Did Anyone Win AOL Member Awards?

[wolram]

http://members.aol.com/crebigsol/awards.htm
this may be old but did anyone win?

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Originally posted by wolram
http://members.aol.com/crebigsol/awards.htm
this may be old but did anyone win?

Awards of up to US.$50,000.00 each are hereby offered by the author, Cameron Y. Rebigsol, of this website to people who can successfully defend Relativity.

"Details regarding how a paper to be qualified in presenting arguments against Rebigsol's calculations for the awards are listed at the end of the simplified versions of both of the following papers

Sounds like a loaded question. Who's the judge?

The following awards are offered to people who can successfully disprove the mathematical argument shown in the article MATHEMATICAL INVALIDITY OF RELATIVITY.

1). U.S.$50,000.00 to the first person,

2). U.S.$5,000.00 to the second person,

3). U.S.$1,000.00 to the third person (in the order submitted).

The main conclusions of relativity denied by the article MATHEMATICAL INVALIDITY OF RELATIVITY are:

(1). that, in special relativity, the dimension of a moving objects contracts in the direction of its movement and that the time shown by a moving clock dilates in the course of its movement.

In disputing this conclusion, the main line of Rebigsol’s argument shows that if relativity is to be mathematically valid, special relativity creates many self-contradicting mathematical paradoxes, even an "equation" like 0.6=0.48.

(2). that, in general relativity, no distinction can be made between two fields: a field that is created by a massive object through gravitational influence and a field that is created by mechanical propelling of perfect steadiness. This is the so-called "principle of equivalence" of relativity.

In disputing this conclusion, Rebigsol’s main line of argument includes:

(A). This "principle" of relativity is only some lengthy verbal description of human perception. No mathematical derivation of any kind has been presented to establish the validity of this "principle".

(B). What allows this human perception of inability to play the role of a principle in scientific study while concrete and accurate mathematical analysis can be derived to reveal the exact distinction of these two fields?

Detailed conditions for the awards:

1. Only papers that are published in scientific journals will be considered for the claim of these awards. While there are no restrictions on the name of these journals, any of such journals must be registered in the government for circulation before 1994 with total annual subscriptions of no less than 500 every year since then.

2. In order to establish the proper date of submission for any paper aiming at the awards, the author of such paper, at the same time of submission of the paper to the journal for publication, should also mail an exact copy of the paper with information about the journal’s name and address through return receipt request mailed to:
Cameron Y. Rebigsol

P.O. Box 16202

San Francisco, CA 94116

* Note: No manuscript of any kind will be returned to any author by Rebigsol. Rebigsol will not be responsible for the cost of publication of any paper in any manner, regardless of its ultimate winning status

* Note: No manuscript of any kind will be returned to any author by Rebigsol. Rebigsol will not be responsible for the cost of publication of any paper in any manner, regardless of its ultimate winning status.

3. The opportunity for the awards is open forever until one of the followings happens:

I. Relativity is widely accepted as an invalid theory;
II. Rebigsol's arguments against relativity are successfully countered, and the awards are thus claimed;

III. Rebigsol is medically certified as mentally incapable (Currently Rebigsol is looking for volunteer with whom Rebigsol can set up a trust fund for the awards, hoping that Rebigsol's future mental status will not constitute a time limit on this award offer)

4. Each work to be considered should be of no more than 15 one-sided 11 inch by 8 ½ inch pages with characters comparable in size to those in the paper of MATHEMATICAL INVALIDITY OF RELATIVITY. If all winners’ works happen to arrive on the same day, the one with the less amount of type will win the higher award.
5. It is the responsibility of the author to notify Rebigsol of the date and the name of the journal of publication of his work. Meanwhile, a copy of such journal that has published his work must be submitted to Rebigsol as evidence.

6. Within 120 days of receipt of such notification and a copy of such journal, Rebigsol must reply to the author with a firm answer regarding the acceptance or denial of the author as a winner of the award. The award will be forwarded to the winning author as lump-sum payment within 30 days after the recognition of the winner.

7. The work of disproving Rebigsol’s calculation must be a whole body of mathematical work rather than just a literary description. The following format cannot be acceptable: "Because of the error found in line 34, the whole work by Rebigsol fails." Any error one picks up from MATHEMATICAL INVALIDITY OF RELATIVITY must be mathematically developed until some equations or inequalities can exhibit the failure of Rebigsol’s calculations against relativity. Work written to disprove Rebigsol must focus on Rebigsol’s calculations. Please note, Rebigsol's arguments against relativity are aiming at the mistakes that relativity commits in its derivation and the main and popular conclusions thus resulted. The discussion is about the fundamental concepts of the entire theory, but not only one or two individual equations. If any reader belives himself as having developed a solid argument to counter one of Rebigsol's calculations, he should also verify whether or not his argument can survive in disproving Rebigsol's other works in the same article. For example, if he thinks he has countered Rebigsol's argument on relativity's simultaneity doctrine, he then must consider himself to have successfully defended the concept of Lorentzian contraction. Subsequently, he should examine whether his strategy can produce him a valid mathematical demonstration to support Einstein's claim about the measurement of (circumference/diameter)>3.14159265... with a rigid moving rod, or he should verify whether or not his strategy can lead him to satisfactorily explain one of the mathematical paradoxes developed by Rebigsol with the doctrines from relativity, such as 0.6=0.48, shown in this web site. (Instead of a satisfactory and valid mathematical explanation in favor of relativity, a mathematical argument showing that relativity's doctrines do not lead to such paradox can also be considered acceptable as a counter argument against Rebigsol.)

8. No article is considered as having successfully defended the principle of equivalence shown in relativity if that article can not defend special relativity.

9. The name and address of any winner may be used to answer questions from anybody concerned with the verification on winning status.

Without having reviewed his entire argument, I'd bet this comes down to "acceptable" assumptions. I am very interested in hearing what our heavyweights have to say here.

 

[Hurkyl]

Unsurprisingly, the "refutation" is pure junk.

Section 1 on special relativity:

This entire section is based on equation set A. The first two are the familiar Lorentz transforms and the latter two are the equations of the light-cones originating from the origin in each reference frame. (Of course, a 2-d cone is simply a pair of intersecting lines)


The defining property of the Lorentz transformation is that it maps lightcones onto lightcones, so, for example, the solution set of x^2=(ct)^2 gets mapped onto the solution set of x'^2=(ct')^2 when you change coordinates.

In other words:

x^2=(ct)^2 if and only if x'^2=(ct')^2


The author, however, totally misunderstands what is going on, and takes the above two equations as being equations that must always be true. Unsurprisingly, the author derives contradictions from this flawed hypothesis.


Section 2 uses the same flawed hypothesis.


Section 3:

It's clear yet again that the author doesn't understand what's going on, through his terminology. Cutting things from axes? Attaching them? Worth of a segment?

He seems to be trying to avoid having to properly handle reference frames by inventing things like cutting a segment from a moving axis and making it stationary.

His flaw in this section is that he is speaking gibberish, but taking my best guess at what he is trying to say, he has obscured the fact that we're working in two different reference frames, and doesn't realize he's trying to set equal the velocity measured by different observers.


Section 4:

His first listed option is just the fallacy of simultaneity; he cannot tolerate that simultaneous events in one frame (t'2-t'1=0) are not simultaneous events in another frame (t2-t1[ne]0). However, he mistakenly stated that it is mathematics that cannot tolerate it.

In option two, he asserts that
x2-x1 = v(t2-t1)
is always true... but, of course, this is not always true. In particular, it is true when the two events are on the trajectory of a particle, but the two considered events are not on the trajectory of a particle.


I imagine the rest would be even more nonsensical.

 

[quartodeciman]

Reference to A. Einstein's "On the Influence of Gravitation on the Propagation of Light" is an anachronism, being published before Einstein's learning about Riemannian geometry. In this paper, time is warped by different gravitational potential values at different places, while space remains serenely Euclidean. So Einstein had to assume a variable lightspeed c and attempted to develop a new gravitation law from that. That was all given up by the time Einstein got into second and third gear with General Relativity (late 1912 and on). The editors of the Principle of Relativity anthology probably included this paper in their collection in order to document Einstein's early conception of light-bending near the Sun.

See Pais,Subtle Is The Lord,Oxford(1982);p. 199,eq. 11.6 and pp. 202-203,eqs. 11.9-11.10

 

[Brad_Ad23]

I especially love the part where they screw up the equivallence principle. They say something along the lines that one cannot distinguish between a mass generated gravitational field and the mechanical acceleration of a steady body. In other words, acceleration is similar to gravity. I guess they forgot that this only applies for uniform fields. A mass gravity field is curved. Objects dropped will get closer together. Oops!