Happy Birthday, Special Relativity

[clj4]

From the list only :

http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/physics/pdf/0503/0503227.pdf

is a complete derivation of special relativity and I am not sure it is correct (it has not been peered reviewed). Anybody cared to review it? Should be an interesting exercise. A brief look over it and it appears that this paper has the c'=c assumption accidentally hidden which would make it irrelevant.

Here is one mistake in the above paper:

in deriving equation (10) in paragraph III(B) the authors are already PRESUPOSING constant c when going from the primed system (equation (9)) to the unprimed system (equation (10)). This is a classical error in such papers that attempt to do away with c'=c , the authors simply reintroduce c'=c in a sureptitious way.
Wolfgang Pauli and R.C.Tolman (among many others) tried in vain to construct a special relativity without the second postulate. Looks like a ver difficult task, unlikely that it would succeed.

 

[clj4]

Special Relativity is amazing and although it is its' 100th Birthday today, I predict that General Relativity will not live to its centennial, and will be revised sometime before 2016.

Hmm,

You may have to rethink your statement after the results of Gravity Probe B are published this year.

 

[clj4]

How about a moratorium on amateur attempts to falsify it? No more trains, twins, spaceships,...

Well, how do you stop the kooks that keep hoping to disprove SR?
How do you stop the kooks that want to go back to Newton?
And how do you stop the kooks that claim that he plagiarized his theories?
How do you stop the kooks with "alternative" theories?
No other field has brought out so many kooks...

 

[clj4]

Trains, spaceships, etc... help us understand the consequences.

Here are some ideas for a "birthday present for SR":

1) draw more spacetime diagrams and appeal to geometry,
2) adopt consistent and unambiguous terminology [definitions!], and
3) eliminate poor phrases and poor analogies.

I think (1) helps make the algebraic calculations more concrete.
I think (2) gives us a common language.
I think (3) removes "myths" and other "folklore".
Otherwise, folks are arguing over semantics, often misusing or misinterpreting mathematical symbols.

(When we analyze forces on an object, we draw [or should be drawing] Free Body Diagrams before plopping down equations. We should do the same for analyzing situations in relativity.)

4) drop the word "Theory" when discussing Special Relativity.
$$\mbox{Theory of\hspace{-9ex}{\color{red}-------------} Special Relativity}$$
$$\mbox{Special Theory of\hspace{-9ex}{\color{red}-------------} Relativity}$$
$$\mbox{Special Relativity Theory\hspace{-7ex}{\color{red}-----------}}$$

All very good and practical ideas, they should work on normal people.
What can we use to make the kooks go away?

 

[clj4]

Sir Joseph Larmorr (Lormar?) developed an ether theory superficially consistent with classical physics, and thus, in the first decade of the 20th century, Cambridge theoretical physicists dismissed Einsein's approach as both unnecessary and overly philosophical.

However, when GR came along, Larmor's theory was shown to fail miserably when trying to accommodate effects of gravitation. That is why his project was abandoned.

Larmor is the correct one.

 

[robert Ihnot]

selfAdjoint: How about a moratorium on amateur attempts to falsify it? No more trains, twins, spaceships,...

Not a chance! Those trains, twins, spaceship...are things Einstein used to explain his theory. Kitty Hawk was Dec 1903; the speed of the plane thought to be something like 12 miles/hr. To the young Einstein, trains were the things he saw and thought of as going fast.