RICHARD FEYNMAN ABOUT THE SPEED OF LIGHT
in [Math]
|
Prev: deriving speed of light out of raw pure math Chapt 19 #207; ATOM TOTALITY
Next: proper analysis of Euclid's Infinitude of Primes rather than the botched job of Hardy/Woodgold and Mathematical Intelligencer #609 Correcting Math
From: Pentcho Valev on 28 Jun 2010 02:05 The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Volume 1, Chapter 15-1: "Suppose we are riding in a car that is going at a speed u, and light from the rear is going past the car with speed c. Differentiating the first equation in (15.2) gives dx'/dt=dx/dt-u, which means that according to the Galilean transformation the apparent speed of the passing light, as we measure it in the car, should not be c but should be c-u." Needless to say, Feynman rejects the equation c'=c-u (it is incompatible with Einstein's special relativity) but: 1. According to Maxwell's theory, the equation c'=c-u is correct (u is the speed of the car relative to the ether). 2. According to Newton's emission theory of light, the equation c'=c-u is correct (u is the speed of the car relative to the emitter). 3. In the absence of ad hoc auxiliary hypotheses (Lorentz-FitzGerald's length contraction), the Michelson-Morley experiment confirms the equation c'=c-u and refutes the alternative equation c'=c compatible with Einstein's special relativity: http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00001743/02/Norton.pdf John Norton: "Einstein regarded the Michelson-Morley experiment as evidence for the principle of relativity, whereas later writers almost universally use it as support for the light postulate of special relativity......THE MICHELSON-MORLEY EXPERIMENT IS FULLY COMPATIBLE WITH AN EMISSION THEORY OF LIGHT THAT CONTRADICTS THE LIGHT POSTULATE." http://books.google.com/books?id=JokgnS1JtmMC "Relativity and Its Roots" By Banesh Hoffmann p.92: "Moreover, if light consists of particles, as Einstein had suggested in his paper submitted just thirteen weeks before this one, the second principle seems absurd: A stone thrown from a speeding train can do far more damage than one thrown from a train at rest; the speed of the particle is not independent of the motion of the object emitting it. And if we take light to consist of particles and assume that these particles obey Newton's laws, they will conform to Newtonian relativity and thus automatically account for the null result of the Michelson-Morley experiment without recourse to contracting lengths, local time, or Lorentz transformations. Yet, as we have seen, Einstein resisted the temptation to account for the null result in terms of particles of light and simple, familiar Newtonian ideas, and introduced as his second postulate something that was more or less obvious when thought of in terms of waves in an ether." Pentcho Valev pvalev(a)yahoo.com
From: Pentcho Valev on 28 Jun 2010 10:03 The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Volume 2, Chapter 42-6: "Suppose we put a clock at the "head" of the rocket ship - that is, at the front end - and we put another identical clock at the "tail," as in fig. 42-16. Let's call the two clocks A and B. If we compare these two clocks when the ship is accelerating, the clock at the head seems to run fast relative to the one at the tail. To see that, imagine that the front clock emits a flash of light each second, and that you are sitting at the tail comparing the arival of the light flashes with the ticks of clock B. (...) The first flash travels the distance L1 and the second flash travels the shorter distance L2. It is a shorter distance because the ship is acelerating and has a higher speed at the time of the second flash. You can see, then, that if the two flashes were emitted from clock A one second apart, they would arrive at clock B with a separation somewhat less than one second, since the second flash doesn't spend as much time on the way." Einsteiniana's idiocies can destroy any rationality, even Richard Feynman's one! If the acceleration is uniform, it is obvious that L1=L2. The problem has an easy solution. The observer (sitting at the tail) measures the frequency of light to have increased. Then, by taking into account the formula: (frequency) = (speed of light)/(wavelength) he concludes that either the speed of light (relative to the observer) has increased (then Einstein's 1905 light postulate is false) or the wavelength has decreased. Einsteinians believe that the wavelength somehow varies with the speed of the observer: http://sampit.geol.sc.edu/Doppler.html "Moving observer: A man is standing on the beach, watching the tide. The waves are washing into the shore and over his feet with a constant frequency and wavelength. However, if he begins walking out into the ocean, the waves will begin hitting him more frequently, leading him to perceive that the wavelength of the waves has decreased." http://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/teaching/HPS_0410/chapters/big_bang/index.html John Norton: "Here's a light wave and an observer. If the observer were to hurry towards the source of the light, the observer would now pass wavecrests more frequently than the resting observer. That would mean that moving observer would find the frequency of the light to have increased (AND CORRESPONDINGLY FOR THE WAVELENGTH - THE DISTANCE BETWEEN CRESTS - TO HAVE DECREASED)." Pentcho Valev pvalev(a)yahoo.com
From: cwldoc on 28 Jun 2010 06:14 > The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Volume 1, Chapter > 15-1: > "Suppose we are riding in a car that is going at a > speed u, and light > from the rear is going past the car with speed c. > Differentiating the > first equation in (15.2) gives dx'/dt=dx/dt-u, which > means that > according to the Galilean transformation the apparent > speed of the > passing light, as we measure it in the car, should > not be c but should > be c-u." > > Needless to say, Feynman rejects the equation c'=c-u > (it is > incompatible with Einstein's special relativity) but: > > 1. According to Maxwell's theory, the equation c'=c-u > is correct (u is > the speed of the car relative to the ether). > > 2. According to Newton's emission theory of light, > the equation c'=c-u > is correct (u is the speed of the car relative to the > emitter). > > 3. In the absence of ad hoc auxiliary hypotheses > (Lorentz-FitzGerald's > length contraction), the Michelson-Morley experiment > confirms the > equation c'=c-u and refutes the alternative equation > c'=c compatible > with Einstein's special relativity: > > http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00001743/02/No > rton.pdf > John Norton: "Einstein regarded the Michelson-Morley > experiment as > evidence for the principle of relativity, whereas > later writers almost > universally use it as support for the light postulate > of special > relativity......THE MICHELSON-MORLEY EXPERIMENT IS > FULLY COMPATIBLE > WITH AN EMISSION THEORY OF LIGHT THAT CONTRADICTS THE > LIGHT > POSTULATE." > > http://books.google.com/books?id=JokgnS1JtmMC > "Relativity and Its Roots" By Banesh Hoffmann > p.92: "Moreover, if light consists of particles, as > Einstein had > suggested in his paper submitted just thirteen weeks > before this one, > the second principle seems absurd: A stone thrown > from a speeding > train can do far more damage than one thrown from a > train at rest; the > speed of the particle is not independent of the > motion of the object > emitting it. Actually, light emitted from a speeding train could do more "damage," but that is due to the fact that it is blue-shifted, not to any difference in speed! > And if we take light to consist of > particles and assume > that these particles obey Newton's laws, they will > conform to > Newtonian relativity and thus automatically account > for the null > result of the Michelson-Morley experiment without > recourse to > contracting lengths, local time, or Lorentz > transformations. Yet, as > we have seen, Einstein resisted the temptation to > account for the null > result in terms of particles of light and simple, > familiar Newtonian > ideas, and introduced as his second postulate > something that was more > or less obvious when thought of in terms of waves in > an ether." > > Pentcho Valev > pvalev(a)yahoo.com
From: herbzet on 28 Jun 2010 22:19 Pentcho Valev wrote: > > The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Volume 2, Chapter 42-6: > "Suppose we put a clock at the "head" of the rocket ship - that is, at > the front end - and we put another identical clock at the "tail," as > in fig. 42-16. Let's call the two clocks A and B. If we compare these > two clocks when the ship is accelerating, the clock at the head seems > to run fast relative to the one at the tail. To see that, imagine that > the front clock emits a flash of light each second, and that you are > sitting at the tail comparing the arival of the light flashes with the > ticks of clock B. (...) The first flash travels the distance L1 and > the second flash travels the shorter distance L2. It is a shorter > distance because the ship is acelerating and has a higher speed at the > time of the second flash. You can see, then, that if the two flashes > were emitted from clock A one second apart, they would arrive at clock > B with a separation somewhat less than one second, since the second > flash doesn't spend as much time on the way." > > Einsteiniana's idiocies can destroy any rationality, even Richard > Feynman's one! If the acceleration is uniform, it is obvious that > L1=L2 Ah-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA! a-heh-heh-heh. yeh, if the acceleration is uniformly zero. Thanks for the laff, Pantcho. -- hz
From: Pentcho Valev on 29 Jun 2010 04:30
http://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/papers/OntologyOUP_TimesNR.pdf John Norton: "Already in 1907, a mere two years after the completion of the special theory, he [Einstein] had concluded that the speed of light is variable in the presence of a gravitational field." So in 1907 Einstein's nightmare began - it is easy to show, and Einstein must have realized very quickly, that if the speed of light varies with the gravitational potential, it varies with the speed of the observer as well (in the absence of a gravitational field): http://www.logosjournal.com/issue_4.3/smolin.htm Lee Smolin: "Special relativity was the result of 10 years of intellectual struggle, yet Einstein had convinced himself it was wrong within two years of publishing it." Since the variability of the speed of light in a gravitational field is a fundamental tenet of Einstein's general relativity, it is extremely difficult to camouflage it. In 1911 Einstein devised some camouflage (gravitational time dilation) but it is so absurd that even Richard Feynman gets confused when trying to explain it (see below). Einsteinians much sillier than Feynman usually solve all the problems by simply declaring that the speed of light is constant in a gravitational field: http://www.amazon.com/Brief-History-Time-Stephen-Hawking/dp/0553380168 Stephen Hawking, "A Brief History of Time", Chapter 6: "Under the theory that light is made up of waves, it was not clear how it would respond to gravity. But if light is composed of particles, one might expect them to be affected by gravity in the same way that cannonballs, rockets, and planets are.....In fact, it is not really consistent to treat light like cannonballs in Newtons theory of gravity because the speed of light is fixed. (A cannonball fired upward from the earth will be slowed down by gravity and will eventually stop and fall back; a photon, however, must continue upward at a constant speed...)" http://www.hawking.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=64&Itemid=66 Stephen Hawking: "Interestingly enough, Laplace himself wrote a paper in 1799 on how some stars could have a gravitational field so strong that light could not escape, but would be dragged back onto the star. He even calculated that a star of the same density as the Sun, but two hundred and fifty times the size, would have this property. But although Laplace may not have realised it, the same idea had been put forward 16 years earlier by a Cambridge man, John Mitchell, in a paper in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. Both Mitchell and Laplace thought of light as consisting of particles, rather like cannon balls, that could be slowed down by gravity, and made to fall back on the star. But a famous experiment, carried out by two Americans, Michelson and Morley in 1887, showed that light always travelled at a speed of one hundred and eighty six thousand miles a second, no matter where it came from. How then could gravity slow down light, and make it fall back." http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/SpeedOfLight/speed_of_light.html Steve Carlip: "Einstein went on to discover a more general theory of relativity which explained gravity in terms of curved spacetime, and he talked about the speed of light changing in this new theory. In the 1920 book "Relativity: the special and general theory" he wrote: ". . . according to the general theory of relativity, the law of the constancy of the velocity of light in vacuo, which constitutes one of the two fundamental assumptions in the special theory of relativity [. . .] cannot claim any unlimited validity. A curvature of rays of light can only take place when the velocity of propagation of light varies with position." Since Einstein talks of velocity (a vector quantity: speed with direction) rather than speed alone, it is not clear that he meant the speed will change, but the reference to special relativity suggests that he did mean so. THIS INTERPRETATION IS PERFECTLY VALID AND MAKES GOOD PHYSICAL SENSE, BUT A MORE MODERN INTERPRETATION IS THAT THE SPEED OF LIGHT IS CONSTANT in general relativity." Pentcho Valev wrote: The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Volume 2, Chapter 42-6: "Suppose we put a clock at the "head" of the rocket ship - that is, at the front end - and we put another identical clock at the "tail," as in fig. 42-16. Let's call the two clocks A and B. If we compare these two clocks when the ship is accelerating, the clock at the head seems to run fast relative to the one at the tail. To see that, imagine that the front clock emits a flash of light each second, and that you are sitting at the tail comparing the arival of the light flashes with the ticks of clock B. (...) The first flash travels the distance L1 and the second flash travels the shorter distance L2. It is a shorter distance because the ship is acelerating and has a higher speed at the time of the second flash. You can see, then, that if the two flashes were emitted from clock A one second apart, they would arrive at clock B with a separation somewhat less than one second, since the second flash doesn't spend as much time on the way." Einsteiniana's idiocies can destroy any rationality, even Richard Feynman's one! If the acceleration is uniform, it is obvious that L1=L2. The problem has an easy solution. The observer (sitting at the tail) measures the frequency of light to have increased. Then, by taking into account the formula: (frequency) = (speed of light)/(wavelength) he concludes that either the speed of light (relative to the observer) has increased (then Einstein's 1905 light postulate is false) or the wavelength has decreased. Einsteinians believe that the wavelength somehow varies with the speed of the observer: http://sampit.geol.sc.edu/Doppler.html "Moving observer: A man is standing on the beach, watching the tide. The waves are washing into the shore and over his feet with a constant frequency and wavelength. However, if he begins walking out into the ocean, the waves will begin hitting him more frequently, leading him to perceive that the wavelength of the waves has decreased." http://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/teaching/HPS_0410/chapters/big_bang/index.html John Norton: "Here's a light wave and an observer. If the observer were to hurry towards the source of the light, the observer would now pass wavecrests more frequently than the resting observer. That would mean that moving observer would find the frequency of the light to have increased (AND CORRESPONDINGLY FOR THE WAVELENGTH - THE DISTANCE BETWEEN CRESTS - TO HAVE DECREASED)." Pentcho Valev pvalev(a)yahoo.com |