The Light Speed Barrier - Is there really a universal speed limit?

el scorcho · 2003-08-13 10:40:22

This thought occurred to me a few minutes ago and to be honest i really don't know how much merit there is to this. It is only speculation based on what i managed to learn about the behavior of light in my high school chemistry class. I wasn't very good in that class, so bear with me; if this is so outrageously wrong, please correct me.

I seem to remember hearing that light is made up of tiny particles, much like all matter. My question is this: if light is just a string of tiny particles, wouldn't that make it a form of matter? And in turn, wouldn't that debunk the theory that faster-than-light travel is impossible? ???

Just a thought...if anyone knowledgeable in this sort of thing has an answer for me, please let me know.

prometheusunbound · 2003-08-13 13:46:30

You are absolutly right. however, there is also a wave formation model in conjuction with the particle model. . . . . .I am not sure how they all interact. There are some smart cookies on this site that will surely know, just wait and see!

Algol · 2003-08-13 16:21:30

This is the basis of quantum theory. Basically it has been found through various exeriments that light displays both wave-like properties and particle like properties, this at one time sparked a heated debate over which it was, particle or wave, until quantum theory came along and said both and neither, in other words wave-particle duality.

I could go into detail, but its been a couple of years and i would probably mess up a detail somewhere and confuse you. Itll be in any university level chemistry book you can find.

Suffice to say that light displays some properties of waves and some properties of particles, for instance it has momentum, but not mass. Such is the quantum world.

dickbill · 2003-08-13 17:32:30

Probably everybody is afraid to make mistakes in his explanation. I think the topic has been treated already in this forum, but in what thread I cannot say. Use the search engine.
Also, buy a good book: the physicist Richard Feynman was a great writer about these topics. His books are very clear and very easy to understand.

Personnaly, I don't know why the speed of the light is a limit of the physical world.

prometheusunbound · 2003-08-13 18:59:29

Einstien calculated that it would take all the mass in the universe to go at light speed. if taken literally, then light speed is impossible. Why? because it makes it a one point system, as the an arrow in flight is only moving when it is compared to the ground. If, however, it was the only thing that exsited, then it cannot move in relation to nothing.

dickbill · 2003-08-13 20:09:41

Einstien calculated that it would take all the mass in the universe to go at light speed.

say otherwise, when the speed increase and get closer to the speed of the light, the mass of the object increases, which in turn requires more energy to accelerate further and so on.
Well, I can repeat what I read but I have to admit I don't understand the reasons for this. I think that to understand the 'speed of the light limitation problem', you need to understand the theory of relativity, which like any difficult task, requires hard work and time for reflexion.
I would prefer a definitive and easy answer, like: it is obvious by itself that the Earth is at the center of the universe because all stars and the sun turn around us. Who could deny that ?

sethmckiness · 2003-08-13 20:50:20

Depending on the reference frames and things like that, it really is quite interesting. I have read a few things on it. The whole Time paradox that resides with relative velocity.

Gennaro · 2003-08-14 03:21:06

I've come to like special relativity less and less. Mass increase, I think, is a purely theorethical effect of the theory, I'm not sure it has ever been proven empirically (and I have a hunch that those in the know don't even take it very seriously, it's just so absurd).
The cosmic speed limit simply feels wrong, and I mean not only the concept in itself, but the actual limit being the speed of light. 300,000 km/s isn't much. It takes 8 min for light to reach Earth from the Sun and over 5 hours to travel to Pluto. Make an experiment in the free space simulator Celestia, put the speed at c and sit there and watch for 5 hours. What fun. Remember Sun-Pluto is 40 AU and there's something like 270,000 Sol-Pluto's to Alpha Centauri. Both are cosmically insignificant distances. Why couldn't we make an Earth-Pluto flight in 3.5 hours instead of 5 hours?
It just seems so arbitrary.

So this should be the only objective measure in the material universe? The phenomenon that in itself defines space?
The day they find anything that travels faster than 300,000 km/s, the whole theory of relativity goes out the window. What about gravity?

On the other hand I guess it's a neat theory. Because of it we can say exactly how big the Universe is. If it's 13 billion years old, it's exactly 26 billion light years across (actually any deviation from this disproves the the theory of special relativity since nothing can travel faster than light and c is absolute).
Morever we can never observe further than 13 billion light years, because we can only look at things back in time. Consequently, exactly 50% of the Universe is pitch dark. The epicentre of the big bang is located in the centre, so if you look in any other direction than straight at the cosmological point zero, the light coming to you will show a curvature heading to/from this location back in time. Geometrically, the curvature makes for a longer distance travelled for the light but it accomplish this in the same time despite having the same speed as the light beams going straight (???).
When you reach the edge you'll probably fall over.

nirgal · 2003-08-14 04:06:41

"I've come to like special relativity less and less. Mass increase, I think, is a purely theorethical effect of the theory, I'm not sure it has ever been proven empirically (and I have a hunch that those in the know don't even take it very seriously, it's just so absurd)."

Nonsense! The mass increase has been proven in experiments countless times, in fact it is measured thousands of times each day in particle accelerators. And believe me, physicists take this very seriously. I won't even bother to comment on the rest of your post. You really have to read up on the subject!

Gennaro · 2003-08-14 06:57:23

That's doubtlessly true, but the rest of my post wasn't meant to be absolutely dead serious either.

It was more like, state a few crazy yet coherent assumptions and let those fantastic wizzez on cosmology explain it all in simple and concrete detail.

You for example, are very competent in this field are you not?

Mark Friedenbach · 2003-08-15 04:10:28

Relativity is valid, and virtually every aspect of it has been verified. The speed of light can be measured cheaply in one's own garage. Light does take time to get from one location to another (if you don't believe me, listen to some Apollo transmissions, or call someone on a satellite phone). Changes between relativistic and actual mass are a fact of life in particle accelerators. Time dilation can be measured by atomic clocks in satellites. The atomic clock in Denver has to be constantly changed to stay sync with the clock in Washington, due to a difference in elevation.

Einstein's theories of relativity are products of science, and science is an empirical process. Physicists do not accept or reject a theory based on their own ideas about how the world "should" work, but instead on objective experimental results. And many times, especially nowadays, these results are totally contrary to our instinctive view of how the universe works. To believe that the physical world should match our "common sense" understanding is quite na?ve.

Now, I'm not an expert, but perhaps I can clear up some some confusion about the speed of light "speed limit" (I am falling back on physics classes I took a while ago, so someone please correct me if I make a mistake). Einstein's theories do not say that "nothing is faster than light" or "nothing can move faster than the speed of light." That is a conclusion that only has meaning from a certain context. Allow me to explain:

Say you are in a spaceship that leaves Earth orbit, and travels to Alpha Centauri (4.2 light years away). Since, once you arrive, you know the distance you traveled, and the time it took (from you're point of view), you can easily calculate the speed the spaceship must have been traveling at. If you aged 42 years, then you must have been traveling at 10% the speed of light (4.2 / 42 = 0.1 or 10%). If the trip took 8.4 years, you must have zipping along at half the speed of light. Common sense would say that you could keep accelerating and travel fast enough for the trip to only take 2.1 years, in which case you would be going twice the speed of light. In fact (despite what you might have heard), this is the case. There is no "universal speed limit" in that respect.

However, things do get weird when you paint other objects into the picture. During your 2.1 year trip, you conduct some experiments (in which you are traveling "at" twice the speed of light, according to your calculations when you arrive). Inside the spaceship everything is fine, but as you look out the window, you notice that all the stationary objects in space seem to be getting shorter. Indeed, you get out your meter stick and measure the length of some Kuiper-belt object as you zip out of the solor system, and sure enough, it is shorter than it should be. It seems like all of space (except for you) has squeezed or compressed in the direction you are traveling. It has.

If you were to use your magical meter stick to measure the entire distance you travel, from Earth to Alpha Centauri, you would find that rather than the 4.2 light-years that you expected, the distance you'd measure is 1.05 light-years (I'm making up these numbers as I've forgotten the equations used to calculate them). Once you arrive at your destination and slow to a stop, the universe stretches back to its normal configuration, and the distance from Alpha Centauri to Earth becomes 4.2 light years again. Since the trip still takes you 2.1 years, from one point of view you could say that you were traveling at only 50% the speed of light while you were moving (1.05 / 2.1 = 0.5 or 50%). From this point of view, the universe will continue to get shorter and shorter as you travel faster and faster, and the speed that you can observe as you travel will approach, but never reach the speed of light. Only from this and the next example can you consider the speed of light a speed limit. But once you slow down, the universe will stretch back out and you'll notice you've gone a very long distance in a very short time.

Finally, if I were to observe your trip to Alpha Centauri from Earth, I too would draw separate conclusions. From my point of view, as you accelerate faster and faster, I see time slowing down for you. What you see as a 2.1 year trip, I see as a 8.4 year trip (as in I age 8.4 years). So from my point of view, you're also going at only half the speed of light. And no matter how hard you try, from my point of view you will never move faster than the speed of light. Or put another way, it is impossible for you to make it to Alpha Centauri without me aging at least 4.2 years. But this is only from my point of view as a "stationary" observer, and is no more or less valid than the ones above. That's the beauty of relativity.

Anyway, I know this is rather long winded, but I hope you can see that the "universal speed limit" is fictional in the sense that it only exists from certain points of view. Let me know if it helped.

Edited for format and typos

Algol · 2003-08-15 12:37:55

You are, of course, absolutely correct.
Exceedingly well put!

Mark Friedenbach · 2003-08-15 14:17:05

Thanks

Shaun Barrett · 2003-08-22 23:56:43

I agree with Algol.
You made a good job of that explanation, Mark! It's a tricky subject to understand, never mind explain succinctly, and you explained it rather well in a way I haven't come across before. Very interesting.
Nice one, Mark!

sethmckiness · 2003-08-23 04:05:26

The atomic clock in Denver has to be constantly changed to stay sync with the clock in Washington, due to a difference in elevation

The Reason the Cesium Standards in various places have ot be changed isn't so much the time dilation as the fact that not all Cesiums are created equal. This is why there is Universal Coordinated Time (also known as UTC) which is a myriad of different countries with Cesium standards averagein there results. Taking in the fact that it takes a little more then a year to orbit the sun UT0, the slight deviation of earths orbit UT1 and the leap second UTC.

I would be hard pressed to prove the differency of less then .1% of the total radius could make that big of a difference in UTC. I believe it is good to either a Milli-Second or Micro-Second.

For those that know anything about Satellite Communications the new high-PSK modems require timing that is better then a stand alone Cesium standard. Like 64-PSK modems. I don't have the books here to quote exact numbers.

Spider-Man · 2003-08-31 01:52:11

I've come to like special relativity less and less. Mass increase, I think, is a purely theorethical effect of the theory, I'm not sure it has ever been proven empirically (and I have a hunch that those in the know don't even take it very seriously, it's just so absurd).
The cosmic speed limit simply feels wrong, and I mean not only the concept in itself, but the actual limit being the speed of light. 300,000 km/s isn't much. It takes 8 min for light to reach Earth from the Sun and over 5 hours to travel to Pluto. Make an experiment in the free space simulator Celestia, put the speed at c and sit there and watch for 5 hours. What fun. Remember Sun-Pluto is 40 AU and there's something like 270,000 Sol-Pluto's to Alpha Centauri. Both are cosmically insignificant distances. Why couldn't we make an Earth-Pluto flight in 3.5 hours instead of 5 hours?
It just seems so arbitrary.
So this should be the only objective measure in the material universe? The phenomenon that in itself defines space?
The day they find anything that travels faster than 300,000 km/s, the whole theory of relativity goes out the window. What about gravity?
On the other hand I guess it's a neat theory. Because of it we can say exactly how big the Universe is. If it's 13 billion years old, it's exactly 26 billion light years across (actually any deviation from this disproves the the theory of special relativity since nothing can travel faster than light and c is absolute).
Morever we can never observe further than 13 billion light years, because we can only look at things back in time. Consequently, exactly 50% of the Universe is pitch dark. The epicentre of the big bang is located in the centre, so if you look in any other direction than straight at the cosmological point zero, the light coming to you will show a curvature heading to/from this location back in time. Geometrically, the curvature makes for a longer distance travelled for the light but it accomplish this in the same time despite having the same speed as the light beams going straight (???).
When you reach the edge you'll probably fall over.

I agree with your sentiments, but, unfortunately, the increased mass thing has been proven, with particle accelerators. When, say, two protons are sped around the accelerator at near light speed, and then are smashed into each other, the product is not simply the resultant mass of two singular protons, but hundreds of them (or potentially more, depending on how much energy went into the system, on how fast they were going). The energy that was used to accelerate the protons was converted into mass when they suddenly stopped. And when that mass recoallesced, it became a whole bunch of hadrons and other quarky things, with a mass equal to the energy and the mass of the two accelerated protons.

I don't like it any more than you do. But I'll comment on the rest of your truly rational and intriguing thoughts once I get some rest.

Surferosad · 2003-08-31 21:40:22

I'm new here, and I don't know if this has been pointed out or not, so be patient with me if I'm just repeating the bloody obvious!

The light speed limit is not a limitation on space travel! An Interstellar ship constantly accelerating at 1 g could reach the centre of the galaxy in 28 years SHIP TIME! But there wouldn't be any point in coming back: 30 000 years would have gone by on Earth. With a constant 1 g acceleration getting you closer and closer to the speed of light (without ever attaining it) , you could tour the Universe in about 56 years ship time. Humanity can colonize the Universe. But it will pay a hefty price...

Free Spirit · 2003-08-31 22:10:52

How do you keep that ship constantly accelerating at one g though? Maybe some kind of very powerful laser pushed light sail could do it for awhile but I'm not sure about clear out to the center of the galaxy.

Shaun Barrett · 2003-09-01 01:03:11

Free Spirit:-

How do you keep that ship constantly accelerating at one g though? ... clear out to the center of the galaxy.

The sad answer to that question, of course, is that nobody has a clue how to do such a thing!
It's certainly not going to happen with rockets because of the ridiculously enormous reaction mass you'd have to carry and, even with an impossibly-tightly-focused, ground-based laser, the amount of energy you'd have to pump into it to keep accelerating a constantly increasing mass, closer and closer to light speed, would be vastly greater than Earth's entire energy production! You'd need to be able to harness a good proportion of the output of a star, I should think, to achieve your goal.

Unless we can invent a propellantless space-drive, a la science fiction, I think it's a lost cause. And even if we could produce a true space-drive, it would be a one way trip as far as coming home to friends and relatives is concerned, because of the time dilation reasons outlined above.

However, something has been happening recently in this field which may prove very interesting.
"Focus" magazine, July 2003 Ed., p.63:-

Within the last few years, cracks have begun to appear in the edifice of Special Relativity. It insists that there is a limit on the energy of cosmic rays from deep space - yet ultra-fast rays breaking this limit have been detected several times. Some theorists think that the answer may be that the speed of light is not alone in having the same value for all observers; there may be an energy threshold whose value is also universal.
Work on this "Doubly Special Relativity' is still in its infancy. Even so, it may prove to be the first glimmerings of a theory with implications even more astounding than those that emerged from Einstein's teenage daydream.

Who knows where this latest research will lead us? Maybe nowhere useful or maybe to a means of breaking the light-speed barrier.
I think that would be ... Relatively Special, don't you?! {Groan .. }
Sorry!

Byron · 2003-09-01 07:30:41

The light speed limit is not a limitation on space travel! An Interstellar ship constantly accelerating at 1 g could reach the centre of the galaxy in 28 years SHIP TIME! But there wouldn't be any point in coming back: 30 000 years would have gone by on Earth. With a constant 1 g acceleration getting you closer and closer to the speed of light (without ever attaining it) , you could tour the Universe in about 56 years ship time. Humanity can colonize the Universe. But it will pay a hefty price...

There's something I don't quite understand. How can you "maintain" a constant 1 gee acceleration in perputuity across the Universe? I agree with the time dilation effect..it's been proved adaquately enough...but if you take a ship and accelerate it at one gee (using whatever endless source of energy you might on hand, mini-black holes, maybe?) you would "bump up" against "c" in about 11 months' time. (That's "real" time..lol) Your speed increases at the contant rate of 10 meters second squared (1 gee)...everything's fine and dandy until you reach approx 97% of "c" and then you start experiencing a huge increase of energy needed to maintain that constant accleration. By the time you get very near "c," something like 99.9999%, it would take all the energy in the Universe to keep up the acceleration...so, you see where this is going... :;):

Surferosad · 2003-09-01 09:07:04

Uhh... I don't know. I'm just giving those numbers out to make a point (the point that light speed is not a limitation to travel, since you can use time dilation to help you get anywhere in the Universe). I don't think anyone would actually just go around the universe just constantly accelerating at 1 g. For once, as you point out, it probably can't be done. However, if you're going somewhere, (say, you want to eventually orbit some distant star) you don't constantly accelerate at 1 g during the whole trip. You accelerate for half of the trip, then you decelerate for the other half, since you want to greatly reduce your speed so that you can get into orbit. Also, time dilation happens whether you're accelerating or not, right? If you keep a constant speed of 97% C for instance, time dilation will still take place, but it won't be as severe as if you just keep accelerating.

It's a one way ticket to the stars!

Free Spirit · 2003-09-01 16:33:38

It's certainly not going to happen with rockets because of the ridiculously enormous reaction mass you'd have to carry and, even with an impossibly-tightly-focused, ground-based laser, the amount of energy you'd have to pump into it to keep accelerating a constantly increasing mass, closer and closer to light speed, would be vastly greater than Earth's entire energy production! You'd need to be able to harness a good proportion of the output of a star, I should think, to achieve your goal.

The energy problem is a sticky one to be sure. I don't even pretend to believe that laser powered, relativistic light sails are something we could do with current technology, but a laser powered lightsail is about the only thing I can think of that you could keep accelerating at 1g. Of course if you can generate the power for that laser you could probably use the same energy source in some other fashion to gain the desired velocity. Does anyone else here fear large scale production of anti-matter? Knowing its destructive potential I don't think we should develop it, at least on Earth. Manufacturing accidents and anti-matter weapons could end all life on Earth easily, much more so than traditional nukes.

Gennaro · 2003-09-01 19:19:06

Well, thanks for the lecture(s). I should never have written that nonsense about lack of emprical demonstrations of mass increase. My bad. In fact, I actually knew better, had just forgotten all about it. Happens to me all the time.
In any event we can be sure that something strange happens to sub atomic particles when accelerated to relativistic speeds. On the other hand, I read somewhere that the mass increase phenomenon in particle accelerators (if they had those around 1912) is an older observation than the theory of special relativity. So consequently, it ought to have been explained in some other way originally. Einstein, if this is correct, simply amalgated those finds into his own theory. Nevertheless, I agree there's a clear conjecture in support of it.

Related to the discussion, what would you make out of this in way of alternative science?

http://www.dipmat.unipg.it/~bartocci/ep6/ep6-vanfl.htm

Yes I know, the site also brings up issues like faces on Mars and exploding planet theories (yeah, right and how's that supposed to happen considering forces of gravity?). Nevertheless, it would be interesting to read the comments by initiated people, able to grasp the contents in full.

Spider-Man, I'm glad you share my sentiments. It's so easy to be regarded a total idiot when trying to discuss these things. To be honest, I'd hope for Einstein to be proven wrong somehow, I admit it. He destroys my space future.

Spider-Man · 2003-09-01 23:15:03

Actually, I have much more for you, Gennaro.

This article is interesting, mainly in its revelation of most physicists as inherently self-contradictory and sophistic:

http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2/4 … 8-2000.asp

But there's an even better one than that, one which totally turns 'round the tables on the speed of light, and gravity ( http://www.gravitywarpdrive.com/Rethink … tivity.htm ), which I will quite verbatem because of the website's unreadibilty:

R E T H I N K I N G R E L A T I V I T Y
by Tom Bethel

No one has paid attention yet, but a well-respected physics journal just published an article whose conclusion, if generally accepted, will undermine the foundations of modern physics -- Einstein's Theory of Relativity in particular. Published in Physics Letters A (December 21, 1998), the article claims that the speed with which the force of gravity propagates must be at least twenty billion times faster than the speed of light. This would contradict the Special Theory of Relativity of 1905, which asserts that nothing can go faster than light. This claim about the special status of the speed of light has become part of the world view of educated laymen in the twentieth century.
Note:
Tom Van Flandern's article, titled "The Speed of Gravity - What the Experiments Say," is provided as a Web Page on this Website. ( http://www.ldolphin.org/vanFlandern/gravityspeed.html )
Special Relativity, as opposed to the General Theory (1916), is considered by experts to be above criticism, because it has been confirmed "over and over again." But several dissident physicists believe that there is a simpler way of looking at the facts, a way that avoids the mind-bending complications of Relativity. Their arguments can be understood by laymen. I wrote about one of these dissidents, Peter Beckmann, over five years ago (TAS, August 1993, and Correspondence, TAS, October 1993). The present article introduces new people and arguments. The subject is important because if Special Relativity is supplanted, much of twentieth-century physics, including quantum theory, will have to be reconsidered in that light.
The article in Physics Letters A was written by Tom Van Flandern, a research associate in the physics department at the University of Maryland. He also publishes Meta Research Bulletin which supports "promising but unpopular alternative ideas in astronomy." In the 1990's, he worked as a special consultant to the Global Positioning System (GPS), a set of satellites whose atomic clocks allow ground observers to determine their position to within about a foot. Van Flandern reports that an intriguing controversy arose before GPS was even launched. Special Relativity gave Einsteinians reason to doubt whether it would work at all. In fact, it works fine (But more on that later).
The publication of his article is a breakthrough of sorts. For years, most editors of mainstream physics journals have automatically rejected articles arguing against Special Relativity. This policy was informally adopted in the wake of the Herbert Dingle controversy. A professor of science at the University of London, Dingle had written a book popularizing Special Relativity, but by the 1960's he had become convinced that it couldn't be true. So he wrote another book, Science at the Crossroads (1972), contradicting the first. Scientific journals, especially Nature, were bombarded with his (and others') letters.
An editor of Physics Letters A promised Van Flandern that reviewers would not be allowed to reject his article simply because it conflicted with received wisdom. Van Flandern begins with the "most amazing thing" he learned as a graduate student of celestial mechanics at Yale: that all gravitational interactions must be taken as instantaneous. At the same time, students were also taught that Einstein's Special Relativity proved that nothing could propagate faster than light in a vacuum. The disagreement "sat there like an irritant," Van Flandern told me. He determined that one day he would find its resolution. Today, he thinks that a new interpretation of Relativity may be needed.
The argument that gravity must travel faster than light goes like this. If its speed limit is that of light, there must be an appreciable delay in its action. By the time the Sun's "pull" reaches us, the Earth will have "moved on" for another 8.3 minutes (the time of light travel). But by then the Sun's pull on the Earth will not be in the same straight line as the Earth's pull on the Sun. The effect of these misaligned forces "would be to double the Earth's distance from the Sun in 1200 years." Obviously, this is not happening. The stability of planetary orbits tells us that gravity must propagate much faster than light. Accepting this reasoning, Isaac Newton assumed that the force of gravity must be instantaneous.
Astronomical data support this conclusion. We know, for example, that the Earth accelerates toward a point 20 arc-seconds in front of the visible Sun -- that is, toward the true, instantaneous direction of the Sun. Its light comes to us from one direction, its "pull" from a slightly different direction. This implies different propagation speeds for light and gravity.
It might seem strange that something so fundamental to our understanding of physics can still be a matter of debate. But that in itself should encourage us to wonder how much we really know about the physical world. In certain Internet discussion groups, "the most frequently asked question and debated topic is 'What is the speed of gravity?,'" Van Flandern writes. It is heard less often in the classroom, but only "because many teachers and most textbooks head off the question." They understand the argument that it must go very fast indeed, but they also have been trained not to let anything exceed Einstein's speed limit.
So maybe there is something wrong with Special Relativity after all. In The ABC of Relativity (1925), Bertrand Russell said that just as the Copernican system once seemed impossible and now seems obvious, so, one day, Einstein's Relativity theory "will seem easy." But it remains as "difficult" as ever, not because the math is easy or difficult (Special Relativity requires only high-school math, General Relativity really is difficult), but because elementary logic must be abandoned. "Easy Einstein" books remain baffling to almost all. The sun-centered solar system, on the other hand, has all along been easy to grasp.
Nonetheless, Special Relativity (which deals with motion in a straight line) is thought to be beyond reproach. General Relativity (which deals with gravity, and accelerated motion in general) is not regarded with the same awe. Stanford's Francis Everitt, the director of an experimental test of General Relativity due for space-launch next year, has summarized the standing of the two theories in this way: "I would not be at all surprised if Einstein's General Theory of Relativity were to break down," he wrote. "Einstein himself recognized some serious shortcomings in it, and we know on general grounds that it is very difficult to reconcile with other parts of modern physics. With regard to Special Relativity, on the other hand, I would be much more surprised. The experimental foundations do seem to be much more compelling." This is the consensus view.
Dissent from Special Relativity is small and scattered. But it is there, and it is growing. Van Flandern's article is only the latest manifestation. In 1987, Peter Beckmann, who taught at the University of Colorado, published Einstein Plus Two, pointing out that the observations that led to Relativity can be more simply reinterpreted in a way that preserves universal time. The journal he founded, Galilean Electrodynamics was taken over by Howard Hayden of the University of Connecticut (Physics), and is now edited by Cynthia Kolb Whitney of the Electro-Optics Technology Center at Tufts. Hayden held colloquia on Beckmann's ideas at several New England universities, but could find no physicist who even tried to put up an argument.
A brief note on Einstein's most famous contribution to physics -- the formula that everyone knows. When they hear that heresy is in the air, some people come to the defense of Relativity with this question: "Atom bombs work, don't they?" They reason as follows: The equation E = mc2 was discovered as a byproduct of Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity (True). Relativity, they conclude, is indispensable to our understanding of the way the world works. But that does not follow. Alternative derivations of the famous equation dispense with Relativity. One such was provided by Einstein himself in 1946. And it is simpler than the relativistic rigmarole. But few Einstein books or biographies mention the alternative. They admire complexity, and cling to it.

Dingle's Question:
University of London Professor Herbert Dingle showed why Special Relativity will always conflict with logic, no matter when we first learn it. According to the theory, if two observers are equipped with clocks, and one moves in relation to the other, the moving clock runs slower than the non-moving clock. But the Relativity principle itself (an integral part of the theory) makes the claim that if one thing is moving in a straight line in relation to another, either one is entitled to be regarded as moving. It follows that if there are two clocks, A and B, and one of them is moved, clock A runs slower than B, and clock B runs slower than A. Which is absurd.
Dingle's Question was this: Which clock runs slow? Physicists could not agree on an answer. As the debate raged on, a Canadian physicist wrote to Nature in July 1973: "Maybe the time has come for all of those who want to answer to get together and to come up with one official answer. Otherwise the plain man, when he hears of this matter, may exercise his right to remark that when the experts disagree they cannot all be right, but they can all be wrong."
The problem has not gone away. Alan Lightman of MIT offers an unsatisfactory solution in his Great Ideas in Physics (1992). "The fact that each observer sees the other clock ticking more slowly than his own clock does not lead to a contradiction. A contradiction could arise only if the two clocks could be put back together side by side at two different times." But clocks in constant relative motion in a straight line "can be brought together only once, at the moment they pass." So the theory is protected from its own internal logic by the impossibility of putting it to a test. Can such a theory be said to be scientific?
Consider Clifford M. Will of Washington University, a leading proponent of Relativity today. "It is difficult to imagine life without Special Relativity," he says in Was Einstein Right? "Just think of all the phenomena or features of our world in which Special Relativity plays a role. Atomic energy, both the explosive and the controlled kind. The famous equation E = mc2 tells how mass can be converted into extraordinary amounts of energy." Note the misleading predicate, "plays a role." He knows that the stronger claim, "is indispensable," would be pounced on as inaccurate.
Is there an alternative way of looking at all the facts that supposedly would be orphaned without Relativity? Is there a simpler way? A criterion of simplicity has frequently been used as a court of appeal in deciding between theories. If it is made complex enough, the Ptolemaic system can predict planetary positions correctly. But the Sun-centered system is much simpler, and ultimately we prefer it for that reason.
Tom Van Flandern says the problem is that the Einstein experts who have grown accustomed to "Minkowski diagrams and real relativistic thinking" find the alternative of universal time and "Galilean space" actually more puzzling than their own mathematical ingenuities. Once relativists have been thoroughly trained, he says, it's as difficult for them to rethink the subject in classical terms as it is for laymen to grasp time dilation and space contraction. For laymen, however, and for those physicists who have not specialized in Relativity, which is to say the vast majority of physicists, there's no doubt that the Galilean way is far simpler than the Einsteinian. Special Relativity was first proposed as a way of sidestepping the great difficulty that arose in physics as a result of the Michelson-Morley experiment (1887). Clerk Maxwell had shown that light and radio waves share the same electromagnetic spectrum, differing only in wave length. Sea waves require water, sound waves air, so, it was argued, electromagnetic waves must have their own medium to travel in. It was called the ether. "There can be no doubt that the interplanetary and interstellar spaces are not empty," Maxwell wrote, "but are occupied by a material substance or body, which is certainly the largest, and probably the most uniform body of which we have any knowledge." As today's dissidents see things, it was Maxwell's assumption of uniformity that was misleading.
The experiment of Michelson and Morley tried to detect this ether. Since the Earth in its orbital motion must plow through it, an "ether wind" should be detectable, just as a breeze can be felt outside the window of a moving car. Despite repeated attempts, however, no ethereal breeze could be felt. A pattern of interference fringes was supposed to shift when Michelson's instrument was rotated. But there was no fringe shift.
Einstein explained this result in radical fashion. There is no need of an ether, he said. And there was no fringe shift because the speed of an approaching light wave is unaffected by the observer's motion. But if the speed of light always remains the same, time itself would have to slow down, and space contract to just the amount needed to ensure that the one divided by the other -- space divided by time -- always gave the same value: the unvarying speed of light. The formula that achieved this result was quite simple, and mathematically everything worked out nicely and agreed with observation.
The skeptical, meanwhile, were placated with this formula: "I know it seems odd that time slows down and space contracts when things move, but don't worry, a measurable effect only occurs at high velocities -- much higher than anything we find in everyday life. So for all practical purposes we can go on thinking in the same old way." (Meanwhile, space and time have been subordinated to velocity. Get used to it.)
Now we come to some modern experimental findings. Today we have very accurate clocks, accurate to a billionth of a second a day. The tiny differentials predicted by Einstein are now measurable. And the interesting thing is this: Experiments have shown that atomic clocks really do slow down when they move, and atomic particles really do live longer. Does this mean that time itself slows down? Or is there a simpler explanation?
The dissident physicists I have mentioned disagree about various things, but they are beginning to unite behind this proposition: There really is an ether, in which electromagnetic waves travel, but it is not the all-encompassing, uniform ether proposed by Maxwell. Instead, it corresponds to the gravitational field that all celestial bodies carry about with them. Close to the surface (of sun, planet, or star) the field, or ether, is relatively more dense. As you move out into space it becomes more attenuated. Beckmann's Einstein Plus Two introduces this hypothesis, I believe for the first time, and he told me it was first suggested to him in the 1950's by one of his graduate students, Jiri Pokorny, at the Institute of Radio Engineering and Electronics in Prague. Pokorny later joined the department of physics at Prague's Charles University, and today is retired.
I believe that all the facts that seem to require special or General Relativity can be more simply explained by assuming an ether that corresponds to the local gravitational field. Michelson found no "ether wind," or fringe shift, because of course the Earth's gravitational field moves forward with the Earth. As for the bending of starlight near the Sun, the confirmation of General Relativity that made Einstein world-famous, it is easily explained given a non-uniform light medium. It is a well known law of physics that wave fronts do change direction when they enter a denser medium. According to Howard Hayden, refracted starlight can be derived this way "with a few lines of high school algebra.? And derived exactly. The tensor calculus and Riemannian geometry of General Relativity gives only an approximation. Likewise the "Shapiro Time-Delay," observed when radar beams pass close to the Sun and bounce back from Mercury. Some may prefer to try to understand all this in terms of the "curvature of Space-Time," to use the Einstein formulation (unintelligible to laymen, I believe). But they should know that a far simpler alternative exists.
The advance of the perihelion of Mercury's orbit, another famous confirmation of General Relativity, is worth a closer look (the perihelion is the point in the orbit closest to a sun). Graduate theses may one day be written about this peculiar episode in the history of science. In his book, Subtle Is the Lord, Abraham Pais reports that when Einstein saw that his calculations agreed with Mercury's orbit, "he had the feeling that something actually snapped in him ... This experience was, I believe, by far the strongest emotional experience in Einstein's scientific life, perhaps in all his life. Nature had spoken to him."
Fact: The equation that accounted for Mercury's orbit had been published 17 years earlier, before Relativity was invented. The author, Paul Gerber, used the assumption that gravity is not instantaneous, but propagates with the speed of light. After Einstein published his General Relativity derivation, arriving at the same equation, Gerber's article was reprinted in *Annalen der Physik* (the journal that had published Einstein's Relativity papers). The editors felt that Einstein should have acknowledged Gerber's priority. Although Einstein said he had been in the dark, it was pointed out that Gerber's formula had been published in Mach's Science of Mechanics, a book that Einstein was known to have studied. So how did they both arrive at the same formula?
Tom Van Flandern was convinced that Gerber's assumption (gravity propagates with the speed of light) was wrong. So he studied the question. He points out that the formula in question is well known in celestial mechanics. Consequently, it could be used as a "target" for calculations that were intended to arrive at it. He saw that Gerber's method "made no sense, in terms of the principles of celestial mechanics." Einstein had also said (in a 1920 newspaper article) that Gerber's derivation was "wrong through and through."
So how did Einstein get the same formula? Van Flandern went through his calculations, and found to his amazement that they had "three separate contributions to the perihelion; two of which add, and one of which cancels part of the other two; and you wind up with just the right multiplier." So he asked a colleague at the University of Maryland, who as a young man had overlapped with Einstein at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study, how in his opinion Einstein had arrived at the correct multiplier. This man said it was his impression that, "knowing the answer," Einstein had "jiggered the arguments until they came out with the right value."
If the General Relativity method is correct, it ought to apply everywhere, not just in the solar system. But Van Flandern points to a conflict outside it: binary stars with highly unequal masses. Their orbits behave in ways that the Einstein formula did not predict. "Physicists know about it and shrug their shoulders," Van Flandern says. They say there must be "something peculiar about these stars, such as an oblateness, or tidal effects." Another possibility is that Einstein saw to it that he got the result needed to "explain" Mercury's orbit, but that it doesn't apply elsewhere.
The simplest way to understand all this "without going crazy," Van Flandern says, is to discard Einsteinian Relativity and to assume that "there is a light-carrying medium." When a clock moves through this medium "it takes longer for each electron in the atomic clock to complete its orbit." Therefore, it makes fewer "ticks" in a given time than a stationary clock. Moving clocks slow down, in short, because they are "ploughing through this medium and working more slowly." It's not time that slows down. It's the clocks. All the experiments that supposedly "confirm" Special Relativity do so because all have been conducted in laboratories on the Earth's surface, where every single moving particle, or moving atomic clock, is in fact "ploughing through" the Earth's gravitational field, and therefore slowing down.
Both theories, Einsteinian and local field, would yield the same results. So far. Now let's turn back to the Global Positioning System. At high altitude, where the GPS clocks orbit the Earth, it is known that the clocks run roughly 46,000 nanoseconds (one-billionth of a second) a day faster than at ground level, because the gravitational field is thinner 20,000 kilometers above the Earth. The orbiting clocks also pass through that field at a rate of three kilometers per second -- their orbital speed. For that reason, they tick 7,000 nanoseconds a day slower than stationary clocks.
To offset these two effects, the GPS engineers reset the clock rates, slowing them down before launch by 39,000 nanoseconds a day. They then proceed to tick in orbit at the same rate as ground clocks, and the system "works." Ground observers can indeed pin-point their position to a high degree of precision. In (Einstein) theory, however, it was expected that because the orbiting clocks all move rapidly and with varying speeds relative to any ground observer (who may be anywhere on the Earth's surface), and since in Einstein's theory the relevant speed is always speed relative to the observer, it was expected that continuously varying relativistic corrections would have to be made to clock rates. This in turn would have introduced an unworkable complexity into the GPS. But these corrections were not made. Yet "the system manages to work, even though they use no relativistic corrections after launch," Van Flandern said. "They have basically blown off Einstein."
The latest findings are not in agreement with relativistic expectations. To accommodate these findings, Einsteinians are proving adept at arguing that if you look at things from a different "reference frame," everything still works out fine. But they have to do the equivalent of standing on their heads, and it's not convincing. A simpler theory that accounts for all the facts will sooner or later supplant one that looks increasingly Rube Goldberg-like. I believe that is now beginning to happen.

--TB

Tom Van Flandern's Meta Research Bulletin ($15) and his book, Dark Matter, Missing Planets ($24.50), may be obtained from P.O. Box 15186, Chevy Chase, MD 20825; Peter Beckmann's Einstein Plus Two ($40) from Golem Press, P.O. Box 1342, Boulder, CO 80306. Beckmann's book is highly technical; Van Flandern's is mostly accessible to laymen.
Tom Bethell is TAS's Washington correspondent. His new book, The Noblest Triumph, was recently published by St. Martin's Press.
Posted 04/28/99 http://www.spectator.org/499TAS/bethell.htm
Copyright ? 1999 The American Spectator. All rights reserved.

More coming soon...

Spider-Man · 2003-09-01 23:56:52

I was immensely delighted when I first read this. It means that superluminal travel is indeed quite possible, even if it is difficult, and that everything from Star Trek's warp engines to Star Wars' hyperdrive is now no longer utter science fiction. The effects of time dilation are now explained away logically and reasonably, not by the comparative nonsense of time itself changing on a level so fundamental it makes absolutely no sense at all.

I don't believe the article mentioned it, but one of the constant refutations and protestations of physicists like Stephen Hawking, and others who are vehemently defensive of Einstein (whom I still think was great, even if he was incorrect) and Heisenberg and others, is that theories like that of Relativity are mathematically correct, and therefore untouchable. These people tend to believe that nothing is real but equations, that nothing but math and formulae exist, that the physical world is an illusion. Beyond this preposterousness, they insist in the complete accuracy of these theories, defining them as "fact" due to their inherent mathematical continuity.

Do you know what else was completely mathematically accurate, and was also portrayed as perfect and undeniably true due to its "divine" complexity?

The geocentric model of the universe ? specifically the one developed in the Renaissance that was meant to explain away the recent findings regarding the suppos?dly eliptical movements of the planets, proposing that the planets revolved around little invisible points, and that they had more than just a simple motion around the Earth, but a more complicated one. Geocentric systems were developed that were nigh infinitely complex, in order to preserve the Earth at the center of the universe and the planets in motion in crystalline spheres. Most important of all: they were accurate so far as they completely and fully described the motion of the planets and indeed kept Earth in the middle. Their math was perfect, and they were totally supported by the evidence, if not more so since one could always point out that one never feels the Earth moving. Heliocentrists were fanatics by comparison.
The favor largely changed towards the actual truth, of course, after Galileo published Sidereus Nuncius, The Starry Messenger, where he demonstrated that not everything goes around the Earth, for the Jovian satellites were a system unto their own.

The point is that being mathematically right doesn't mean it's true. One could propose that there is no such thing as gravity, and that we are held to the surface of the "turtle's back" of our "flat" world because of the giant turtle's animal magnetism, to paraphrase the Flat Earth Society. Equations have actually been developed by these lunatics to prove that their flat Earth model is right.

The scary part is that their math is just as valid as that which designs our cars, our televisions, and our computers.
So math isn't the end-all be-all. It's a tool, and if used improperly, the knife can be used to stab and kill instead of cut the bread.

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