Re: Einstein, Dirac and so on....
From: Australopithecus Afarensis (fossil.lucy_at_cox.net)
Date: 07/03/04
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Date: Fri, 2 Jul 2004 23:47:02 -0700
I am not disputing what GR predicts. If it has not, no one would be so
vehemently defending it. I don't dispute the gravitational red shift either
which is not even covered by Newtonian law of gravity despite some prominent
scientists try to explain that one with the gravitational potential energy.
The weakness lies in photons having no rest mass. However, these are
experimental results. They are also subject to interpretations.
Does GR predict gravitational sling shots which all modern deep space probes
incorporate to save energy? It does. How about the gravitational sling
shot equivalence of a photon? I mean the exchange of energy.
Does GR leave room for other discoveries on the orbital advance of Mercury?
It does not. Dicke's Bulge is an example.
Does GR predict recent finding in cosmology? You can argue it does by
introducing Band-Aids such as inflation, expansion of space, cosmological
constant, etc. Yet, all these violate the 1st Law of Thermodynamics
(conservation of observed energy) and the conservation of observed momentum.
Let's not get into the subject of singularities.
On the subject of Kepler, you are not giving him enough credit. Although
today we don't think very much going from circles to ellipses, Kepler had no
help from any mathematical tools nor physical understandings. He did not
have calculus as a tool. Consider what he had to work with, he had done a
more than superb of a job. This is unlike Einstein that he has all the
tools, consultants, and other's previous works to go on. I think Kepler's
work is a lot more original than Einstein's and also not to mention the
relative difficulty level. The last point on this subject which I mentioned
already was Kepler's data points as courtesy of Brahe. That is the only
thing Kepler has to work with.
I also do not dispute that Newton is the greatest physicist of all time. I
was just surprised that you would pick Newton over Einstein.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Robert J. Kolker" <robert_kolker@hotmail.com>
Newsgroups: sci.physics.relativity,it.scienza
Sent: Friday, July 02, 2004 05:24 AM
Subject: Re: Einstein, Dirac and so on....
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
----- Original Message -----
From: "Robert J. Kolker" <robert_kolker@hotmail.com>
Newsgroups: sci.physics.relativity,it.scienza
Sent: Friday, July 02, 2004 05:32 AM
Subject: Re: Einstein, Dirac and so on....
Australopithecus Afarensis wrote:
> The following top topics that elevated Einstein into a Demigod needs to be
> examined again. Einstein knew the answers and fudged GR to meet the first
> of the following.
>
> ** Mercury's orbit of advance
Totally false. Einsteins theory of gravity flows exclusively from the
equivalence principle. He made three predictions:
1. The correct amount of light bending around the sun (twice as large as
the Newtonian reconing.
2. The anomalous precession of the perihelia of planets. Mercury was the
easist to observe but it is the case for all planets. Again he got a
better reckoning that could be had from Newton's Law of Graviation.
Newton knew that the orbits of the planets did not close.
3. The gravitational red-shift of light. This is something that Newton
could not have gotten.
All three follow from the equivalence principle. Einstein did not do
simple curve fits.
Planck did that to get a fit to the black body curve. From this curve
fit Planck got the inspiration for the quantum of radiational energy and
the first estimate of what is now called Planck's Constant.
And this was Einstein's major work. In his "minor" works in invented the
quantum of light to account for the photoelectric effect and in his
paper he came up with another way of estimating Avagadro's number.
In his later career he also did researches that established the basis of
lasers and he predicted that the universe is expanding. Unfortunately he
got cold feet with this prediction. Had he stayed the course, he would
have predicted what Hubble found empirically. So even Einstein's
"errors" were fruitful
Bob Kolker
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