Re: Interpretation of canonical/contact transformations

From: Igor Khavkine (igor.kh_at_gmail.com)
Date: 01/27/05 

Date: Thu, 27 Jan 2005 15:45:16 +0000 (UTC)

On Sun, 23 Jan 2005 14:56:34 +0000, Eugene Stefanovich wrote:

> "Action-at-a-distance" naturally emerges in my approach to electromagnetic
> interactions. I understand well that this is not a conventional view.
> However, I also understand that this result does not contradict any
> existing experiment. In fact, it easily explains the superluminal
> propagation of evanescent waves observed experimentally. "Conventional
> approach" has big troubles there. The "conventional" explanation of
> evanescent wave experiments goes like this: "well, evanescent waves may
> propagate superluminally, but one cannot make a superluminal *signal* out
> of them". The only way to find the truth is to perfect the experimental
> techniques to the point at which superluminal effects would become so
> obvious that they could not be "explained away" by defining and redefining
> the meaning of a *signal*.

I and many other people do not believe there isn't anything unconventional
going on in these so called "superluminal" effects. The biggest problems
come from taking the word superluminal literally. In another post I gave a
reference these apparent effects within standard electrodynamics. Thus
there are no problems that need to be fixed in the conventional formalism.

> I though that I appropriately responded to your (and other's) posts and
> showed that there are no "flaws" in my interpretation. On the other hand,
> I see a lot of flaws in the "conventional" interpretation of the
> electromagnetic interactions. That was the reason why I wrote my book.

And I thought that I appropriately responded by pointing out that there
indeed are flaws in your arguments. However, it seems that we may have to
remain of different minds of this issue.

If you really believe that the action-at-a-distance effects you think you
predict are experimentally distinguishable from the standard theory, then
let history be the arbiter of this argument.

Igor