Difference between revisions of "Questioning Einstein: Is Relativity Necessary?"

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{{Infobox paper
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{{Infobox book
| title = Questioning Einstein: Is Relativity Necessary?
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| name = Questioning Einstein: Is Relativity Necessary?
| url = [http://www.naturalphilosophy.org/pdf/abstracts/abstracts_5363.pdf Link to paper]
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| image = Questioning Einstein: Is Relativity Necessary? 1277.jpg
 
| author = [[Tom Bethell]]
 
| author = [[Tom Bethell]]
| published = 2010
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| published = 2009
| journal = [[Proceedings of the NPA]]
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| publisher = [[Vales Lake Publishing, LLC]]
| volume = [[7]]
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| pages = 205
| num_pages = 7
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| isbn = 0971484597
| pages = 35-41
 
 
}}
 
}}
  
'''Read the full paper''' [http://www.naturalphilosophy.org/pdf/abstracts/abstracts_5363.pdf here]
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Questioning Einstein: Is Relativity Necessary? by Tom Bethell is a serious scholarly work that is very well written, absorbing the reader in a tale of long-neglected experimental results that plays out to a deep satisfaction in finally answering the question, "Why can't I understand relativity?" This is a fresh, unique review of both special and general relativity. It takes for granted that Einstein s mathematics is properly done. It does not quarrel with the numerous experimental results that support Einstein's general relativity theory. Then what is the quarrel with Einstein? Bethell argues that special relativity theory is wrong and general relativity theory is not necessary. For example, Einstein himself derived E = mc2 without relativity theory, and he also argued in a lecture in 1920 at Leiden that space without ether is unthinkable, only 15 years after having said that the ether was superfluous.
  
==Abstract==
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Bethell's book is not mathematical; after all, he does not quarrel with Einstein s mathematics. Importantly, it is strongly based on experimental foundations. Time dilation, for example, is supported by but not proved by moving muons and clocks carried around the globe.
  
I summarize my book, <span style="font-style: italic;">Questioning Einstein: Is Relativity Necessary?</span> [Vales Lake Press, 2009], which in turn simplifies Petr Beckmann's Einstein Plus Two [Golem Press 1987]. It is written for those with little physics and uses no math. Beckmann's assumption was that the luminferous medium, which Michelson failed to detect in 1887, is the local gravitational field, which attenuates with distance from the gravitating body. Overwhelmingly, we are in the Earth's gravitational field, which accompanies the orbiting Earth but does not rotate with it. This accounts for the Michelson-Morley null result and predicts an east-west light speed difference and therefore a small fringe shift.  An ?ether? denser near the sun predicts the bending of light rays by Fermat's Principle, and the gravitational red shift. Einstein's equation accounting for Mercury's orbit was published by Paul Gerber, 17 years before general relativity. Both the Sagnac experiment (1913) and Michelson-Gale (1924) showed a fringe shift, but were disqualified as tests of special relativity because they involved rotating (non-inertial) reference frames. GPS is said to validate special relativity because relativistic adjustments are entered into the orbiting clocks and would not synchronize without them. But the corrections do not refer clock motion to the observer, as relativity requires, but to the non-rotating Earth centered, inertial reference frame. This is a preferred reference frame ? not allowed by special relativity. The same criticism applies to the Hafele-Keating experiment (1972), in which atomic clocks were flown around the world and showed an east-west time difference. After 1916, Einstein restored a ?gravitational ether,? indistinguishable from Beckmann's ether, but played it down. The book concludes that general relativity gives the right results by a roundabout method. Special relativity has been falsified, unless rescued by the claim that all experiments on the surface of a rotating globe are non-inertial.
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In particular, Bethell promotes Petr Beckmann s case that the medium of propagation of light is the dominant gravitational field. That idea is actually part and parcel of Einstein s general theory of relativity, save that the latter hides the simplicity behind tensors in curved space-time.
  
[[Category:Scientific Paper|questioning einstein relativity necessary]]
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==Links to Purchase Book==
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* [[http://www.amazon.com/Questioning-Einstein-Relativity-Tom-Bethell/dp/0971484597/ref=pd_sim_b_6 Questioning Einstein: Is Relativity Necessary?]][[Category:Book|questioning einstein relativity necessary]]
  
 
[[Category:Relativity|questioning einstein relativity necessary]]
 
[[Category:Relativity|questioning einstein relativity necessary]]

Latest revision as of 06:46, 2 January 2017

Questioning Einstein: Is Relativity Necessary?
Questioning Einstein: Is Relativity Necessary? 1277.jpg
Author Tom Bethell
Published 2009
Publisher Vales Lake Publishing, LLC
Pages 205
ISBN 0971484597

Questioning Einstein: Is Relativity Necessary? by Tom Bethell is a serious scholarly work that is very well written, absorbing the reader in a tale of long-neglected experimental results that plays out to a deep satisfaction in finally answering the question, "Why can't I understand relativity?" This is a fresh, unique review of both special and general relativity. It takes for granted that Einstein s mathematics is properly done. It does not quarrel with the numerous experimental results that support Einstein's general relativity theory. Then what is the quarrel with Einstein? Bethell argues that special relativity theory is wrong and general relativity theory is not necessary. For example, Einstein himself derived E = mc2 without relativity theory, and he also argued in a lecture in 1920 at Leiden that space without ether is unthinkable, only 15 years after having said that the ether was superfluous.

Bethell's book is not mathematical; after all, he does not quarrel with Einstein s mathematics. Importantly, it is strongly based on experimental foundations. Time dilation, for example, is supported by but not proved by moving muons and clocks carried around the globe.

In particular, Bethell promotes Petr Beckmann s case that the medium of propagation of light is the dominant gravitational field. That idea is actually part and parcel of Einstein s general theory of relativity, save that the latter hides the simplicity behind tensors in curved space-time.

Links to Purchase Book