TWO MYTHS ABOUT THE FALSE SECOND POSTULATE OF EINSTEIN



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Topic: Science > Physics
User: "Pentcho Valev"
Date: 28 Apr 2007 09:52:06 AM
Object: TWO MYTHS ABOUT THE FALSE SECOND POSTULATE OF EINSTEIN
In his 1905 paper Einstein clearly showed that both Faraday's
induction law and "the unsuccessful attempts to discover any motion of
the earth relatively to the light medium" lead to the principle of
relativity (the first postulate) whereas the second postulate which is
"apparently irreconcilable with the former" is introduced SEPARATELY:
http://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/einstein/specrel/www/ "Take, for
example, the reciprocal electrodynamic action of a magnet and a
conductor. The observable phenomenon here depends only on the relative
motion of the conductor and the magnet, whereas the customary view
draws a sharp distinction between the two cases in which either the
one or the other of these bodies is in motion. For if the magnet is in
motion and the conductor at rest, there arises in the neighbourhood of
the magnet an electric field with a certain definite energy, producing
a current at the places where parts of the conductor are situated. But
if the magnet is stationary and the conductor in motion, no electric
field arises in the neighbourhood of the magnet. In the conductor,
however, we find an electromotive force, to which in itself there is
no corresponding energy, but which gives rise--assuming equality of
relative motion in the two cases discussed--to electric currents of
the same path and intensity as those produced by the electric forces
in the former case. Examples of this sort, together with the
unsuccessful attempts to discover any motion of the earth relatively
to the "light medium", suggest that the phenomena of electrodynamics
as well as of mechanics possess no properties corresponding to the
idea of absolute rest. They suggest rather that, as has already been
shown to the first order of small quantities, the same laws of
electrodynamics and optics will be valid for all frames of reference
for which the equations of mechanics hold good.1 We will raise this
conjecture (the purport of which will hereafter be called the
"Principle of Relativity") to the status of a postulate, and also
introduce another postulate, which is only apparently irreconcilable
with the former, namely, that light is always propagated in empty
space with a definite velocity c which is independent of the state of
motion of the emitting body."
Then the minds of relativists were reprogrammed and now they believe
that Einstein's arguments led to the second postulate, Einstein's
false principle of constancy of the speed of light. Yet a clever
relativist dispersed the myth about "the unsuccessful attempts to
discover any motion of the earth relatively to the light medium":
http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00001743/02/Norton.pdf John
Norton: "Einstein regarded the Michelson-Morley experiment as evidence
for the principle of relativity, whereas later writers almost
universally use it as support for the light postulate of special
relativity......THE MICHELSON-MORLEY EXPERIMENT IS FULLY COMPATIBLE
WITH AN EMISSION THEORY OF LIGHT THAT CONTRADICTS THE LIGHT
POSTULATE."
Of course, in the world of Einstein nobody cares about dispersal of
myths. Some day another clever relativist will disperse, in the same
way, the myth about Faraday's induction law. Nobody will care again.
Pentcho Valev
.

 

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