[Viv Pope]

Dear Craig D,
Thanks for your interest and for giving me the opportunity to make myself clear.

Actually, I am by no means saying that Einstein's Second Axiom is wrong in the measurement sense of c. I thoroughly agree that the value of c is 2.99792458^8 m/s, also that this has been confirmed time and again by all sorts of measurements, to the extent that it now remains practically inviolate. That is not the sense in which I regard Einstein's axiom as wrong. In the 1960s, Herman Bondi and I concurred that, as Bondi writes in his book: Assumption and Myth in Physical Theory

Any attempt to measure the velocity of light is . . . not
an attempt at measuring the velocity of light but an
attempt at ascertaining the length of the standard
metre in Paris in terms of time-units.

[Cambridge University Press, 1965. p.28.]


Both Bondi and I, in our different ways, came to the same conclusion that by regarding c as a pure constant instead of a 'velocity' - but, as I say, with the same value and dimensions - the Special theory of Relativity is much simplified and improved. This replacement of c, the 'velocity' by c the constant makes no difference to the mathematical consequences of Relativity - except, of course to simplify them in the way I have shown. ((that is to say, leaving aside the philosophical significance, which is immense.)

What is so significant about this is that it changes our whole conception of what Einstein called 'the velocity of light in vacuo'. For instance, we no longer have to think of what light 'does' in winging its was through the void for perhaps millennia till it happens to strike something. It obviates any need to think of light as 'waves', 'photons', 'wave-particles' or whatever. Indeed, it opens-up a whole new mind-set away from classical 'God's-eye-view' mechanism (e.g.., quasi-ballistics) and into phenomenalism which is an altogether radical 'New Paradigm' of Physics; I say 'new' but, historically, this has been 'waiting in the wings' for centuries to get its cue to come 'on stage' as a replacement for the now seriously flagging extant paradigm. Revolutionary new paradigms have always been the life-blood of growing Science, so why should they stop now? And, whenever these have occurred they have invariably been accompanied by the sort of mental trauma which makes people feel like limpets prised off rocks.

One remaining caveat to this is that, logically, it makes no sense to judge a new paradigm from the standpoint of the old, any more than it does to criticise one contemporary language system from the standpoint of another. Making radical changes in a concept-system is always hard, but I'm sure you will agree that for the sake of progressive science it should be regarded as an adventure not a catastrophe.

Thanks again

Viv Pope

[Viv Pope]

Originally Posted by CraigD

In order to confirm that I understand the point Viv intended to make with these statements, let me restate my read of it:
“The concept of the speed of light in vacuum (c) is logically incoherent, because the speed of light cannot be measured in a system consisting only of light in vacuum.”

However, I’ve not previously encountered a definition of the c as “the speed of light measured with only vacuum”, and am practically certain this is not the definition intended to be used in the Second Postulate of Special Relativity:

The Principle of Invariant Light Speed - Light in vacuum propagates with the speed c (a fixed constant) in terms of any system of inertial coordinates, regardless of the state of motion of the light source.

(source: wikipedia article “special relativity”)

The usual definition of the speed of light in any medium is the same as that of the average speed of anything: , where and are changes in distance and time. Although direct measurement of for practical values of were experimentally impractical 100 years ago, they are no longer (eg: see “A small tabletop experiment for a direct measurement of the speed of light”, Aoki and Mitsui, 2008).

Although, to a person subscribing to a corpuscular theory of light (eg: Isaac Newton and many other 18th century natural philosophers), the idea that a direct measurement of the speed of light results in a constant value regardless of the motion of the emitter or receiver of the light is counterintuitive and unexpected, such results are reproduced literally many times a second worldwide, in particular by the GPS. The precision of the clocks and signal shapes of the GPS and other systems performing long-distance speed of light measurements is sufficient that a violations of the second postulate would be easily detected. No such violations are detected.

Therefore, rather than being nonsensical, as Viv claims, the second postulate seems to me superbly supported by experiments.

Viv, do I appear to understand your claims? If not, how have I erred?

If so, what is your experimental evidence for violations of the second postulate, or explanation for why violations are not experimentally detectable?

Viv Pope replies:
Dear Craig D,
Thanks for your interest and for giving me the opportunity to make myself clear.

Actually, I am by no means saying that Einstein's Second Axiom is wrong in the measurement sense of c. I thoroughly agree that the value of c is 2.99792458^8 m/s, also that this has been confirmed time and again by all sorts of measurements, to the extent that it now remains practically inviolate. However, that is not the sense in which I regard Einstein's axiom as wrong. In the 1960s, Herman Bondi and I concurred that, as Bondi writes in his book: Assumption and Myth in Physical Theory

Any attempt to measure the velocity of light is . . . not
an attempt at measuring the velocity of light but an
attempt at ascertaining the length of the standard
metre in Paris in terms of time-units.

[Cambridge University Press, 1965. p.28.]

Both Bondi and I, in our different ways, came to the same conclusion that by regarding c as a pure constant instead of a 'velocity' - albeit, as I say, with the same value and dimensions - the Special theory of Relativity is very much much simplified and improved. This replacement of c, the 'velocity' by c the constant makes no difference to the mathematical consequences of Relativity - except, of course to simplify them in the way I have shown. ((that is to say, leaving aside the philosophical significance, which is immense.)

What is so significant about this is that it changes our whole conception of what Einstein called 'the velocity of light in vacuo'. For instance, we no longer have to think of what light 'does' in winging its way through the void for perhaps millennia till it happens to strike something. It also obviates any need to think of light as 'waves', 'photons', 'wave-particles' or whatever. Indeed, it opens-up a whole new mind-set away from classical 'God's-eye-view' mechanism (e.g., quasi-ballistics) and into phenomenalism which is an altogether radical 'New Paradigm' of Physics - I say 'new' but, historically, this has been 'waiting in the wings' for centuries to get its cue to come 'on stage' as a replacement for the now seriously flagging extant paradigm. Revolutionary new paradigms have always been the life-blood of growing Science, so why should they stop now? And, whenever these have occurred they have invariably been accompanied by the sort of mental trauma which makes people feel like limpets prised off rocks.

One remaining caveat to this is that, logically, it makes no sense to judge a new paradigm from the standpoint of the old, any more than it does to criticise one contemporary language system from the standpoint of another. Making radical changes in a concept-system is always hard, but I'm sure you will agree that for the sake of progressive science it should be regarded as an adventure not a catastrophe.

Thanks again

Viv Pope

PS
As for Einstein not having stated that the 'velocity of light 'is constant relative to the void, what else is to be made of his definite statement that the 'velocity of light' is 'constant in vacuo'? If I say to you that the speed of sound is constant in water, then what else could I mean by that except that this speed (whatever it is) is constant relative to water?

[CraigD]

Originally Posted by Viv Pope

There is also the fact that Einstein’s time equation, which is perplexingly written as tR = 1/√[1 – (v^2/c^2)], can be derived from the much simpler Pythagorean equation tR = √(s^2 + t^2 ), where s is the observed distance travelled by a body in units of metres/c per second, t is the time in seconds of that motion as registered on the body itself (as viewed by the home observer), and tR is, by Pythagoras, the resultant in seconds (the hypotenuse) of the two dimensionally rectangular time-measures s and t.

Viv, how did you derive

from

,

and

?

I believe you’ve made an algebra or typing error.

fails for any real values of and greater than zero. Example, , :

[CraigD]

To head off any notational confusion, I’ve changed “c is 2.99792458^8” in the quoted text to . The value is the speed of light in vacuum in m/s is exactly 299792458, which is , not , which is about 6525 . Though this may seem needlessly nit-picky, hypography has some history of time-wasting confusion due to notational irregularities which has shown us its important to use accepted notational conventions. Though IMHO the best means to do so is via the LaTeX markup provided by the site’s [math] tag feature, acceptable text-only equivalent of include “1.2*10^3” and “1.2e3”.

Originally Posted by Viv Pope

Actually, I am by no means saying that Einstein's Second Axiom is wrong in the measurement sense of c. I thoroughly agree that the value of c is , also that this has been confirmed time and again by all sorts of measurements, to the extent that it now remains practically inviolate.

This is reassuring. Science websites such as hypography are notorious magnets for people who flatly disbelieve all experimental data showing that c is a constant, often to the point of accusing the many science professionals, amateurs, and students that have conducted them of being parties to a conspiracy of deception. While your CV lead me to believe you were not such a person, statements such as

Originally Posted by Viv Pope

Take, for instance, Einstein’s Second Axiom. This is clearly nonsensical. It states, in effect, that the ‘speed of light’ in vacuo is c, which is constant, not only for all observers, regardless of how they move relatively to one another but also to space (the vacuum) itself, which is logically incoherent.

, are common among such “relativity deniers”. The very concept of “how they move relative to space” implies belief in a privileged inertial frame, a common belief among this cohort.

I’d recommend care in avoiding even unintentional similarity between your writing and theirs. Unfortunately, many otherwise open-minded science and philosophy readers are prone to recognizing these similarities and ignoring writing that shows them.

Originally Posted by Viv Pope

In the 1960s, Herman Bondi and I concurred that, as Bondi writes in his book: Assumption and Myth in Physical Theory
Any attempt to measure the velocity of light is . . . not
an attempt at measuring the velocity of light but an
attempt at ascertaining the length of the standard
metre in Paris in terms of time-units.

Confusion and debate among laypeople, technicians, and standards body members over the definition of units of distance, time, and velocity have, I think, an interesting history (summarized nicely IMHO, in the BIPM webpage “The BIPM and the evolution of the definition of the metre”). I’d say that since 10/21/1983, when the BIPM adopted the definition

The metre is the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1/299 792 458 of a second.

, Bondi’s definition above coincides, but for a specific integer constant, with the “officially” one. Together with:

The second is the duration of 9 192 631 770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom.

We now have the meter defined purely in terms of two natural phenomena, electromagnetic radiation and the hyperfine splitting of a specific atom, leading to such delightful trick question as

“Will future improvements in technology will result in measurements of the speed of light more precise than 299,792,458 m/s?”

In 1960, the correct answer was “yes”. Since 10/21/1983, the correct answer is “no”.

Originally Posted by Viv Pope

Both Bondi and I, in our different ways, came to the same conclusion that by regarding c as a pure constant instead of a 'velocity' - but, as I say, with the same value and dimensions - the Special theory of Relativity is much simplified and improved.

I don’t understand your use of the term “pure constant”. As I’m familiar with the phrase, it’s a synonym for “unitless” or “dimensionless” constant, or “pure number of constant value”, a number that by definition does not change when the conventional system of units is changed. For example, , the ratio of diameter to circumference of a circle in the Euclidean plane, is a pure number because it is the same regardless of whether one measures diameter and circumference in meters, feet, or a bit of cat whisker picked up off the floor. Numbers defined as ratios of quantities of the same fundamental kind of unit – length/length, mass/mass, time/time, etc. – are pure, as are numbers that count the cardinality of a collection of by definition indivisible things, such as the number of intact eggs in a basket or the spin of a subatomic particle.

Speed, however, be it of a light signal in vacuum in gravitationally flat space, of a light signal in a non-vacuum medium and/or gravitationally curved space, of a chicken crossing a road, or of any other phenomena measured by dividing distance by time, is not a pure number, because the number changes when the conventional units are changed. By definition, the speed of light in vacuum is (where c is the Planck units system unit for speed), , , , etc. The number of this exactly defined constant depends on ones choice of system of units, regardless of whether one chooses a system in which it is 1 or some other number.

Viv, what’s your definition of a “pure constant”? Without understanding it, and how it differs, if at all, from my (or wikipedia’s) definition of “pure number”, I don’t think I can begin to fathom the new paradigm you intend to describe, or why you believe it’s “waiting in the wings” rather than currently “on stage”. My initial impression of statements such as

Originally Posted by Viv Pope

What is so significant about this is that it changes our whole conception of what Einstein called 'the velocity of light in vacuo'. For instance, we no longer have to think of what light 'does' in winging its was through the void for perhaps millennia till it happens to strike something. It obviates any need to think of light as 'waves', 'photons', 'wave-particles' or whatever. Indeed, it opens-up a whole new mind-set away from classical 'God's-eye-view' mechanism (e.g.., quasi-ballistics) and into phenomenalism which is an altogether radical 'New Paradigm' of Physics; I say 'new' but, historically, this has been 'waiting in the wings' for centuries to get its cue to come 'on stage' as a replacement for the now seriously flagging extant paradigm.

is that this “new” paradigm is about the same one drilled into me via my few (4 credit hours lecture, 4 lab) Modern Physics classes as a 1980-1983 Math undergraduate.

[Viv Pope]

[quote=Viv Pope;225548]Viv Pope replies:

Viv wrote:
Dear Craig D,
Thanks for your interest and for giving me the opportunity to make myself clear.

Actually, I am by no means saying that Einstein's Second Axiom is wrong in the measurement sense of c ... etc.

As a rider to his thing about c not being a 'velocity', here is a paper I delivered at ANPA (the Alternative Natural Philosophy group) in Cambridge, some years ago.

Ten Proofs that the Constant c cannot be a Velocity

1. The undeniable fact that c has the dimensions of distance divided by time explains all that is known about the times taken for communications over distance. But the fact that all velocities are distances divided by time by no means entails that all distances divided by time are velocities, which would be as absurd as saying that because all bachelors are men, all men are bachelors.

2. Herman Bondi says: ‘Any attempt to measure the velocity of light is…not an attempt at measuring the velocity of light but an attempt at ascertaining the length of the standard metre in Paris in terms of time-units.’ Also, it has been proved that all the practical consequences of Einstein’s Theory, both Special and General, can be deduced much more simply by adopting Bondi’s interpretation of c as a pure ‘conversion factor’ for interconverting measures in metres into time-measures in seconds.

These two above arguments were aimed to prove that c need not necessarily be a ‘velocity’. The following eight arguments contend that c cannot, logically, be a velocity.

3. For light to be seen, photographed or detected in any possible way, it has to shine on something. In a vacuum there is, by definition, nothing on which it can shine. So, logically, light cannot be seen, photographed or in any other way be detected in the vacuum of space, which signifies a reduction to absurdity of experiments claiming to have photographed ‘light travelling in vacuo’.

4. To be seen or otherwise detected travelling in a vacuum, light would have to give off light. And that secondary light would have to give off light; and that tertiary light would also have to give off light … and so on, ad infinitum, in a logical regress to absurdity.

5. If c is interpreted as a ‘velocity in the vacuum of space’ (as Einstein’s Second Postulate states), then in a vacuum to what can that ’velocity’ possibly be referred, constant or otherwise? So the concept of light as having a ‘velocity in space’ is just another absurdity.

6. Light is quantised in units of Planck’s constant h. These quanta have been interpreted as ‘flying photons’, claimed to have been photographed ‘in flight’ by Nils Abramson. However, since the ‘photon’ is defined as a single, irreducible light-quantum, it has no energy to spare in manifesting itself anywhere between its point of emission and point of absorption. A quantum interaction between a pair of atoms therefore has to be instantly consummated, with there being no sensible question either as to where it is or what it does between its source and sink. There are simply no parameters to describe that ‘motion’. Any attempt to photograph or otherwise detect it absorbs its whole packet of energy at that point, so that there can be no question of how it exists or travels when undetected, that is, in vacuo.

7. In order to conform to the law of conservation of energy, the alleged ‘photon’ cannot just hang around unconsummated in limbo, waiting to be absorbed. As Tom Phipps (Jr.) put it, ‘the ‘photon’ sure don’t have a holding pattern!’ So, what is a ‘photon’ when it is supposed to be travelling, say, between galaxies or, as it might be, en route to nowhere? The whole concept is meaningless.

8. Can light be scattered by light, as some experimenters have claimed? If a powerful laser-beam is shone across the path of another, do their ‘photons’ collide or their ‘waves’ interfere? In a simple experiment devised and carried out at Brunel university, in 1980, two powerful lasers were beamed across each other’s paths and also shone head-on at each other. No blocking or interference whatever was detected. If any such interference were to take place, then that light would suffer dispersion. Considering the amount of light that is allegedly ‘criss-crossing’ around, it would be amazing if visual acuity were possible over the length of a single metre. All the light that is allegedly shooting around in all directions would be as much a barrier to vision as the densest fog that can be imagined. The fact, then, that there are photographs of the farthest galaxies that display awesome clarity militates against the validity of any such experimentalist claim.

9. All velocities, properly so called, obey the rule of the composition of velocities, according to which the velocity of an object is different relative to differently moving observers. But c is, eminently, the same for all relatively moving observers, as Einstein’s Relativity requires and as experiment confirms. Therefore, logically, c cannot be a velocity.

10. For a velocity to be a velocity it has to be the velocity of something that is physically identifiable. In physics both ancient and modern, there is nothing that can be physically identified as light travelling in vacuo, especially in view of Heisenberg’s Indeterminacy Principle, which makes the ‘track’ of an alleged ‘photon’ absolutely indeterminate. If we think of what ‘travels in vacuo’ as ‘waves’, then what can possibly ‘wave’ in a vacuum? And if we think of what ‘travels’ as ‘photons’, then if those ‘photons’ travel at the ‘speed of light’, then their mass has to be relativistically infinite at that ‘speed’. The mass of a single photon would be as great as that of the whole universe. To escape this consequence by assuming that the ‘stationary mass’ of the 'photon' is zero – as some physicists have claimed – then how can that ‘zero mass’ be conceived as a ‘particle’? And, anyway, when is a photon ever regarded as stationary, since its alleged ‘velocity’ is c in all observational frames, bar none?
-----------------------

We can, of course stick to our traditional view of light with conventional superglue. But I appeal to anyone who understands the true purpose and spirit of a forum such as this to think hard about the prognosis for this ailing notion of light as something travelling inscrutably in the void. The paradigm shift this entails is truly revolutionary, but that was ever the way with developing science.

Viv Pope

[/font]

[Viv Pope]

Originally Posted by CraigD

To head off any notational confusion, I’ve changed “c is 2.99792458^8” in the quoted text to . The value is the speed of light in vacuum in m/s is exactly 299792458, which is , not , which is about 6525 . Though this may seem needlessly nit-picky, hypography has some history of time-wasting confusion due to notational irregularities which has shown us its important to use accepted notational conventions. Though IMHO the best means to do so is via the LaTeX markup provided by the site’s [math] tag feature, acceptable text-only equivalent of include “1.2*10^3” and “1.2e3”.This is reassuring. Science websites such as hypography are notorious magnets for people who flatly disbelieve all experimental data showing that c is a constant, often to the point of accusing the many science professionals, amateurs, and students that have conducted them of being parties to a conspiracy of deception. While your CV lead me to believe you were not such a person, statements such as , are common among such “relativity deniers”. The very concept of “how they move relative to space” implies belief in a privileged inertial frame, a common belief among this cohort.

I’d recommend care in avoiding even unintentional similarity between your writing and theirs. Unfortunately, many otherwise open-minded science and philosophy readers are prone to recognizing these similarities and ignoring writing that shows them.Confusion and debate among laypeople, technicians, and standards body members over the definition of units of distance, time, and velocity have, I think, an interesting history (summarized nicely IMHO, in the BIPM webpage “The BIPM and the evolution of the definition of the metre”). I’d say that since 10/21/1983, when the BIPM adopted the definition

The metre is the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1/299 792 458 of a second.

, Bondi’s definition above coincides, but for a specific integer constant, with the “officially” one. Together with:

The second is the duration of 9 192 631 770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom.

We now have the meter defined purely in terms of two natural phenomena, electromagnetic radiation and the hyperfine splitting of a specific atom, leading to such delightful trick question as

“Will future improvements in technology will result in measurements of the speed of light more precise than 299,792,458 m/s?”

In 1960, the correct answer was “yes”. Since 10/21/1983, the correct answer is “no”.

I don’t understand your use of the term “pure constant”. As I’m familiar with the phrase, it’s a synonym for “unitless” or “dimensionless” constant, or “pure number of constant value”, a number that by definition does not change when the conventional system of units is changed. For example, , the ratio of diameter to circumference of a circle in the Euclidean plane, is a pure number because it is the same regardless of whether one measures diameter and circumference in meters, feet, or a bit of cat whisker picked up off the floor. Numbers defined as ratios of quantities of the same fundamental kind of unit – length/length, mass/mass, time/time, etc. – are pure, as are numbers that count the cardinality of a collection of by definition indivisible things, such as the number of intact eggs in a basket or the spin of a subatomic particle.

Speed, however, be it of a light signal in vacuum in gravitationally flat space, of a light signal in a non-vacuum medium and/or gravitationally curved space, of a chicken crossing a road, or of any other phenomena measured by dividing distance by time, is not a pure number, because the number changes when the conventional units are changed. By definition, the speed of light in vacuum is (where c is the Planck units system unit for speed), , , , etc. The number of this exactly defined constant depends on ones choice of system of units, regardless of whether one chooses a system in which it is 1 or some other number.

Viv, what’s your definition of a “pure constant”? Without understanding it, and how it differs, if at all, from my (or wikipedia’s) definition of “pure number”, I don’t think I can begin to fathom the new paradigm you intend to describe, or why you believe it’s “waiting in the wings” rather than currently “on stage”. My initial impression of statements such as is that this “new” paradigm is about the same one drilled into me via my few (4 credit hours lecture, 4 lab) Modern Physics classes as a 1980-1983 Math undergraduate.

Viv Pope replles:
Yes, it IS nitpicking, CraigD. You are picking up mere typos as if they were bits of constructive argument. OF COURSE it is 10^8, Anyone with any sense should have seen that, without making a Big Production of it.

There is just about NO similarity between the conceptual structure of my (our POAMS} paradigm and any other contemorary one. The only similarity is between POAMS and the 19th century phenomenalism of Ernst Mach in the traditon of 'English Empiricism'. But that is scarcely surprising since POAMS (the Pope-Osborne Angular Momentum Synthesis) is based on it - as should be obvious to anyone accessing the site and seeing that POAMS is described as 'The Neo-Machian Philosophy'. Now, where else on the Web can you see anything else making that particular claim?

A 'pure constant', for Bondi and myself is not a dimensionless number. For instance, 39.37 inches to the metre is a constant but is not dimensionless. Its dimensions are inches and metres, like c^2, whose dimensions are joules and kilograms. I dont care what you read elsewhere; that is what our thesis contends, and if you can't understand that, then, as you say, you've no hope of understanding the thesis.

In short, then, I was disappointed with your response. It wasn't the most tardy and negative response I've ever had, but it was close! My impression, therefore is, with respect, that you would be wasting your time and mine engaging in any further dialogue on this issue. Why don't you access the literature that is downloadable for free on the POAMS website, and then perhaps, we can talk

Best wishes,

Viv Pope

[Viv Pope]

Originally Posted by Boerseun

Hi Viv,

Interesting stuff in the original post, until I saw this at the end of it:

So here you are promoting your own book that supposedly topples Einstein.

It's called spam, and we don't take very kindly to it.

We can't participate in discussing matters pertaining to your original post if it requires we first buy a book you wrote. We had a guy here who wrote "The Final Theory", something he sucked out of his thumb, and he simply refused to disclose anything unless you pay the $30 fee for his book.

That is not Science.

If you're serious about your alternative theory, please:

1) Refer us to a peer-reviewed publication in which it appeared
2) Give us some info of what its about (...and no, we're not going to buy the book, nor are you allowed to use our readership as a free billboard for your book).
3) The strategy of "yes, I know it's technical, but page seventeen of the book (available at whatever.com) explains it beautifully) doesn't hold sway here. If that's your approach, this thread will most likely be deleted and your account be removed.

...and I'm not nasty, I'm interested in any new scientific developments. But not the charlatans who continuously keep cashing in on ignorance.
At post number three we don't know you well enough to know in which category you fit, you see.

Viv Pope replies
I trust it is now generally realised that your cursory impression, from the way our the books appeared to you on the POAMS website, was wrong, that you had failed to notice the strip on the left hand side of the front page indicating that most of the talk papers, Proceedings papers, journal articles, etc., were downloadable for free.

I have received no appology for being put 'offline' for your summary assumption that my aim in joining this forum was purely 'commercial'. I guess that in the present climate of cynicism and gereral loss of integrity, apologies, like so much else that is honourable, have gone out of fashion.

Viv Pope

[Viv Pope]

Originally Posted by CraigD

I believe you’ve made an algebra or typing error.

fails for any real values of and greater than zero. Example, , :

Originally Posted by CraigD

Viv, how did you derive

from

,

and

?

IViv Pope replies:
Perhaps this piece (below) may help. Note, in particular, the text I have coloured blue.

This piece was selected and posted in a hurry as something I found conveniently available. I'll get back to you on your other points as soon as possible. (Apologies for not being able to render the formulae, here, with superscripts, subscripts, etc, in the way you have, the way they appear in our book and our free POAMS publications. There's no bar to your studying those formulae there. Indeed, my mathematics colleague, Dr. Osborne in particular, would be as interested, as I would, in any feedback on those published formulae.

Relativity Without Einstein

Einstein was a mathematical genius and what he did for physical science was truly amazing. The value of that contribution can never be underestimated. This is especially so, since he distilled out the essence of a natural truth from the utter confusion in the science of the time.

However, that mathematician’s route is not for everyone. For most people it is still notoriously complex and arcane. Fortunately, the fact is that to take that route to relativity is not logically necessary. Take, for example, the phenomenon of a travelling body. All we need to do is to take the observational distance s travelled by the body in conventional metres and kilometres, and express it, instead, in terms of units of light-seconds (analogous to the way in which astronomers customarily measure distances in ‘light-years’), Then we take the travelling-time t registered by the body itself also measured in seconds, both measures as seen by the observer, in a telescope, say. Those two dimensions are then projected orthogonally (i.e., at right-angles to each other). By ordinary Pythagoras, the length of the observational resultant, tR, in seconds, is the diagonal (the hypotenuse) between those two rectangular measures. Why rectangular? Because, like all geometrical dimensions – i.e., measures in the same units – they have to be projected like that, since it is the only way of extending those two commensurate measures (both in seconds) without encroaching opon each other’s domains. Thus, we have

tR = √(s2 + t2) Pythagoras

This Pythagorean time-equation and the customary Einsteinian one, are inter-transformable. For instance, if it were necessary to express this same time-resultant, tR, in Einsteinian terms, then, since the relative velocity of the motion is the distance s travelled in the time tR (i.e., v = s/tR ), all we have to do is to substitute for s, in the Pythagorean equation, the equivalent vtR and then simplify, which produces the familiar (to physicists) equation:

tR = t/√√(1 – v2/c2). Einstein

Einstein realised this connection with Pythagoras but he failed to comprehend its commonsense significance. Why did he fail? Because he was inhibited, as were all his contemporaries, by the notion of light as ‘travelling at a constant speed c in the vacuum’. No-one questioned how it was possible to measure the ‘velocity of light’ in a vacuum, which had launched the whole esotery of speculative ‘waves’, ‘wave-particles’, ‘photons’, the ‘luminiferous ether’, ‘electromagnetic propagation’ and so on, which Einstein inherited. The contributions of some of these theories to the physics of that era, was, like Einstein’s, invaluable, but the downside was that these theories all but completely confounded commonsense. For instance, the notion of light as ‘travelling in space raised the question of how it was mediated. Was it by ripples in an invisible ‘ether’? No, because all attempts to detect that medium spectacularly failed. Was that because, as was suggested, anything used to measure the earth’s motion through this ‘ether’ contracted by just the amount necessary to conceal the motion. The search for answers to these questions is what launched practically the whole of nineteenth to twentieth century theoretical physics and cosmology.

All this theoretical circumlocution was, of course, perfectly understandable. No-one can be ‘blamed’ for it. It is just the way it happened at the time. It is only in hindsight that the simple logical thread of it all can be discerned. This is that the extant interpretation of c as a ‘velocity’ needs to abandoned and regarded instead as no more than a scale constant, like 39.37 inches to the metre or 2.2 pounds to the kilogram. Needless to say, these constants are the same for all observers regardless of how they move relatively to one another’. For commonsense, this is unremarkable, whereas in the context of Einsteinian Relativity, this simple fact of for the constant c was made intensely puzzling.

What, then, is the next progressive phase in the development of physics – if physics is allowed to progress, that is. One’s experience with these forums is that any suggestion, however honest and conscientious, is met with a veritable wall of resistance from those whose egos are plainly offended by any suggestion of their having to upgrade their treasured precepts. Thus, they react, almost by reflex, with petulant and insolent responses which. surely, are completely incongruous in these supposedly ‘progressive’ forums.

Viv Pope

[Boerseun]

Originally Posted by Viv Pope

I have received no appology for being put 'offline' for your summary assumption that my aim in joining this forum was purely 'commercial'. I guess that in the present climate of cynicism and gereral loss of integrity, apologies, like so much else that is honourable, have gone out of fashion.

Hey, Viv - sorry for only coming back to you now. I've been a bit busy avoiding a civil war in my country the last few weeks. I apologize for that.

So - let's get to it:

Originally Posted by Viv Pope

Ten Proofs that the Constant c cannot be a Velocity

1. The undeniable fact that c has the dimensions of distance divided by time explains all that is known about the times taken for communications over distance. But the fact that all velocities are distances divided by time by no means entails that all distances divided by time are velocities, which would be as absurd as saying that because all bachelors are men, all men are bachelors.

Not entirely sure what you mean by this. If I shine a light at a static (static to me, of course) mirror, which is 300,000kms away from me, it will take two seconds before I see a reflection. Whatever properties you want to ascribe to light, or how it propagates, is meaningless - the fact of the matter is that the light I shone at the mirror, took two seconds to get there and back. If I accellerate to .9c, and the mirror stays in the same frame of reference, i.e. it accellerates in the same direction to the same speed, the results of the experiment would be exactly, to the digit, the same. How it happens is another matter, the mere fact that it takes exactly 2 seconds to traverse 300,000kms (in my frame of reference) points to a set velocity relative to my frame of reference.

Originally Posted by Viv Pope

2. Herman Bondi says: ‘Any attempt to measure the velocity of light is…not an attempt at measuring the velocity of light but an attempt at ascertaining the length of the standard metre in Paris in terms of time-units.’ Also, it has been proved that all the practical consequences of Einstein’s Theory, both Special and General, can be deduced much more simply by adopting Bondi’s interpretation of c as a pure ‘conversion factor’ for interconverting measures in metres into time-measures in seconds.

These two above arguments were aimed to prove that c need not necessarily be a ‘velocity’. The following eight arguments contend that c cannot, logically, be a velocity.

However you measure it, and whether you like the results or not, light clocks in at 300,000km/s. I don't fully understand your problem. Is your gripe with lightspeed not being a "velocity", or a "speed"? Velocity is a vector, including a direction, speed is simply, well, distance divided by time, regardless of direction. And that seems appliccable to light, because direction is meaningless - the results are the same. So, yes - lightspeed isn't a velocity - it's a speed. But what's the problem with that?

Originally Posted by Viv Pope

3. For light to be seen, photographed or detected in any possible way, it has to shine on something. In a vacuum there is, by definition, nothing on which it can shine. So, logically, light cannot be seen, photographed or in any other way be detected in the vacuum of space, which signifies a reduction to absurdity of experiments claiming to have photographed ‘light travelling in vacuo’.

You cannot, by definition, photograph photons. Whether in vacuo or not. Besides, light only travels in vacuo - if it travels through air or glass, it travels in the vacuum between particles. It slows down when travelling through matter, though, 'cause it's continuously absorbed and re-emmitted. But the actual travelling is done in vacuum.

Can you maybe link to articles claiming experiments of photons being photographed?

If you put a camera at one end of a pipe, put a lightbulb in the other end, and suck out all the air, then you have caught photons after they have travelled through a vacuum. If you detect photons in any way, your detecting instruments have absorbed them. You can't photograph them "in flight", so to speak. If there are any claims towards that, I'd like to see it.

Originally Posted by Viv Pope

4. To be seen or otherwise detected travelling in a vacuum, light would have to give off light. And that secondary light would have to give off light; and that tertiary light would also have to give off light … and so on, ad infinitum, in a logical regress to absurdity.

Who made that particular claim?

Originally Posted by Viv Pope

5. If c is interpreted as a ‘velocity in the vacuum of space’ (as Einstein’s Second Postulate states), then in a vacuum to what can that ’velocity’ possibly be referred, constant or otherwise? So the concept of light as having a ‘velocity in space’ is just another absurdity.

That vacuum is existing in a frame of reference relevant to the observer. If you're moving away from me at one hell of a speed and I shine light towards you, the light will leave me at 300,000km/s. You'll receive the light, at exactly 300,000km/s. The speed difference is accounted for by a frequency drop. The light you'll receive will be redshifted. But the speed relative to any observer in any frame of reference will be a constant (and perfectly measurable) 300,000km/s. Whether you want to attach a subjective quality like "absurdness" to it is immaterial - it's simply how it is.

Originally Posted by Viv Pope

6. Light is quantised in units of Planck’s constant h. These quanta have been interpreted as ‘flying photons’, claimed to have been photographed ‘in flight’ by Nils Abramson. However, since the ‘photon’ is defined as a single, irreducible light-quantum, it has no energy to spare in manifesting itself anywhere between its point of emission and point of absorption. A quantum interaction between a pair of atoms therefore has to be instantly consummated, with there being no sensible question either as to where it is or what it does between its source and sink. There are simply no parameters to describe that ‘motion’. Any attempt to photograph or otherwise detect it absorbs its whole packet of energy at that point, so that there can be no question of how it exists or travels when undetected, that is, in vacuo.

Point A is the transmitter, point B the receiver. A can be a star, B can be your eyeball. In between the star and your eyeball is a lot of space. A big, black, empty vacuum. The photon stream whacking your eyeball is ample proof that the photon did, somehow, traverse the vacuum. I don't completely understand this particular point.

Originally Posted by Viv Pope

7. In order to conform to the law of conservation of energy, the alleged ‘photon’ cannot just hang around unconsummated in limbo, waiting to be absorbed. As Tom Phipps (Jr.) put it, ‘the ‘photon’ sure don’t have a holding pattern!’ So, what is a ‘photon’ when it is supposed to be travelling, say, between galaxies or, as it might be, en route to nowhere? The whole concept is meaningless.

You're sitting on a riverbank. A motorboat cruises down the river at speed, generating quite a bow wave. A minute later, the bow wave breaks against the riverbank, right in front of you. What was the wave between the boat and the riverbank? It was simply a wave in the river. But nothing was there to break against, there wasn't an observer, so it went by unnoticed. It was there, however. The photons emitted by a star is busy travelling between it and your eyeball, and any observer between you and it will absorb those photons, relative to the size of the observer, the star, and your eyeball. It happens every time the moon moves between you and the sun. You can see the moon as one helluva big observer, absorbing the photon stream between the sun and your eyeballs. Once again, I fail to see your gripe.

Originally Posted by Viv Pope

8. Can light be scattered by light, as some experimenters have claimed? If a powerful laser-beam is shone across the path of another, do their ‘photons’ collide or their ‘waves’ interfere? In a simple experiment devised and carried out at Brunel university, in 1980, two powerful lasers were beamed across each other’s paths and also shone head-on at each other. No blocking or interference whatever was detected. If any such interference were to take place, then that light would suffer dispersion. Considering the amount of light that is allegedly ‘criss-crossing’ around, it would be amazing if visual acuity were possible over the length of a single metre. All the light that is allegedly shooting around in all directions would be as much a barrier to vision as the densest fog that can be imagined. The fact, then, that there are photographs of the farthest galaxies that display awesome clarity militates against the validity of any such experimentalist claim.

Light can, in fact, be interfered with by more light. Not only do interference patterns show it, which alluded to the wave nature of light in the first place, but common everyday articles like holograms are produced using this particular property. The fact that you can see the furthest galaxies is because there is nothing between your eyeball and those galaxies to scatter the light. Photons are massles, they're not particles in the sense that they can absorb other photons and re-remit them in a different direction. They have properties of particles, to be sure, and properties of waves. But they are neither. They are photons, and they act like photons. It sounds like a cop-out, but it's not.

Originally Posted by Viv Pope

9. All velocities, properly so called, obey the rule of the composition of velocities, according to which the velocity of an object is different relative to differently moving observers. But c is, eminently, the same for all relatively moving observers, as Einstein’s Relativity requires and as experiment confirms. Therefore, logically, c cannot be a velocity.

Once again, the velocity "drop" or "addition" that you'd expect between two different observers moving at different speeds shining torches at each other, is made up for in the fact that the frequencies change.

Also, you seem to not consider time dilation. If I move at .9c relative to you, and I shine a light in my direction of movement, you would see that light as travelling away from me at a mere .1c relative to me. I, however, would measure that lightbeam as travelling at a perfectly normal 300,000km/s - because time would be so dilated (relative) that it would look like it, to me. And time dilation, however counterintuitive, is also a proven facet of nature at high speeds.

Originally Posted by Viv Pope

10. For a velocity to be a velocity it has to be the velocity of something that is physically identifiable. In physics both ancient and modern, there is nothing that can be physically identified as light travelling in vacuo, especially in view of Heisenberg’s Indeterminacy Principle, which makes the ‘track’ of an alleged ‘photon’ absolutely indeterminate.

So, how did the light reach your eye from that distant star, then? If a space telescope takes a picture of a distant star, it's intercepting photons travelling in vacuo. I fail to understand your gripe, again.

Originally Posted by Viv Pope

If we think of what ‘travels in vacuo’ as ‘waves’, then what can possibly ‘wave’ in a vacuum? And if we think of what ‘travels’ as ‘photons’, then if those ‘photons’ travel at the ‘speed of light’, then their mass has to be relativistically infinite at that ‘speed’. The mass of a single photon would be as great as that of the whole universe.

Photons are massless. Photons are attributed with wavelike properties, because they interfere with each other. Photons have properties of particles, because they are quantised, and knock electrons out of their orbits. But they are neither - they are not particles, and they are not waves. We try to shoehorn their properties into our everyday understanding of the world, and our tiny minds grasp waves and particles. This is the foundation of the entire field of quantum physics.

Originally Posted by Viv Pope

To escape this consequence by assuming that the ‘stationary mass’ of the 'photon' is zero – as some physicists have claimed – then how can that ‘zero mass’ be conceived as a ‘particle’? And, anyway, when is a photon ever regarded as stationary, since its alleged ‘velocity’ is c in all observational frames, bar none?

There is no such thing as a "stationary" photon. And they don't have mass. They do, however, have momentum. A photon is a quantised packet of energy. It's not a particle, nor a wave. It's clean, naked energy, and it acts exactly like it does because its the fundamental unit of energy. Instead of trying to understand photons in terms of other, more everyday things that we can grasp like particles and waves, we should rather try and understand the everyday things in terms of photons.

[Viv Pope]

Dear CraigD,
I have now had time to deal wth yuur mathamatical question of how to get from the Einstein time equation to the Pythagorean one. I can see how it would have puzzled you. It was a typo, and I apolgise for that. The typo was that the '1' (one) in the Einsteinian equation should have been 't'. On my laptop these two characters look almost the same, especially with my septuagenarian eyesight. I had to use a magnifing glass to tell the difference,

Anyway, if you make that correction in the Einstein equation, subtitute for v the observational equivalent s/t-subscriptR and then simplify (I won't insult your intelligence by showing how to do that), you obtain the Pythagorian time-equation.

Sorry if I led you a dance. It makes your point, though, about exactness.

Viv Pope