Jim Hodges
Jim Hodges | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1938 |
| Residence | Kurunjang, Victoria, Australia |
| Nationality | Australian |
| Known for | Fundamental Physics, Relativity |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Fundamental Physics |
James Newport Hodges (born 1938), commonly known as Jim Hodges, is an Australian independent researcher and critic of Albert Einstein's special relativity. He is the founder and director of the S. J. Prokhovnik Institute, also known as The Ether Drift Club, which he established in 1997. Based in Kurunjang, Victoria, Australia, Hodges advocates a Lorentzian ether interpretation of physics as an alternative to special relativity.
Biography
Hodges lives in Kurunjang, near Melton, Victoria, Australia. According to his own account, his serious interest in fundamental physics began in 1994, after which he devoted much of his effort to the study and critique of special relativity. In 1997 he founded the S. J. Prokhovnik Institute, informally known as The Ether Drift Club, naming it after the mathematician and physicist S. J. Prokhovnik, who was known for deriving relativistic results from a Lorentzian ether-theory framework.
Hodges has been associated with a number of organisations that question or critique mainstream relativity theory, including the Ether Drift Club, the Natural Philosophy Alliance, the Independent Scholars Association of Australia (ISAA) and the Australian Institute of Physics.
Work
Hodges's central claim is that special relativity should be rejected in favour of an ether-based, Lorentzian interpretation of physics. He describes a 1994 thought experiment in which two relatively moving spacecraft measure each other's lengths by the clashing of their antennae, arguing that the only way each ship could measure the other as contracted would be for one to be really contracted while the other only appears so. From this reasoning he concluded that the reciprocal length contraction of special relativity is untenable and that a real, ether-based contraction should be preferred.
Much of his subsequent output consists of thought experiments and analyses intended to challenge the relativity of simultaneity, the relativistic Doppler formula, and the physical interpretation of time dilation, and to argue instead for a preferred reference frame associated with the ether. His work has appeared in outlets associated with the dissident-science community, including presentations and abstracts for the Natural Philosophy Alliance and the ISAA Review.
Articles attributed to Hodges include:
- Ether Drift Experiment Number 1 (1995).
- Re-evaluation and Replacement of the Relativistic Doppler Formula with Expressions Derived from Lorentzian Theory (1995).
- Time Odyssey 3030, from Twin Paradox to Ether Theory (1996).
- A Trio of Circular Ether Drift Thought Experiments: Unmasking the Electromagnetic Medium, ISAA Review (2014).
Abstracts
- 2009 - "Independent Scientific Fraud and Corruption Commission: Centenial Review of Special Relativity" (Read in full)
- 2008 - "Falsification of Relativity of Simultaneity using Halsbury-Transfer to link Four Streams of Einstein-Synchronous Clocks into a Square Loop"
- 2007 - "Ether Denial, Motion-Induced Clock Slowing & the Big Ether Blob Revolution "
- 2006 - "About Time: The Three Stages of Enlightenment: Concerning the Synchronization and Rate-Correction of Terrestial Clocks"
- 2003 - "Seven Veils of Ignorance Torn from Truth"
- 2000 - "Circular Motion, Gravitational Potential, and Clocks"
- 1997 - "An Electrically Powered Launch into Space: Eliminating the Need for Throwaway Mass"
- 1997 - "Mathematicism and Atomism to Logical Etherism"
- 1996 - "From Twin Paradox to Aether Theory"