Category: Special Relativity

Now the fact is this: The Sagnac effect is fatal to SRT as presently practiced. Draper people already knew that, and I soon knew it too. And that is how I became a Dissident Physicist. >>>think critically...

Alexander Unzicker is a theoretical physicist and writes about elementary questions of natural philosophy. His critique of contemporary physics Bankrupting Physics (Macmillan) received the ‘Science Book of the Year’ award (German edition 2010). With The Mathematical Reality, Unzicker presents his most fundamental work to date, which is the result of years of study of natural laws and their historical development.The discovery of fundamental laws of nature has influenced the fate of Homo sapiens more than anything else. Has modern physics already understood these laws? >>>think critically...

This discussion is about the encounter of a genius, Dr Carl Andrew Zapffe, with relativity physics. There are two main points. The first is that Dr Zapffe was not a fool or an ignorant person, he was trained scientist who, when he investigated the arcane details of relativity, discovered that Einstein had made a mistake. Being a conscientious person he felt obligated to bring this to the attention of the scientific community. Our story is about how his views were received. How one famous author of relativity books concluded that he was a “cod“, and how NASA rejected his idea to perform a crucial experiment that would determine once and for all the validity of the foundations of relativity. >>>think critically...

The purpose of this article is to publish and comment upon a letter written by Louis Essen and sent to Dr. Carl Zapffe. The letter is interesting because it compresses into a few short lines the essence of Louis Essen’s criticism of Einstein’s theory of relativity. >>>think critically...

This paper defines a new way to assess the scientific value of Einstein’s special theory of relativity by defining a concept called irksomeness. This follows by converting the adjective irksome, meaning vexatious or troublesome, into a noun. We will call a theory irksome by the following definition: An irksome theory is one in which each of its component demonstrations makes sense or is rational, but the theory as a whole makes no sense or is irrational. Hence a theory, such as relativity, which is a very good example of a theory possessing this characteristic, is irksome or possesses irksomeness, if it satisfies the above definition. An irksome theory is recalcitrant in that its inconsistencies, anomalies, or paradoxes refuse to be tamed or effectively eliminated. It is also irksome when its concepts can not be clearly defined in a way such that there is a consistent agreement regarding its essential truth claims. >>>think critically...

For the reader who is unfamiliar with physics academia, it might seem difficult to understand why Special Relativity (SR) remains one of the key foundation blocks of academic, theoretical physics. After all physics thinking should be based on empirical data and logic – there should be little room for subjective preferences, etc. >>>think critically...

The earliest empirical data directly related to “time dilation” came from particle accelerators. These results seemed to confirm Einstein’s time dilation prediction. When unstable particles had “high velocity”, their half-lives were greatly increased – in other words, “high velocity” particles survived longer than “low velocity” particles before they decayed. >>>think critically...

In 1940, in a physics class in Argentina, a simple question from a physics student to his professor became a moment of "eureka" that was to take this physics student on a journey of decades challenging Albert Einstein himself. Einstein was 60 years old at the time and already hailed as a genius but this student was to change everything with a simple insight that seemed very innocent at the time.>>>think critically...

But not so fast. First, let me give you an analogy. There’s a very funny 2007 British comedy/mystery film. The story goes as follows. The top cop in London, loves and lives his job. He’s so good at his job that he soon gets promoted to Sergeant. However, the only open position is in a quiet village that has been named as the “Safest Place in the UK” every year for decades. The top cop’s ... >>>think critically...

Albert Einstein is a revered icon of science and a symbol of genius. Time Magazine named him, not just Person of Year, but Person of the 20th Century. Einstein’s Theory of Relativity is often touted as the “greatest achievement in physics”. It would seem to take a lot of chutzpah to contradict Einstein on any topic, but to challenge him regarding relativity would se... >>>think critically...