Re: Einstein, Dirac and so on....

From: Robert J. Kolker (robert_kolker_at_hotmail.com)
Date: 07/02/04 

Date: Fri, 02 Jul 2004 12:24:54 GMT

Australopithecus Afarensis wrote:

> I am surprised you would rate Newton over Einstein, but I do agree with you
> that Newton is the greatest physicist of all time. The next one is Maxwell.
> Einstein would not even rank the top 100 in my list.

Nonsense. His theory of gravity assures his immortality. His lesser
works on brownian motion help establish atomic theory once and for all.
In the early part of the 20-th century there were still physicists, like
Ernst Mach, who regarded atoms as hypothetical bojums and mere
heuristic. Then Einstien's work on the photo-electric effect help revive
interest in Planck's quanta. Einstein made quanta general, the substance
of radiation, rather than a quirk of radiation from solids, as did Planck.

Einstein wandered off the paths of righteousness into never-never land
when he committed his life and labor to unified field theory. Also his
opposition to quantum theory as more than a heuristic alienated him from
the physics community. Einstein did to quantum theory what Mach did to
atomic theory, i.e. he relegated it to a gimmic that worked as far as it
went.
>
> One genius who did not have anybody's work to build on besides data points
> but came up with something very respectable is Kepler. Another one who has
> his works covering hundred of volumes is Euler. Euler won out by quantity.

Kepler was a mystic ( a Platonic-Pythagorian) and he happened to hit
lucky on fitting the orbits of planets to ellipses (which is really not
right). The planets do NOT go in elliptical orbits even with Newtonian
gravity. If Tycho had a telescope and could determine the ephemeris to
four more orders of magnitude, Kepler would not have been able to get a
curve fit.

In fact Newton pointed out in -De Motu- that applying the n-body
interaction of three or more bodies gravitationaly guaranteed that the
orbits were not even closed. The fact that Newton understood the
consequences of n-body interactions (although he did not use that
terminology) is proof of his towering genius.

Did you know that Newton also attacked a special case of fluid dynamics
to determine what shape vessel a drip-clock would require to guarantee
equal time between drips? It was a special case of the Navier-Stokes
equation he formulated. He was not successful in solving it. But the
fact that he attacked fluid dynamics at the base is again proof of his
towering intellect.
>
> Einstein would be a great physicist if his General Relativity is not based
> on the following two assumptions.
>
> ** Speed of light being the same every where
> ** No inertial frame of reference

Expermintally established.
>
> He has no excuse to make those assumptions, the Michelson-Morley Experiment
> hinted against his assumptions:

MMX null result supported his assumptions completely. MMX failed to find
an aether as did the Trouton-Noble experiment. That is one of the
reasons why Einstein did not assume an aether in his theories.
>
> ** Relative speed of light being lowered through time dilation
> ** More inertial frame of reference through causality of photons
> (simultaneity of events)

The speed of light is the same in all inertial frames of reference.
There is experimental evidence to support that hypothesis.

Bob Kolker

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