Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein
	Albert Einstein in 1921
Born	14 March 1879; Ulm, Kingdom of Württemberg, German Empire
Died	18 April 1955; Princeton, New Jersey, United States
Nationality	German, Swiss, American
Alma mater	Swiss Federal Polytechnic (ETH Zurich)
Known for	Special relativity, General relativity, mass–energy equivalence (E = mc2), photoelectric effect
Awards	Nobel Prize in Physics (1921)
	Scientific career
Fields	Physics

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Wikipedia Dispute: wikipedia:Albert Einstein

This Natural Philosophy wiki page disputes content found on Wikipedia page wikipedia:Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein (14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist, best known for developing the special and general theories of relativity and for his contributions to the early quantum theory of light. In mainstream physics he is regarded as one of the most influential scientists of the 20th century, and his name has become popularly synonymous with "genius." This wiki, and the community of the John Chappell Natural Philosophy Society that maintains it, documents a large body of scientific work that disputes his theories of relativity; those criticisms are collected in the section below.

Biography

Einstein was born on 14 March 1879 in Ulm, in the Kingdom of Württemberg in the German Empire, and grew up in Munich. He studied at the Swiss Federal Polytechnic (ETH) in Zurich, graduating in 1900, and in 1902 took a position as a technical examiner at the Swiss Patent Office in Bern. He received his doctorate from the University of Zurich in 1905.

Annus mirabilis (1905)

In 1905, while still working at the patent office, Einstein published four papers that became widely influential:

an explanation of the photoelectric effect in terms of light quanta;
a statistical analysis of Brownian motion;
the special theory of relativity; and
the mass–energy equivalence relation, E = mc².

General relativity and later career

In 1915 Einstein published the general theory of relativity, a geometric theory of gravitation. Following the 1919 solar-eclipse expedition led by Arthur Eddington, which was reported as confirming the bending of starlight, Einstein achieved widespread public fame.

In 1921 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics — notably "for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect," not for relativity, a distinction often overlooked in popular accounts.

With the rise of Nazism, Einstein emigrated in 1933 and settled in the United States, joining the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. In 1939 he signed a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt drawing attention to the possibility of atomic weapons. He spent his later years in an unsuccessful search for a unified field theory and remained skeptical of the indeterminism of quantum mechanics, famously remarking that "God does not play dice." He died in Princeton on 18 April 1955.

Einstein married Mileva Marić in 1903; they divorced in 1919, after which he married his cousin Elsa Einstein.

Reception and the "cult of genius"

In mainstream science, criticizing Einstein is often discouraged and is sometimes dismissed as "quack" or "pseudo-science." Authors on this wiki argue that this reputation has taken on the character of a cult, in which the persona of Einstein as the supreme "genius" shields his theories from the ordinary scientific scrutiny that any theory should withstand.

Criticisms of relativity on this wiki

The community that maintains this wiki has produced an extensive body of work challenging both of Einstein's theories of relativity. The criticisms summarized below are drawn from papers and books catalogued here and are attributed to their authors. They run contrary to the mainstream scientific consensus, which holds both theories to be extensively confirmed by experiment; this section documents the dissenting arguments as they appear on the wiki. Many hundreds more are indexed under Category:Relativity.

Special relativity

Logical and philosophical objections

A recurring theme is that the special theory rests on logical and conceptual errors rather than on sound physics. In Fourteen Arguments Against Einstein's Theory of Special Relativity (1998), Francisco J Müller catalogues objections including the claim that Einstein's 1905 derivation of the Lorentz transformations was never re-used even by Einstein himself, that it requires a hidden third postulate, that length contraction is as ad hoc as the earlier Lorentz–FitzGerald contraction, and that relative simultaneity between moving observers is logically invalid. He further charges the theory with the "fallacy of misplaced concreteness" — treating space and time as substantive entities — and with claiming that a single object can have different real lengths or ages depending on the observer, thereby violating the object's objective identity.

Similar concerns about the logical structure of the theory are developed in John E Chappell's Crucial Flaws in Special Relativity: Logic and Simultaneity (1996) and in Joseph F Cuny's A Refutation of Special Relativity (2002).

Mathematical objections

Several authors argue that the mathematics of the original 1905 derivation is itself defective — for example in Are there Mathematical Errors in Einstein's 1905 Derivation of Special Relativity (SRT)? and Frequent Errors in Special Relativity. Objections raised include the integration of a purely numerical equation and the illegitimate transfer of a result derived for a longitudinal light ray to the transverse case.

The mass–energy relation

Müller and others contend that Einstein's derivation of E = mc² "begs the question," and they dispute the popular beliefs that this equation was the essential basis for the atomic bomb and that atomic energy arises from the transmutation of mass into energy.

Preferred frame and asymmetric phenomena

A major line of criticism holds that a range of real physical effects are not symmetric between observers and therefore require a preferred (absolute) frame of reference that special relativity forbids. Cited examples include Doppler effects, the Sagnac effect, GPS timing, stellar aberration, and unipolar induction. On this view, a Lorentzian or "absolute" interpretation of the transformations is preferable to Einstein's; see, for example, Critical Flaws in Special Relativity and Its Possible Replacement by Doppler Concepts.

Experimental challenges

Authors on this wiki also argue that the experimental record contradicts special relativity:

In Einstein's Time Dilation Experimentally Refuted (2009), Peter Ripota cites a 1996 entangled-photon experiment by Antoine Suarez and Valerio Scarani at CERN, in which a rapidly rotating detector produced no expected phase shift, and concludes that "there is no time dilation."
In Data That Allegedly Proves Special Relativity Disproves It (2013), Nick Percival re-analyzes the GPS, Hafele–Keating, and muon-decay data usually presented as supporting time dilation, and argues that it does not support — and in places contradicts — special relativity.

General relativity

Theoretical inconsistencies

Papers such as Some Rectifiable Inconsistencies and Related Problems in Einstein's General Relativity and The Need for a Critical Reappraisal of Einstein's General Relativity argue that the general theory contains internal inconsistencies. In The Correct Derivation of Kepler's Third Law for Circular Orbits Reveals a Fatal Flaw in General Relativity Theory, the author contends that a corrected orbital derivation exposes a fundamental error in the theory.

Observational failures

Several works claim that general relativity fails against astronomical data, particularly for binary-star systems — for example 1997 General Relativity Failures: The Case of SW Canis Majoris Binary Stars Systems and 2008 General Relativity Failures: The Case of V731 Cep Binary Stars Motion Puzzle Solution Without Rigging. The status of the equivalence principle is questioned in Eotvos' Experiment, General Relativity and the Problem of Incommensurability.

Incompatibility with quantum mechanics

The long-standing failure to reconcile general relativity with quantum mechanics is treated by some authors as evidence of a defect in the theory itself, as in Introducing Integral Geometry: Are Notational Flaws Responsible For the Inability to Combine General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics?.

Proposed alternatives

Rather than merely criticizing, some authors propose replacement theories of gravitation, such as A New Theory of Gravity: Overcoming Problems with General Relativity. A broader survey of open issues appears in Unsolved Problems in Special and General Relativity.

Priority and authorship

A separate strand of criticism concerns originality rather than physics. It is argued that the key mathematics of special relativity was developed earlier by Hendrik Lorentz and Henri Poincaré (see Errors Before Einstein), and that Einstein's first relativity paper may have been substantially co-authored by his first wife, the physicist Mileva Marić.

Systematic catalogues of criticism

The scale of the dissenting literature is itself documented on this wiki. Chapter 2 - Catalogue of Errors for Both Theories of Relativity (2012), translated from the documentation of G O Mueller, presents a survey of "95 years of criticism (1908–2003)" identifying some 3,789 critical works. Book-length critiques catalogued here include Einstein's Relativity: The Greatest Fallacy in the Twentieth Century, Relativity - A Scientific Blunder, and Einstein and The-Emperor's-New-Clothes Syndrome: The Expose of a Charlatan by Robert L Henderson.