Günter Dinglinger
Günter Dinglinger | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 1928 |
| Residence | Kaarst, Germany |
| Nationality | German |
| Known for | Corpuscular theory of light, criticism of special relativity and quantum mechanics, defence of the Bohr atom |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Mechanical and chemical process engineering; optics, atomic physics, relativity criticism |
Günter Dinglinger (born 1928 in Köthen, Anhalt) is a German engineer, Dr.-Ing., who after a career in food technology and industrial gas engineering published a series of critical essays on modern physics. Writing in German and publishing on his own website rather than in journals, he argued that light is a stream of particles and nothing else, that geometrical optics rests on no theoretical foundation, that special relativity is "a century's error", and that the difficulties of quantum mechanics follow from the same misconceptions about light.
He is unusual among the critics documented on this wiki in that his target is not Niels Bohr but those who displaced him: one of his papers is an explicit defence of the Bohr atom, offering a modified quantisation rule under which the energy levels of both hydrogen and helium can be calculated.
Biography
Dinglinger was born in 1928 in Köthen in Anhalt, and took his Abitur at the Willy-Lohmann-Oberschule there. He studied at the Technische Hochschule Karlsruhe, graduating as Dipl.-Ing. in mechanical engineering and chemical process engineering, and remained at the school as a research assistant at the Chair of Food Technology (Lehrstuhl für Lebensmitteltechnik), where he took the degree of Dr.-Ing.
He then spent his career in industry. At Unifranck in Ludwigsburg — the firm behind the Thomy brand — he worked in the research and development department. He moved to Messer Griesheim in Düsseldorf and Krefeld, where he headed the application engineering of technical gases. He later lived in Kaarst, near Düsseldorf, and it was in retirement that he wrote and published the essays for which he appears here.
Scientific views
Dinglinger's essays were published between 2008 and 2010 on his own site, dinglinger-drg.de, subtitled Relativitätstheorie, Astronomie, Quantenmechanik und Licht. The site is no longer online; the papers survive in the Internet Archive and are linked below. They are written for a general educated reader, and several proceed by quoting a standard textbook and setting his objections directly against the quotations.
Light as a particle stream
The centre of his physics is a rejection of wave–particle duality in favour of a purely corpuscular account. In "Licht: Teilchen und Welle?" (Light: Particle and Wave?, 2008) he argues that Einstein introduced "capital errors" concerning light which were adopted by other scientists almost without criticism, and which fascinated the public so thoroughly that they became difficult to oppose. His alternative is that light is a particle stream only — not a wave, and not both.
Optics without the wave theory
Two companion papers apply that position to ordinary optics, on the grounds that the textbook treatment describes the phenomena without explaining them. In "Lichtbrechung und Reflexion" (Refraction and Reflection, 2008) he holds that geometrical optics is "just as unsatisfactory as the assumption of the duality of light", sets out the contradictions using quotations from the scientific literature, and offers the particle-stream account in their place. In "Prisma und Regenbogen" (Prism and Rainbow, 2008) he makes the methodological complaint explicit: geometrical optics yields results that match observation but is "without theoretical underpinning", and he undertakes to explain instead why a prism or a raindrop separates white light into other wavelengths.
Criticism of special relativity
"Relativitätstheorie: Ein Jahrhundertirrtum" (Relativity Theory: A Century's Error, 2010) is his most direct attack. He writes that it is striking with what Chuzpe Einstein ignored the rules of mathematics and logic, assembling from a miscellany of scientific results and his own idiosyncratic interpretations a theory that even established scientists do not entirely see through, and that has fascinated the rest of the world for nearly a century — a fascination he attributes in part to its science-fiction character. The paper then examines the assumptions on which special relativity rests and the consequences drawn from them.
Criticism of quantum mechanics, and a defence of Bohr
"Kleine Polemik zur Quantenmechanik" (A Short Polemic on Quantum Mechanics, 2010) takes chapter 16 of the standard German textbook Gerthsen Physik (Springer, 20th edition, 1999) and tests its foundational assumptions by placing his objections directly opposite the quoted passages.
Against this stands "Eine Lanze für Niels Bohr" (Breaking a Lance for Niels Bohr, 2009), which is constructive rather than critical and is his most specific technical contribution. Dinglinger argues that Bohr was not mistaken in his account of atomic structure. If one allows that the nucleus rotates about a common centre of mass with the electrons rather than sitting at rest, and that the angular momentum is not an integral multiple of h but of Z0.5·n·h, then the energy levels of the hydrogen atom can be calculated, and those of helium with them — the two-electron case on which the old quantum theory is usually said to have failed.
An alternative periodic table
"Aufbau des Periodensystems – Periodensystem der Elemente." (Structure of the Periodic System, 2010) proposes a different arrangement of the elements, organised around what he describes as their linear dependence on neutron number. He claims as an advantage of the scheme that it permits the properties of little-known and as-yet-undiscovered transuranic elements to be estimated.
On science and its public funding
"Das Internationale Jahr der Astronomie 2009" (The International Year of Astronomy 2009) is a short piece of criticism aimed at the institutions rather than the physics. Despite official assurances to the contrary, Dinglinger writes, he does not believe anyone involved was interested in a genuine discussion with the public being addressed; the purpose, as with the earlier Einstein Year, was rather to secure public acceptance for the provision of public research funding.
Papers on this wiki
His website is defunct and the original links no longer resolve; each paper below links to an archived copy.
- 2010 — "Relativitätstheorie: Ein Jahrhundertirrtum" (read in full, archived)
- 2010 — "Kleine Polemik zur Quantenmechanik" (read in full, archived)
- 2010 — "Aufbau des Periodensystems – Periodensystem der Elemente." (read in full, archived)
- 2009 — "Eine Lanze für Niels Bohr" (read in full, archived)
- 2009 — "Das Internationale Jahr der Astronomie 2009" (read in full, archived)
- 2008 — "Licht: Teilchen und Welle?" (read in full, archived)
- 2008 — "Lichtbrechung und Reflexion" (read in full, archived)
- 2008 — "Prisma und Regenbogen" (read in full, archived)
External links
- dinglinger-drg.de — the author's website, archived copy (original defunct)