Re: A little challenge for relativists.

John Kennaugh wrote:
Tom Roberts wrote:
I am not trying to "explain" source independence, Kennaugh was.

The question was why did Einstein assume source independence when formulating SR

That is a silly question, and one that cannot possibly have a definitive answer. Do you intend to hold a seance?

IMHO Einstein did what any sensible person would do in presenting a new approach to well-known physics: make his argument as transparent as possible TO HIS READERS. Remember who his readers were: educated physicists of his day (1905). And in his day, symmetry groups and such were not part of physics in any formal way (though they were "in the air" as Poincare' and Einstein show). I think he phrased his postulates as he did because phrased that way they would be acceptable to his readers -- yes, "source independence" would be interpreted as "appropriate for waves in the ether" by most of his readers. So what?

As has been discussed many times around here, a modern derivation of the symmetries of SR looks VERY different from Einstein's 1905 paper. Again: so what? -- The theory known as SR is really a collection of theorems, and they have many derivations. <shrug>


As far as I am concerned he never hid the fact that he believed in some sort of ether.

Then you haven't read much of his writings (even though your eyes may have traversed images of them). Nor have you understood the basis of SR or GR. <shrug>


In contrast, I know that geometrical properties like this are not amenable to "explanation".
For Euclidean geometry: What "explanation" would you accept for the fact that a straight line is the shortest distance between two points? What "explanation" would you accept for the fact that all right angles are congruent? Etc....

In order to accept that argument you have to believe it is a case of serendipity. [...]

Nonsense. All one needs to accept is that geometry is subject to experiment and observation, just like other aspects of physical theories. Minkowski spacetime (locally) leads to a MUCH better and more complete description of our world than does Euclidean geometry. <shrug>


Tom Roberts	tjroberts@xxxxxxxxxx
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