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Mathematical Obscurities in Special Relativity
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20 years 11 months ago #7188
by tvanflandern
Replied by tvanflandern on topic Reply from Tom Van Flandern
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Jan</i>
<br />"there has not been a fair balanced debate concerning the veracity or falsity of Special Relativity."<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">Yes, there was such a debate sponsored by the American Institute of Physics in 1959 -- well celebrated at the time, and probably the last time such a debate occurred where the outcome was not a foregone conclusion. (It was still respectable to disagree with relativity back then because it was still a frontier topic with few applications.)
At least one major physics figure and relativity supporter in the debate, Herbert Dingle, was eventually led to defect and write the then-famous book "Science at the Crossroads". However, in hindsight, his arguments were like yours and hundreds of others that presumed a certain measure of distant simultaneity and were therefore not the least bit persuasive to other relativists.
The discussions launched by the debate simmered through the 1960s and into the early 1970s. Mendel Sachs wrote about another "paradox" disproving SR in Physics Today, the most widely read physics publication in the world. The response was intense and emotional on both sides and raged on through many issues of the magazine. Eventually, the relativists prevailed because most of the dissenters were still making the same old failure to jettison simultaneity and were defeated on that grounds -- a failure to understand. The larger result was even more unfortunate: Physics Today and other publications adopted editorial policies against dealing with disputes of relativity as "too complex to deal with and always eventually proved wrong".
Every year, new minds come out of schools, and some of them get stopped cold by the same old dilemmas. But there are few relativists still willing to listen. All arguments based on some internal inconsistency in SR are of this type that will persuade no one because "time slippage" resolves all such apparent paradoxes. (Our "universal instant of now" corresponds to the infinite past, present, and infinite future of any other frame, depending on location.) It has been proved that no information can get out of the "light cone" even at speed c, so no real contradiction is possible.
So we are left with two choices:
(1) Keep trying to understand SR until you "get it" the way the relativists do. That took me 25 years. My article www.dipmat.unipg.it/~bartocci/ep6/ep6-vanfl.htm was an attempt to help others get there quicker. Frankly, it was rewarding when I finally did "get it", even though I never believed a word of it. But like solving the Rubiks Cube, I felt a sense of accomplishment over having finally solved a puzzle, however worthless the effort might have been in a practical sense. However, it did allow me to switch my focus from finding logical problems with SR to finding experimental disproofs.
or
(2) Move on. [
] -|Tom|-
<br />"there has not been a fair balanced debate concerning the veracity or falsity of Special Relativity."<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">Yes, there was such a debate sponsored by the American Institute of Physics in 1959 -- well celebrated at the time, and probably the last time such a debate occurred where the outcome was not a foregone conclusion. (It was still respectable to disagree with relativity back then because it was still a frontier topic with few applications.)
At least one major physics figure and relativity supporter in the debate, Herbert Dingle, was eventually led to defect and write the then-famous book "Science at the Crossroads". However, in hindsight, his arguments were like yours and hundreds of others that presumed a certain measure of distant simultaneity and were therefore not the least bit persuasive to other relativists.
The discussions launched by the debate simmered through the 1960s and into the early 1970s. Mendel Sachs wrote about another "paradox" disproving SR in Physics Today, the most widely read physics publication in the world. The response was intense and emotional on both sides and raged on through many issues of the magazine. Eventually, the relativists prevailed because most of the dissenters were still making the same old failure to jettison simultaneity and were defeated on that grounds -- a failure to understand. The larger result was even more unfortunate: Physics Today and other publications adopted editorial policies against dealing with disputes of relativity as "too complex to deal with and always eventually proved wrong".
Every year, new minds come out of schools, and some of them get stopped cold by the same old dilemmas. But there are few relativists still willing to listen. All arguments based on some internal inconsistency in SR are of this type that will persuade no one because "time slippage" resolves all such apparent paradoxes. (Our "universal instant of now" corresponds to the infinite past, present, and infinite future of any other frame, depending on location.) It has been proved that no information can get out of the "light cone" even at speed c, so no real contradiction is possible.
So we are left with two choices:
(1) Keep trying to understand SR until you "get it" the way the relativists do. That took me 25 years. My article www.dipmat.unipg.it/~bartocci/ep6/ep6-vanfl.htm was an attempt to help others get there quicker. Frankly, it was rewarding when I finally did "get it", even though I never believed a word of it. But like solving the Rubiks Cube, I felt a sense of accomplishment over having finally solved a puzzle, however worthless the effort might have been in a practical sense. However, it did allow me to switch my focus from finding logical problems with SR to finding experimental disproofs.
or
(2) Move on. [
] -|Tom|- Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.
20 years 11 months ago #6935
by Jan
Replied by Jan on topic Reply from Jan Vink
Tom,
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"> Every year, new minds come out of schools, and some of them get stopped cold by the same old dilemmas. But there are few relativists still willing to listen. All arguments based on some internal inconsistency in SR are of this type that will persuade no one because "time slippage" resolves all such apparent paradoxes. (Our "universal instant of now" corresponds to the infinite past, present, and infinite future of any other frame, depending on location.) It has been proved that no information can get out of the "light cone" even at speed c, so no real contradiction is possible.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
I find this affair very depressing. It is assumed that everyone is less "intelligent" than the people who came up with the theory. From 1905, things have gone downhill ever since, and always will, so it seems.
The physical universe has turned into a geometric excercise, where the photon is the slave driver. That is to say, the photon imposes its behaviour on any space-temporal event of any conceivable kind.
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Move on<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
We must, but not without our scars [
]
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"> Every year, new minds come out of schools, and some of them get stopped cold by the same old dilemmas. But there are few relativists still willing to listen. All arguments based on some internal inconsistency in SR are of this type that will persuade no one because "time slippage" resolves all such apparent paradoxes. (Our "universal instant of now" corresponds to the infinite past, present, and infinite future of any other frame, depending on location.) It has been proved that no information can get out of the "light cone" even at speed c, so no real contradiction is possible.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
I find this affair very depressing. It is assumed that everyone is less "intelligent" than the people who came up with the theory. From 1905, things have gone downhill ever since, and always will, so it seems.
The physical universe has turned into a geometric excercise, where the photon is the slave driver. That is to say, the photon imposes its behaviour on any space-temporal event of any conceivable kind.
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Move on<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
We must, but not without our scars [
] Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.
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