Relativity is Dead
 | |
| Author | Otto Luther |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Subject | Criticism of the theory of relativity |
| Published | 1966 |
| Publisher | Key Research Corp., Yorba Linda, California |
| Pages | 159 |
Relativity is Dead is a 1966 book by the American art director and self-taught physicist Otto Luther, published in Yorba Linda, California by the Key Research Corporation. It is the first and founding statement of Luther's long campaign against Einstein's theory of relativity, and it introduces the alternative he would develop through the rest of his books — a "Unified Field Theory of Dynamic Space".
Overview
Luther presents the book as the "report on the successful completion of an eight-year search" for what he regarded as the origins of the errors built into relativity theory. His method is to trace the chain of reasoning that leads to relativity and to attack it at its root: he begins with what he calls the misinterpretation of the null result of the Michelson–Morley experiment, and argues that from that first misreading follows a train of "paradoxes, oversights, misconceptions, contradictions, [the] inversion of fact, [and] misuse of terms" that the physics community has accepted uncritically.
Having, in his own account, cleared away these supposed errors, Luther offers his constructive alternative: a physics founded on the properties of space itself, which he calls the Theory of Dynamic Space. The book is openly polemical — its title and its charge of "scientific bigotry" against the defenders of relativity set the combative tone that runs through his later works — and it was self-published outside the academic literature, where its arguments were not taken up.
The publisher's description reads, in part:
Relativity is Dead is a radical critique of the relativity theories and a bold contradiction of those members of the community who regard the relativity theories as valid... To shed this yoke of scientific bigotry, Luther comes to grips with the opinions of Einstein and his disciples by identifying the paradoxes, the oversights, the misconceptions, the contradictions, the inversion of fact, and the misuse of terms as the errors now in use — clearing a path for the new thinking embodied in "A Unified Field Theory of Dynamic Space."
About the author
Otto Luther (1907–1977) was a New York–born art director who worked for many years in commercial art and electronic photography, patenting an early device for converting motion-picture film into television images before retiring to Yorba Linda, California. Largely self-taught in physics, he devoted his retirement to challenging relativity and building devices intended to demonstrate his own theories. Relativity is Dead was followed by "The Little Book: Refutation of Relativity Theories" (1971), "Return to Reason: Theory of Dynamic Space" (1973), "E = mc2 is Invalid" (1974) and "Einstein's Principle of Invariance Challenged" (1974).
Publication details
- Author: Otto Luther
- Title: Relativity is Dead
- Publisher: Key Research Corporation, Yorba Linda, California
- Published: 1966
- Pages: 159
- ASIN: B0007ELHK6
Links to purchase
- Relativity is Dead (Amazon)