Rebuttal to Lesages Shadows (General)

From: greywolf42 (mingstb_at_marssim-ss.com)
Date: 01/18/05 

Date: Tue, 18 Jan 2005 02:33:15 GMT

A Rebuttal to the Claims in "Lesage's Shadows*"
*http://www.mathpages.com/home/kmath131/kmath131.htm

Introduction:

The Mathpages site as a whole contains no attributions, no references, no
authors, no revision dates, no prior versions, and no contact information.
Someone named "Kevin Brown" is listed as the "author" of the site in Network
Solutions. The specific webpage version posted on January 4, 2005 is
discussed in this text. This webpage will be called "Shadows" in this
rebuttal. In the past, Mathpages links have changed without warning or
acknowledgement. Indeed, this particular Mathpages page changed in several
particulars, as of January 12th, 2005. Apparently, this was in response to
my general comment posted on the sci.physics newsgroups on January 6th
(about the Jan 4th versions' failure to even describe Le Sage's actual
model).

A prior webpage with the same web address, but different content, existed
from roughly May 2000 to December 2003. The prior content of this
particular web address was apparently devoted to relativity, the Fizeau
experiment, and De Sitter's theory. Hence, the "Shadows" content on this
particular address is apparently new. The new content was first mentioned on
the newsgroups in November of 2004.

If the reader notices that the future substance of the "Shadows" link
changes in any respect, please notify me at mingstb@sim-ss.com. Comments
on, and corrections to this rebuttal may be sent to the same address. I
will address the changes made between January 4th and January 12th (and any
other noted changes) at the end of this effort. Copies of prior commented
versions are available by request.

The text contained in "Shadows" (January 4, 2005 version) is only useful in
that it provides a listing of many of the standard objections that are used
against Le Sagian theories. However, contrary to what one might expect,
"Shadows" never provides an analysis of Le Sage's model. Instead, "Shadows"
proffers Darwin's 1905 theory as the "Fatio/Lesage" theory.

Le Sage's model is not complex (Roseveare, p 109):

"Le Sage conceived of matter as being built up of indivisible particles in
the form of cages with bars of extremely small diameter. Space was
continually traversed by gravific particles of extremely high velocities in
all directions and rarely collided with each other. An isolated body in
space would not be moved by these gravific corpuscles because it received an
equal number of impulsions (from the corpuscles hitting the cage bars) on
all sides. If another body was brought up towards this previously isolated
body, the latter would be shielded to a certain extent by the former from
the corpuscles approaching from that direction. The equilibrium of
impulsions thus disturbed, the bodies would be pushed towards each other as
if they were attracted."

"'It is not necessary to be very skilful to deduce from these suppositions
all the laws of gravity, both sublunary and universal (and consequently also
those of Kepler, etc.) with all the accuracy with which observed phenomena
have proved those laws. Those laws, therefore, are inevitable consequences
of the supposed constitutions.' (W. Thomson, 1873, p 323)' 'On the
ultramundane corpuscles of Le Sage.' Phil. Mag (Ser. 4), 45, p321-32."

Apparently, the author of "Shadows" was unwilling to write anything that
shed the slightest positive light on Le Sagian theories. The simple and
elegant explanation of Newton's gravitational force law, and the championing
of Le Sage by Lord Kelvin has been ignored. An entire page of history in
Roseveare (110) is completely ignored in the website.

Any theory that uses particles impacting on material objects as a source of
gravity is called a kinetic or Le Sagian theory. A related set of theories
are the "light pressure" theories. These are similar to Le Sagian theories,
but replace the ultramundane corpuscles of Le Sage with light waves or
photons. Together, these types of theories are often called "kinetic" or
"push gravity" theories. For more detail, see the book "Pushing Gravity,"
Edwards, 2002, Aperion.

"Shadows" never identifies differences between kinetic theories of
gravitation. The theory that "Shadows" discusses as "Fatio/Le Sagian" is
neither Fatio's nor Le Sage's. Below is a quick comparison of several
variants of kinetic gravity theories contained in "Pushing Gravity" (a far
from exhaustive list):

{Use ASCII fixed-width font for table below}:

           Kinetic Theories of Gravitation
       (Roughly in Order of First Appearance)
=========================================================
  Proponent | Matter |Corpuscle|Interaction | Speed |
            | Model | Type | | |
=========================================================
   Fatio | Opaque | Solid | Reflection | "high" |
---------------------------------------------------------
  Le Sage* | Open grid | Solid | Absorption | "high" |
---------------------------------------------------------
   Kelvin | Open grid | Solid | Reflection | >> c |
---------------------------------------------------------
  Thomasin/ | Opaque | Light | Absorption | c |
  Lorentz/ | | | | |
 Radzievskii| | | | |
---------------------------------------------------------
   Darwin* | Opaque | Solid | Absorption | >> c |
            | sphere | | | |
---------------------------------------------------------
 Schneiderov|Transparent| Solid | Imperfect | "high" |
            | | |Transmission| |
---------------------------------------------------------
Van Flandern|Transparent| Quantum | Absorption | >> c |
---------------------------------------------------------
Mingst-Stowe|Transparent| Solid | Imperfect |sqrt(3)c|
            | | |Transmission| |
=========================================================

The terms in the above table mean the following:

Opaque matter undergoes a surface interaction with all corpuscles and/or
energy impinging on the matter body (or sub-component). An open grid
interacts with only a small fraction of the impinging corpuscles.
Transparent matter interacts with all corpuscles impinging on the matter
body, but throughout the interior, not at the surface.

A solid corpuscle is a classical, material particle of finite extent. A
light corpuscle is wave(train). A quantum corpuscle is Lorentz Relativistic
within an additional Light Carrying Medium.

A reflection is a (primarily) elastic reflection of the corpuscle from the
surface of the interacting body (or substructure). An absorption is a
(primarily) inelastic absorption of the corpuscles from the surface of the
interacting body. An imperfect transmission is a fractional removal of
momentum and/or energy from the transiting corpuscles.

This complex family of theories is what "Shadows" attempts to lump and
describe as a single theory. This confusion appears deliberate. "Shadows"
uses the variations between theories to argue that "Fatio/ Le Sage theory"
is a mass of contradictions.

"Shadows" relies heavily on "Mercury's Perihelion from Le Verrier to
Einstein", N.T. Roseveare, 1982 - though "Shadows" never identifies the
source of the material. Throughout this rebuttal, this work will simply be
called "Roseveare."

"Shadows" also takes most of its historical information (including contained
quotations) directly from the paper "Fatio on the Cause of Universal
Gravitation," Frans van Lunteren, contained in the 2002 book "Pushing
Gravity" -- again without attribution.

In later sections "Shadows" attempts several calculations. But "Shadows"
does not perform any calculations using any mathematical result from any Le
Sagian theory. Instead, "Shadows" sets up each set of calculations by
hand-waving claims about what "should" happen. But even these derivations
are riddled with elementary errors. Most of the "equations" in "Shadows"
contain terms with inconsistent units.

The Organization of the "Shadows" WebPage:

"Shadows" is a long, rambling mixture of history and assertions, with
occasional mathematical attempts. There are no subject titles that organize
the page, or html tags that allow the user to jump to specific sections.
This makes it difficult to refer to any particular section or phrase in the
webpage. For ease of reference, I will arbitrarily group "Shadows" into
apparent subjects of discussion, and so identify them. These
identifications are not contained in "Shadows".

Here are rough subjects in "Shadows":

Part I: Historical Introduction (approx. first 1/4 of page)

Part II: Introduction of the Physics of the Le Sagian mechanism. (Paragraph
beginning "Since the apparent size of an object...")

Part III: Arguments on Kinetic Theories of Gravitation (Paragraph beginning
in the middle of run-on sentence that begins "Setting Aside the
Implausibility ...")

     A) Laplace/Feynman Drag:

     B) Claims for Mass Accretion / Gravitational Induction Heating: (In the
middle of the Paragraph beginning, "To treat this more fully., beginning
with the phrase: "Setting aside the conflict with special relativity,")

     C) Gravitational Aberration (and Drag Again): (approx. ¾ down the page,
phrase beginning "the finite speed of the ultra-mundane particles .")

Part IV: Philosophical Objections: (About 4/5 of the way down the page,
paragraph beginning: "We mentioned previously the problem of infinite
regress")

Part V: Summary: (About 9/10 down the page. Paragraph beginning "From a
methodological standpoint.")

Substantive Changes to "Shadows" noted on January 12th, 2005:

In order to make reasonably succint newsgroup posts, each of these
"sections" will be dealt with in a separate sub-post to this general
statement. 

--
greywolf42
ubi dubium ibi libertas
{remove planet for return e-mail}
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