Pentcho Valev
2013-12-11 10:24:36 UTC
Loading Image...
http://www.noozhawk.com/article/ucsb_physicists_grant_to_study_fundamental_laws_20131210#.UqeoYxWexjo
"Could Einstein's theory of relativity be wrong? That's among the burning questions being asked by theoretical physicists today. It's a startling claim and one that has received a lot of attention from other scientists. Researchers from UC Santa Barbara's Department of Physics and the Kavli Institute for Theretical Physics (KITP) have received a $1.32 million grant from the National Science Foundation to continue their work on finding an answer."
http://www.fqxi.org/community/articles/display/148
"Many physicists argue that time is an illusion. Lee Smolin begs to differ. (...) Smolin wishes to hold on to the reality of time. But to do so, he must overcome a major hurdle: General and special relativity seem to imply the opposite. In the classical Newtonian view, physics operated according to the ticking of an invisible universal clock. But Einstein threw out that master clock when, in his theory of special relativity, he argued that no two events are truly simultaneous unless they are causally related. If simultaneity - the notion of "now" - is relative, the universal clock must be a fiction, and time itself a proxy for the movement and change of objects in the universe. Time is literally written out of the equation. Although he has spent much of his career exploring the facets of a "timeless" universe, Smolin has become convinced that this is "deeply wrong," he says. He now believes that time is more than just a useful approximation, that it is as real as our guts tell us it is - more real, in fact, than space itself. The notion of a "real and global time" is the starting hypothesis for Smolin's new work, which he will undertake this year with two graduate students supported by a $47,500 grant from FQXi."
http://www.amazon.com/What-Einstein-Was-Wrong-Questions/dp/1782400451
What If Einstein Was Wrong? Brian Clegg, Jim Al-Khalili: "It shouldn't be too much of a surprise that Einstein could get it wrong, because science is not about absolute truth..."
http://www.amazon.com/Faster-Than-Speed-Light-Speculation/dp/0738205257
Joao Magueijo, Faster Than the Speed of Light, p. 250: "Lee [Smolin] and I discussed these paradoxes at great length for many months, starting in January 2001. We would meet in cafés in South Kensington or Holland Park to mull over the problem. THE ROOT OF ALL THE EVIL WAS CLEARLY SPECIAL RELATIVITY. All these paradoxes resulted from well known effects such as length contraction, time dilation, or E=mc^2, all basic predictions of special relativity. And all denied the possibility of establishing a well-defined border, common to all observers, capable of containing new quantum gravitational effects."
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20026831.500-what-makes-the-universe-tick.html
"...John Norton, a philosopher based at the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Norton is hesitant to express it, but his instinct - and the consensus in physics - seems to be that space and time exist on their own. The trouble with this idea, though, is that it doesn't sit well with relativity, which describes space-time as a malleable fabric whose geometry can be changed by the gravity of stars, planets and matter."
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/46941
Philip Ball: "Did Einstein discover E = mc2? Who discovered that E = mc2? It's not as easy a question as you might think. Scientists ranging from James Clerk Maxwell and Max von Laue to a string of now-obscure early 20th-century physicists have been proposed as the true discovers of the massenergy equivalence now popularly credited to Einstein's theory of special relativity. These claims have spawned headlines accusing Einstein of plagiarism, but many are spurious or barely supported. Yet two physicists have now shown that Einstein's famous formula does have a complicated and somewhat ambiguous genesis which has little to do with relativity. (...) While Einstein's celebrated 1905 paper, "On the electrodynamics of moving bodies", clearly laid down the foundations of relativity by abandoning the ether and making the speed of light invariant, his derivation of E = mc2 did not depend on those assumptions. You can get the right answer with classical physics, says Rothman, all in an ether theory without c being either constant or the limiting speed."
http://philipball.blogspot.com/2011/08/did-einstein-discover-emc2.html
Philip Ball: "The biggest revelation for me was not so much seeing that there were several well-founded precursors for the equivalence of mass and energy, but finding that this equivalence seems to have virtually nothing to do with special relativity. Tony Rothman said to me that "I've long maintained that the conventional history of science, as presented in the media, textbooks and by the stories scientists tell themselves is basically a collection of fairy tales." I'd concur with that."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/jun/10/time-reborn-farewell-reality-review
Philip Ball: "Einstein's theory of special relativity not only destroyed any notion of absolute time but made time equivalent to a dimension in space: the future is already out there waiting for us; we just can't see it until we get there. This view is a logical and metaphysical dead end, says Smolin."
http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/waseinsteinwrong/
Paul Davies: "Was Einstein wrong? Einstein's famous equation E=mc2 is the only scientific formula known to just about everyone. The "c" here stands for the speed of light. It is one of the most fundamental of the basic constants of physics. Or is it? In recent years a few maverick scientists have claimed that the speed of light might not be constant at all. Shock, horror! Does this mean the next Great Revolution in Science is just around the corner?"
http://www.rense.com/general13/ein.htm
Einstein's Theory Of Relativity Must Be Rewritten: "A group of astronomers and cosmologists has warned that the laws thought to govern the universe, including Albert Einstein's theory of relativity, must be rewritten. The group, which includes Professor Stephen Hawking and Sir Martin Rees, the astronomer royal, say such laws may only work for our universe but not in others that are now also thought to exist. "It is becoming increasingly likely that the rules we had thought were fundamental through time and space are actually just bylaws for our bit of it," said Rees, whose new book, Our Cosmic Habitat, is published next month. "Creation is emerging as even stranger than we thought." Among the ideas facing revision is Einstein's belief that the speed of light must always be the same - 186,000 miles a second in a vacuum."
Pentcho Valev
http://www.noozhawk.com/article/ucsb_physicists_grant_to_study_fundamental_laws_20131210#.UqeoYxWexjo
"Could Einstein's theory of relativity be wrong? That's among the burning questions being asked by theoretical physicists today. It's a startling claim and one that has received a lot of attention from other scientists. Researchers from UC Santa Barbara's Department of Physics and the Kavli Institute for Theretical Physics (KITP) have received a $1.32 million grant from the National Science Foundation to continue their work on finding an answer."
http://www.fqxi.org/community/articles/display/148
"Many physicists argue that time is an illusion. Lee Smolin begs to differ. (...) Smolin wishes to hold on to the reality of time. But to do so, he must overcome a major hurdle: General and special relativity seem to imply the opposite. In the classical Newtonian view, physics operated according to the ticking of an invisible universal clock. But Einstein threw out that master clock when, in his theory of special relativity, he argued that no two events are truly simultaneous unless they are causally related. If simultaneity - the notion of "now" - is relative, the universal clock must be a fiction, and time itself a proxy for the movement and change of objects in the universe. Time is literally written out of the equation. Although he has spent much of his career exploring the facets of a "timeless" universe, Smolin has become convinced that this is "deeply wrong," he says. He now believes that time is more than just a useful approximation, that it is as real as our guts tell us it is - more real, in fact, than space itself. The notion of a "real and global time" is the starting hypothesis for Smolin's new work, which he will undertake this year with two graduate students supported by a $47,500 grant from FQXi."
http://www.amazon.com/What-Einstein-Was-Wrong-Questions/dp/1782400451
What If Einstein Was Wrong? Brian Clegg, Jim Al-Khalili: "It shouldn't be too much of a surprise that Einstein could get it wrong, because science is not about absolute truth..."
http://www.amazon.com/Faster-Than-Speed-Light-Speculation/dp/0738205257
Joao Magueijo, Faster Than the Speed of Light, p. 250: "Lee [Smolin] and I discussed these paradoxes at great length for many months, starting in January 2001. We would meet in cafés in South Kensington or Holland Park to mull over the problem. THE ROOT OF ALL THE EVIL WAS CLEARLY SPECIAL RELATIVITY. All these paradoxes resulted from well known effects such as length contraction, time dilation, or E=mc^2, all basic predictions of special relativity. And all denied the possibility of establishing a well-defined border, common to all observers, capable of containing new quantum gravitational effects."
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20026831.500-what-makes-the-universe-tick.html
"...John Norton, a philosopher based at the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Norton is hesitant to express it, but his instinct - and the consensus in physics - seems to be that space and time exist on their own. The trouble with this idea, though, is that it doesn't sit well with relativity, which describes space-time as a malleable fabric whose geometry can be changed by the gravity of stars, planets and matter."
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/46941
Philip Ball: "Did Einstein discover E = mc2? Who discovered that E = mc2? It's not as easy a question as you might think. Scientists ranging from James Clerk Maxwell and Max von Laue to a string of now-obscure early 20th-century physicists have been proposed as the true discovers of the massenergy equivalence now popularly credited to Einstein's theory of special relativity. These claims have spawned headlines accusing Einstein of plagiarism, but many are spurious or barely supported. Yet two physicists have now shown that Einstein's famous formula does have a complicated and somewhat ambiguous genesis which has little to do with relativity. (...) While Einstein's celebrated 1905 paper, "On the electrodynamics of moving bodies", clearly laid down the foundations of relativity by abandoning the ether and making the speed of light invariant, his derivation of E = mc2 did not depend on those assumptions. You can get the right answer with classical physics, says Rothman, all in an ether theory without c being either constant or the limiting speed."
http://philipball.blogspot.com/2011/08/did-einstein-discover-emc2.html
Philip Ball: "The biggest revelation for me was not so much seeing that there were several well-founded precursors for the equivalence of mass and energy, but finding that this equivalence seems to have virtually nothing to do with special relativity. Tony Rothman said to me that "I've long maintained that the conventional history of science, as presented in the media, textbooks and by the stories scientists tell themselves is basically a collection of fairy tales." I'd concur with that."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/jun/10/time-reborn-farewell-reality-review
Philip Ball: "Einstein's theory of special relativity not only destroyed any notion of absolute time but made time equivalent to a dimension in space: the future is already out there waiting for us; we just can't see it until we get there. This view is a logical and metaphysical dead end, says Smolin."
http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/waseinsteinwrong/
Paul Davies: "Was Einstein wrong? Einstein's famous equation E=mc2 is the only scientific formula known to just about everyone. The "c" here stands for the speed of light. It is one of the most fundamental of the basic constants of physics. Or is it? In recent years a few maverick scientists have claimed that the speed of light might not be constant at all. Shock, horror! Does this mean the next Great Revolution in Science is just around the corner?"
http://www.rense.com/general13/ein.htm
Einstein's Theory Of Relativity Must Be Rewritten: "A group of astronomers and cosmologists has warned that the laws thought to govern the universe, including Albert Einstein's theory of relativity, must be rewritten. The group, which includes Professor Stephen Hawking and Sir Martin Rees, the astronomer royal, say such laws may only work for our universe but not in others that are now also thought to exist. "It is becoming increasingly likely that the rules we had thought were fundamental through time and space are actually just bylaws for our bit of it," said Rees, whose new book, Our Cosmic Habitat, is published next month. "Creation is emerging as even stranger than we thought." Among the ideas facing revision is Einstein's belief that the speed of light must always be the same - 186,000 miles a second in a vacuum."
Pentcho Valev
