Modern Mechanics
| Scientific Theory | |
|---|---|
| Name | Modern Mechanics |
| Type | Unified model of mechanics and optics; alternative to special relativity |
| Author(s) | Steven B. Bryant |
| Keywords | length, wavelength, relativity, Michelson-Morley, Ives-Stilwell, twin paradox |
| Year | 2015 |
| Website | http://www.relativitychallenge.com |
Modern Mechanics, also called Modern Classical Mechanics, is the framework developed by Steven B. Bryant as a replacement for special relativity. It was presented for a general readership in his book Disruptive: Rewriting the Rules of Physics (2016), and grew out of an earlier version he introduced as the "Physics 3.0" framework in 2010.
Its organising idea is a single distinction that Bryant argues relativity conflates: length versus wavelength.
The length/wavelength distinction
Bryant's claim is that the experiments taken to establish relativity are wavelength-based observations — interferometry, spectral shifts — while the equations used to interpret them are length-based. Applying a length model to wavelength data, on his account, produces apparent effects that are artefacts of the mismatch rather than features of the world.
The consequences he draws are direct. Time dilation, length contraction and the twin paradox are all held to arise from this misapplication, and to disappear when wavelength-based observations are interpreted with wavelength-based equations. He argues in "The Twin Paradox: Why it is Required by Relativity" (2011) that the paradox is not an incidental blemish on relativity but something the theory requires, given the model it uses — which is why, in his view, neither dismissing it nor explaining it away by appeal to acceleration settles anything.
Claimed experimental accuracy
Bryant reports that equations built on the distinction fit the classical experimental record more closely than the Einstein-Lorentz equations, claiming better than one hundred times the accuracy in several cases, including:
- the Michelson-Morley experiment, which he re-analyses in "Revisiting the Michelson-Morley Experiment Reveals Earth Orbit Velocity of 30 km/s" (2008) as yielding an Earth orbital velocity of about 30 km/s;
- the Ives-Stilwell experiment, re-examined in "Revisiting the Ives-Stillwell Experiment" (2008).
Because the claim is numerical and concerns experiments both sides accept, it is in principle checkable against the same data — which Bryant presents as the point of the exercise.
Relation to the critique of relativity
Modern Mechanics is the constructive half of a programme whose critical half addresses the derivations themselves. Bryant argues in "The Failure of the Einstein-Lorentz Spherical Wave Proof" (2010) that Einstein's Spherical Wave Proof establishes only that transformed coordinates satisfy the general equation of a sphere, not that they lie on the same sphere — the transformed points having different radii and so lying on multiple spheres. With Glenn Borchardt he argues in "Failure of the Relativistic Hypercone" (2011) that the hypercone defence of the derivation fails on dimensional grounds, since light-time l = ct is a distance being used as a time.
The two halves are meant to work together: the critical papers argue that the standard derivation does not establish what it claims, and Modern Mechanics offers the alternative account of the same observations.
Standing
Modern Mechanics is not accepted in mainstream physics, and Bryant is a technology executive rather than a professional physicist. His argument is that the issues he raises are mathematical and definitional rather than experimental, and so can be checked by anyone willing to work through the derivations and the data.
See also
- Steven Bryant — the author
- Disruptive: Rewriting the Rules of Physics — the book presenting it
- Introducing the Physics 3.0 Framework — the earlier version
- Special relativity
- Glenn Borchardt