Hans Deyssenroth

Hans Deyssenroth
Born	(1937-01-29)January 29, 1937
Residence	Loerrach, BW, Germany
Nationality	German
Known for	Relativity, Quantum Mechanics
Scientific career
Fields	Physicist, Biometrician, Programmer

Hans Deyssenroth (born 29 January 1937) is a German physicist, biometrician and programmer known for his critical reinterpretation of the Special Theory of Relativity. He argues that in Special Relativity a clear distinction must be drawn between the relativistic effects that are observed and those that are physically realized, maintaining that experimental findings should take precedence over theoretical interpretation. Working outside the academic mainstream since his retirement, he has proposed new laboratory tests of the Lorentz transformation and has re-analysed the Michelson–Morley experiment and the data of the Lunar Laser Ranging programme.

Biography

Deyssenroth studied electrotechnology at the Technische Hochschule Karlsruhe in Germany and physics at the University of Basel in Switzerland, where he earned a diploma in physics (Dipl. Phys.). He subsequently worked in the pharmaceutical industry in Switzerland in various functions, including as a biometrician and as head of an information-technology department, and was a co-author of roughly twenty publications in that field. He resides in Loerrach, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. On his research profile he is listed as a retired senior researcher associated with the Department of Physics of the University of Basel.

According to Deyssenroth, during his professional career he had little opportunity to consider the foundations of physics in depth, and it was only after his retirement that he began to develop his views on relativity. He states that on restudying the basics of physics he acquired increasing doubts that the accepted models are correct, despite their having been verified by many experiments, and that he now proposes new experiments that could confirm these doubts while thinking about alternative models. In particular he became convinced that in the Special Theory of Relativity one should distinguish between the observed relativistic effects and the physically realized relativistic effects, the latter of which he regards as contradicting the first postulate of the theory. His stated credo is that experimental findings and observed phenomena should not be ignored or denied, and that they are more important than any theory.

He has presented his work at international physics conferences, including a 2017 physics meeting in Europe, the 2022 "Frontiers in Physics and Quantum Technologies" conference, and later astronomy and gravitation summits, and he has published his papers in the open-access Journal of Physical Mathematics. Since 2007 he has also circulated German-language critiques of relativity, among them the essay Fehlinterpretationen in der Speziellen Relativitätstheorie hosted on the site of the German relativity critic Ekkehard Friebe.

Alongside his scientific activity, Deyssenroth is a jazz pianist. He gave his first concerts in Lörrach in 1961, received several prizes in Baden-Württemberg, and performed with musicians and groups such as the Oscar Klein Group and the band Brainticket, in addition to teaching at the Basel Jazz School. In the 1980s he turned to computer-based music, and in 2004 he founded the Ritmo Jazz Group.

Scientific contributions

After retiring, Deyssenroth became engaged in questioning the interpretation of the Theories of Relativity. His work centres on the Lorentz transformation, which he presents together with an alternative interpretation intended to separate apparent (observed) relativistic effects from physically real ones.

The Lorentz transformation as a geometric mean

In "Symmetry Experiment to the Lorentz Transformation" (2017) Deyssenroth observes that the relativistic Doppler formula obtained by applying the Lorentz transformation to the classical Doppler effect is exactly the geometric mean of the two classical Doppler formulas — the one for a receiver at rest with an approaching sender, and the one for a sender at rest with an approaching receiver. He argues that this is no accident: in his earlier work he derived the Lorentz transformation by three different routes and in each case the transformed variable emerged as a geometric mean produced by the simultaneous motion of the two frames in opposite directions. On this reading the symmetry of the relativistic formula is a computational artefact of averaging over two frames whose individual velocities relative to some third, outside reference frame are unknown.

The consequence he draws is that if the two velocities relative to that outside frame are unequal, the observations are no longer symmetric even though the relative velocity is the same. He points to the Hafele–Keating experiment, in which the operative reference frame was the centre of the Earth rather than the ground clock and in which the clock readings were not symmetric, as evidence that a preferred frame is implicitly at work. He therefore proposes a laboratory "symmetry experiment" in which two systems aim laser beams at one another and the measured frequencies are compared, in order to decide experimentally between the standard reading of the relativistic Doppler formula and his own.

Reinterpretation of the Michelson–Morley experiment

In "Are We Wrong About the Michelson–Morley Experiment?" (2020) Deyssenroth argues that a detail overlooked for decades changes the analysis of the interferometer. Drawing on the quantum description of reflection — and on Feynman's conclusion that a mirror absorbs an incoming photon and its atoms then emit a new one — he treats every mirror as a light source rather than as a passive reflector. Einstein's second postulate then applies to the new photon: light leaves the mirror with speed c independently of the motion of the emitting body, so a photon leaving a sideways-moving mirror acquires no lateral momentum and is not tilted along with the apparatus. Photons, in his phrase, "do not behave like cannonballs"; he cites the undisturbed Keplerian orbits derived from spectroscopic binary stars as observational support for this.

From this he concludes that the light beam in the transverse (y) arm of the interferometer is not tilted but broadened and thinned out backwards, the converging lens at the detector merely creating the impression of a tilted beam. Computing the path in terms of whole absorbed and re-emitted photons, he finds no continuous time dilation in that arm; at high speeds only a fraction of the emitted photons reach the detector. His broader claim is that time dilation can occur without an accompanying length contraction, which would remove the physical basis of the Lorentz transformation while leaving the observed relativistic effects intact, and he calls for the experiment to be repeated with modern technology.

Lunar Laser Ranging

Deyssenroth's later work applies the same reasoning to the Lunar Laser Ranging programme. He frames it with a thought experiment: if a laser at the floor of a fast-moving train points at a spot on the ceiling, does the beam still strike that spot, or does it strike behind it? If mirrors act as light sources, the beam should land behind. In "Surprises in the Return-rates of Photons from a Mirror on the Moon" (2023) he analyses the monthly return rates of photons from the Apollo 15 retroreflector for the years 2006–2008 and concludes that the returning photons do not acquire lateral momentum but arrive where the Earth was some 2.55 seconds earlier, a result he reports as being established with an error probability below 10⁻⁸⁰. In the companion paper "The Data from the Lunar Laser Ranging Project Contradict Einstein's Genius Spacetime Idea" (2023) he separates the contributing motions — the rotation of the Earth, the Earth's orbit around the Sun, the Sun's motion toward the solar apex, the rotation of the Galaxy, the Galaxy's motion toward Andromeda and the Local Group's motion toward the Great Attractor — and argues that the ranging data are incompatible with the spacetime picture built on the Lorentz transformation.

CNPS talks

He has presented in the CNPS online seminar series:

• "Why Relativity is Wrong – Experimental facts with Hans Deyssenroth" (4 January 2025) — on the data from the Lunar Laser Ranging project and why, in his view, the theories of relativity are wrong although they are usually considered right.

Works

• "The Data from the Lunar Laser Ranging Project Contradict Einstein's Genius Spacetime Idea" (2023)
• "Surprises in the Return-rates of Photons from a Mirror on the Moon", Journal of Physical Mathematics 14 (2023), art. 442
• "Are We Wrong about the Michelson Morley Experiment?", Journal of Physical Mathematics 11:1 (2020), art. 312
• "Symmetry Experiment to the Lorentz Transformation", Journal of Physical Mathematics 8:2 (2017), art. 230
• "Fehlinterpretationen in der Speziellen Relativitätstheorie" (2007) (Read in full)

Abstracts

• 2008 - "Schein und Wirklichkeit in den Relativit?tstheorien"
• 2007 - "Fehlinterpretation in der Speziellen Relativit?tstheorie? Skalierungsfehler beim Zwillingsparadoxon" (Read in full)

External links

• Hans Deyssenroth research profile at ResearchGate
• Hans Deyssenroth author page at Hilaris Publisher
• Hans Deyssenroth biography as a jazz pianist