David M Bower
David M. Bower | |
|---|---|
| Known for | Critique of Einstein's special relativity; absolute space; Neo-Newtonian mechanics and electromagnetism (with Dennis P Allen) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Physics, Relativity, Electrodynamics |
David M. Bower is an independent researcher and critic of Einstein's special relativity who works within the John Chappell Natural Philosophy Society community. He argues that the Lorentz–Poincaré (aether) version of relativity, with its preferred reference frame, is preferable to Einstein's version, and that space is absolute rather than purely relational. In recent years he has collaborated with Dennis P Allen on applying Allen's Neo-Newtonian mechanics to electromagnetism and to models of the elementary particles.
Biography
Little biographical detail about David M. Bower is publicly available; he publishes as an independent researcher without a listed institutional affiliation. His work has appeared as preprints on viXra since 2023, and he has presented in the CNPS online livestream series since October 2023, both alone and jointly with Dennis P. Allen.
Scientific contributions
The absolute nature of space
In A Simple Proof of the Absolute Nature of Space (2023), Bower offers what he describes as a logical extension and extrapolation of Newton's rotating-bucket argument. Where Newton used the curved surface of water in a spinning bucket to argue that rotation is absolute rather than merely relative, Bower extends the reasoning to argue that space possesses absolute properties with respect to translational motion as well as rotational motion. This conclusion places him in the classical, pre-Einsteinian tradition of absolute space, and underpins the rest of his critique of relativity.
Critique of Einstein's special relativity
Bower distinguishes sharply between two versions of special relativity: the Einsteinian version (which he abbreviates ESR), in which no reference frame is preferred, and the Lorentz aether theory (LAT/LET) developed chiefly by Lorentz with input from Poincaré, in which there is a preferred frame — the frame in which the aether is at rest. He contends that the Lorentzian version is the correct one, and that ESR's rejection of a preferred frame is the source of its well-known paradoxes.
In A New Paradox Involving the Lorentz Transformation (2024) he sets out what he presents as a previously unrecognised paradox in Einstein's interpretation and use of the Lorentz transformation, with consequences for the standard derivations of both time dilation and length contraction.
In The Paradox of the Quintuplets (2024) he develops this further. By introducing three reference frames in addition to the usual two (a "laboratory" frame and a boosted frame), he argues that the ordinary twin paradox generalises into a configuration whose absurdities cannot be explained away at all — demonstrating, in his words, "the utter futility of trying to explain (or to resolve) the absurdities of the twin paradox." He identifies the root problem as the fact that Newtonian mechanics, on which ESR is built, never specifies a prototype or primordial inertial reference frame from which all other inertial frames could be obtained by Galilean boosts, so that its notion of an inertial frame is circular.
In Why Mass Doesn't Increase with Velocity (2026) he applies the same paradox to the century-old debate over "relativistic mass". Although Einstein's equations can be read as implying that mass grows with velocity — and although such growth appears to be required if the speed of light is to be a limiting velocity — Bower argues that the assumption carries an insurmountable logical contradiction, and that it is therefore meaningless to postulate velocity-dependent mass. This position is consistent with the Neo-Newtonian programme he works on with Dennis P. Allen, in which inertial mass gain is associated with high and very non-linear acceleration rather than with velocity.
Newtonian electrodynamics
Bower's first CNPS livestream, in October 2023, reported on the work of Peter Graneau and Neal Graneau in Newtonian electrodynamics — the tradition of Coulomb, Ampère, Neumann and Kirchhoff, in which forces between current elements act directly along the line joining them and include longitudinal components absent from the standard Lorentz-force formulation. This line of work is a natural companion to his absolute-space views, since Ampère's original force law is formulated between material elements rather than in terms of fields propagating in a relativistic spacetime.
Neo-Newtonian mechanics and electromagnetism
With Dennis P Allen, Bower has applied Allen's Neo-Newtonian mechanics — a modification of Newtonian mechanics in which inertial mass increases under high and strongly non-linear acceleration — to problems in electromagnetism. Their March 2026 presentation applied Neo-Newtonian mechanics to correcting and improving the analysis of electromagnetic momentum and electron inertia in a current-carrying circuit.
Their April 2026 presentation extended the programme to the structure of matter, offering what they call a tenable model of the electron, positron, proton and neutron. In this work the neutron model involves mutual spin pumping between constituent charges, which generates a very small amount of extra energy E. Their claim is that this residual energy is what is conventionally — and, on their account, mistakenly — attributed to the emission of a neutral particle (the neutrino) of mass E/c2, so that beta decay can be accounted for without postulating the neutrino at all. The broader aim of the programme is a completely electromagnetic theory of elementary particles held in equilibrium, without physical infinities and without unexplained binding energies.
CNPS talks
He has presented in the CNPS online seminar series:
- "A Tenable Electron, Positron, Proton, & Neutron Model, with Dennis Allen and David M. Bower" (25 April 2026)
- "Neo-Newtonian Mechanics and Electromagnetism" (28 March 2026)
- "Newtonian Electrodynamics by David Bower" (14 October 2023)
Works
- "Why Mass Doesn't Increase with Velocity", viXra:2603.0067 (2026)
- "The Paradox of the Quintuplets: Why the Twin Paradox of Special Relativity Cannot be Resolved", viXra:2406.0003 (2024)
- "A Heuristic Analysis of Global Warming Leading to a New Understanding of Climate Change", viXra:2405.0075 (2024)
- "A New Paradox Involving the Lorentz Transformation", viXra:2401.0070 (2024)
- "A Simple Proof of the Absolute Nature of Space", viXra:2311.0075 (2023)