Re: Louis Essen "The Special Theory of Relativity: A Critical Analysis"
- From: "roger" <roger@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2007 17:05:38 +0200
"roger" wrote
"Louis Essen (1908 - 1997) was an English physicist whose
most notable achievements were in the precise measurement
of time and the determination of the speed of light.
Essen spent all his working life at the National Physical Laboratory.
In 1971 he published "The Special Theory of Relativity: A Critical Analysis" [2]
in which he questioned Einstein's theory, which apparently
was not appreciated by his employers. As Essen later stated (1978) [3]:
No one has attempted to refute my arguments, but I was warned
that if I persisted I was likely to spoil my career prospects.
He retired in 1972 and died in Great Bookham, Surrey."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Essen
Louis Essen was called "The Time Lord":
http://www.btinternet.com/~time.lord/index.html
Louis Essen questioned the SRT and the accuracy of the Hafele+Keating experiment:
"... That result was contested by Dr. A. G. Kelly who examined the raw data:
according to him, the final published outcome had to be averaged
in a biased way in order to claim such a high precision.
Also, Louis Essen, the inventor of the atomic clock, published an article
in which he discussed the (in his opinion) inadequate accuracy of the experiment."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hafele-Keating_experiment
"...
Louis Essen has published a booklet titled "The Special Theory of
Relativity A Critical Analysis" in which he examines this
question in great detail.[55] Essen is a prominant English
physicist who built the first caesium atomic clock in 1955 and
determined the most accurate value for the velocity of light by
using a cavity resonator. Skipping around the math, I present
the following excerpts from the booklet:
Perhaps the strangest feature of all, and the most
unfortunate to the development of science, is the use of the
thought-experiment. The expression itself is a contradiction
in terms, since an experiment is a search for new knowledge
that cannot be confirmed, although it might be predicted, by a
process of logical thought. A thought-experiment on the other
hand cannot provide new knowledge; if it gives a result that is
contrary to the theoretical knowledge and assumptions on which
it is based then a mistake must have been made. Some of the
results of the theory were obtained in this way and differ from
the original assumptions....
A common reaction of experimental physicists to the theory
is that although they do not understand it themselves it is so
widely accepted that it must be correct. I must confess that
until recent years this was my own attitude. I was, however,
rather more than usually interested in the subject from a
practical point of view, having repeated, with microwaves
instead of optical waves(Essen 1955), the celebrated Michelson-
Morley experiment, which was the starting point of the theory.
Then with the introduction of atomic clocks, and the enormous
increase in the accuracy of time measurements that they made
possible, the relativity effects became of practical
significance....
Many of the thought-experiments described by Einstein and
others involve the comparison of distant clocks. Such
comparisons are now made every day at many laboratories
throughout the world. The techniques are well known. It seems
reasonable, therefore, to consider the thought-experiments in
terms of these techniques. When this is done, the errors in
the thought-experiments become more obvious. The fact that
errors in the theory arise in the course of the thought-
experiments may explain why they were not detected for so long.
Theoretical physicists might not have considered them
critically from an experimental point of view. But if one has
been actually performing such experiments for many years, one
is in a more favorable position to detect any departure from
the correct procedure. In the existing climate of opinion, one
needed to be very confident to speak of definite errors in the
theory. Was there not perhaps some subtle interpretation that
was being overlooked? A study of the literature did not reveal
any, but even so it was familiarity with the experiments that
gave one the necessary confidence to maintain a critical
attitude.
The literature sometimes reveals a remarkable vagueness of
expression, a lack of a clear statement of the assumptions of
the theory, and even a failure to appreciate the basic ideas of
physical measurement. Ambiguities are not absent from
Einstein's own papers, and various writers, even when advancing
different interpretations of the theory, are correct in as much
as these interpretations can all be attributed to Einstein....
The contraction of length and the dilation of time can now
be understood as representing the changes that have to be made
to make the results of measurement consistent. There is no
question here of a physical theory but simply of a new system
of units in which c is constant, and length and time do not
have constant units but have units that vary with v2/c2. Thus
they are no longer independent, and space and time are
intermixed by definition and not as a result of some peculiar
property of nature.... If the theory of relativity is regarded
simply as a new system of units it can be made consistent but
it serves no useful purpose.... The argument about the clock
paradox has continued interminably, although the way the
paradox arose and its explanation follow quite clearly from a
careful reading of Einstein's paper.... The experiment is
often expressed in the dramatized form of two twins, one of
whom returns from a round trip younger than his brother; and in
this form it has received wide publicity.... It is illogical
to suggest that a result obtained on the basis of the special
theory is correct but is a consequence of a completely
different theory developed some years later. It is also
illogical to assume that accelerations have no effect Ä as he
does in A's picture of the events Ä and then to assume that
gravitation, which in the general theory is assumed to be
equivalent to acceleration, does have an effect.... It may be
surprising, therefore, to find that a more critical examination
of the experiments and the experimental conditions suggests
that there is no experimental support for the theory... The
experiments of the Michelson-Morley type cannot be taken as
supporting the theory, because the theory was developed in
order to explain the null result that was obtained.... The
increase of mass with velocity was predicted for the case of
charged particles directly from electromagnetic theory before
the advent of relativity theory and was confirmed
experimentally by Kaufmann....
18. Conclusions
A critical examination of Einstein's papers reveals that in the
course of thought-experiments he makes implicit assumptions
that are additional and contrary to his two initial principles.
The initial postulates of relativity and the constancy of the
velocity of light lead directly to length contraction and time
dilation simply as new units of measurements, and in several
places Einstein gives support to this view by making his
observers adjust their clocks. More usually, and this
constitutes the second set of assumptions, he regards the
changes as being observed effects, even when the units are not
deliberately changed. This implies that there is some physical
effect even if it is not understood or described. The results
are symmetrical to observers in relative motion; and such can
only be an effect in the process of the transmission of the
signals. The third assumption is that the clocks and lengths
actually change. In this case the relativity postulate can no
longer hold.
The first approach, in which the units of measurement are
changed, is not a physical theory, and the question of
experimental evidence does not arise. There is no evidence for
the second approach because no symmetrical experiment has ever
been made. There is no direct experimental evidence of the
third statement of the theory because no experiments have been
made in an inertial system. There are experimental results
that support the idea of an observed time dilation, but
accelerations are always involved, and there is some indication
that they are responsible for the observed effects.
...."
http://users.navi.net/~rsc/physics/wallace/farce.txt
.
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