations in Levy-Civita’s tensor math have finally led to monstrosities like the big bang and black holes. These are purely mathematical constructs and misled physicists and a wide public to believe in such singular objects. They even claim to be able to imagine such singularities in space and time. Here you mathematicians have strong duty to warn urgently. Nature hates singularities; beware of them!

All the best for your future work

Lutz

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Lutz,

That is a clear and coherent essay for those of us just observing the fields of physics and cosmology.

Some decades ago it occurred to me that the Big Bang model was nonsense, when I read that the rate of expansion is inversely proportional to gravity. Even someone with very little education in the subject would realize that if this intergalactic expansion is balanced by...

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Lutz,

That is a clear and coherent essay for those of us just observing the fields of physics and cosmology.

Some decades ago it occurred to me that the Big Bang model was nonsense, when I read that the rate of expansion is inversely proportional to gravity. Even someone with very little education in the subject would realize that if this intergalactic expansion is balanced by intergalactic contraction, there would be no additional expansion of the universe as a whole. What seemed evident is this is a modeling of a convection cycle of expanding radiation and contracting mass.

We can accept that gravity is "equivalent" to acceleration and still know the surface of the planet doesn't rush outward to keep us attached to it, so why wouldn't there be an opposite effect, where redshift is "equivalent" to recession?

One point I keep raising is that when they discovered these galaxies are redshifted such that we appear at the center, it was argued this was an expansion of space, not just in space and every point appears as the center, based on the premise of expanding spacetime. Which is total nonsense, since the time component doesn't increase! The speed of light doesn't increase in order to remain Constant to this expanding space. Of course, the Doppler effect would only work if there were more lightyears, not stretched lightyears. So we are to believe that space is expanding, based on the redshift of this intergalactic light and we can measure this expansion against a stable yardstick, based on the speed of that very same light!

Now we are the center of our view of the universe and so a compounding optical effect would explain this increasing redshift, why we appear at the center and why it goes parabolic, without needing dark energy to explain the curve in the rate.

I think one of the main problems for physics in general is that we perceive change as a sequence of events and so think of time as the point of the present moving from past to future. Which physics codifies by treating it as a measure of duration.

While the actual reality is a changing configuration of what exists, which turns future into past. To wit, the earth doesn't travel some dimension from yesterday to tomorrow, but tomorrow becomes yesterday because the earth turns.

Duration is simply the state of the present, as events form and dissolve and not a vector external to the present.

This makes time an effect of action, not the basis for it and as such, is similar to temperature. Time is to temperature, what frequency is to amplitude. It is just that while amplitude en masse is temperature, frequency en masse is static and so isolated actions are measured. Yet the overall effect of change is cumulative, like temperature. A faster frequency/clock simply uses energy quicker and so recedes into the past faster. The tortoise is still plodding along, long after the hare has died.

This leaves space alone and space without physical properties to define or limit it has only the two non-physical properties of being absolute and infinite.

The state of this absolute equilibrium is implicit in the speed of light in a vacuum being constant. Since a clock would stop at the speed of light, if we were to place clocks around in space, the one which ran fastest would be closest to this equilibrium of the vacuum.

Meanwhile an infinite space wouldn't be subject to entropy, since energy radiated from one area would be replaced by energy radiated in from surrounding areas.

So then we have this infinite vacuum, filled with energy fluctuations and the two main features of this wave action are frequency and amplitude, i.e.. time and temperature.

Now any energy will express form, even if it is just frequency and amplitude. As such, energy presses outward and form is the definition pressing inward, since it is based on interactions of energy thus impeding.

This form then is both physical mass and sensory information. While the energy is dynamic and conserved, the form is static and transient. So the energy goes from prior form to succeeding form, as the form comes into being and dissolves. Thus the arrow of time for energy is past to future, while the arrow of time for form is future to past.

Think of a factory, where the product goes start to finish, while the production line is going the other way, consuming material and expelling product. Life is the same. Individuals go from being in the future to being in the past, birth to death, while the species goes onto the next generation, shedding the old.

So then tie this back to the galaxies, as mass forms on the perimeters and falls inward, getting ever more dense, yet radiating out much excess energy. Just as factories and people radiate much waste. Eventually what falls into the center gets shot out the poles as cosmic jets, or quasars.

All this energy to eventually solidify into new forms and start over.

So gravity is not just a property of mass, but the process of consolidation, by which energy coalesces into mass and so is not so much a particular force, as a cumulative effect of all that is pulling inward. A vacuum, just like energy released from mass creates pressure.

So the reason we can't find gravity waves is because we are not looking for the right thing. It is light.

Einsteins's Cosmological Constant is light. The balance to the attraction of gravity.

This is my somewhat accidental theory of everything.

I've entered in a few of these contests, but knew this one would really be banging my head on the wall, so didn't get motivated enough to try.

Good luck!

Regards,

John Merryman

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