Did Weber's Electrodynamics Challenge Traditional Physics Theories?

[Prune]

[Note: my first post attempt gave me an error message, so I think it didn't go through as I don't see it showing up in the forum; apologies if this ends up duplicate and in that event please delete one copy.]

The site I found this on is pretty crackpot, but I'm interested in debunking this particular article:
http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/articles/spring01/Electrodynamics.html

According to a more reliable source, http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/SpeedOfLight/c.html "That continued until the 1870s, when Helmholtz discredited Weber's force law on the grounds of energy conservation, and Maxwell's more complete theory of propagating waves prevailed."

However, from the first link:
"The immediate topic is Helmholtz’s objection, that Weber’s Electrical Law could lead to the possibility of infinite work arising from a finite amount of work. Weber shows that for Helmholtz’s fears to be realized, electrical particles would have to move at enormous relative velocities, exceeding the constant c. He thus arrives at a concept of a limiting velocity, quite similar to that found 35 years later in the Special Theory of Relativity, yet arrived at by an entirely different process than that which leads Einstein to this assumption."
Can someone comment on this?

Even more audaciously, near the end he mentions another "accomplishment of Weber, the refutation of Clausius’ thermodynamics and the Helmholtz Energy Principle.[16]"
Well, I see that the Smithsonian Libraries has the reference [16], but in the original German, and unlike some of the other Weber works, I can find neither a translation nor online version.

Thanks in advance for anyone that can clear up my confusions with this.

 

[Prune]

What the... why was this moved from the Scepticism and debunking forum where I originally posted it? Looking at the vast majority of other posts in this General forum, they're not about physics at all. So I must protest at this seemingly meaningless move!

 

[Ivan Seeking]

If you read the posting guidelines in S&D, you will see that it is for potentially unexplained phenomenon only.
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=5929

This is more a general discussion subject than anything.

 

[Chris Hillman]

Yeah, it's cranky, and with a political agenda to boot

Hi, Prune, I agree that this is, or should be, a thread debunking incorrect assertions at a particular website, so I would also have assumed that Scepticism and Debunking was the proper subforum, but that's probably a question for the Feedback subforum!

Anway, to the point, sort of kind of:

The site you mentioned seems to be run by one Laurence Hecht, who is named as "Editor in Chief" of "21st Century Science & Technology" magazine. This website appears to be associated with the Lyndon LaRouche movement, as do a handful of other nominally physics-related sites:
www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/articles/Summer03/Youth.html

Science and the LaRouche Youth Movement
We have now around us, in a social-political and intellectual process that
has chosen to name itself the LaRouche Youth Movement, a core grouping of several...Please join us in helping to shape the intellectual leaders of this
abandoned, "no future" generation, into the Renaissance generation they wish to become. You have nothing to lose but your pessimism and despair.

It is rather obviously cranky. A typical clue:
www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/articles/spring01/Electrodynamics.html
is an editorial signed by Hecht which opens

An iron curtain divides the subjects of gravity and electrodynamics, in today's academically accepted versions of physics. Those attempting to cross it will risk the intellectual equivalent of machine-gun fire...Yet, if the real history of physics of the 19th century were known, most of what passes as teaching of fundamental topics in that discipline today, would be shown to be, in the best of cases, misdirected, in the worst, willful fraud.

Strong stuff indeed!

In addition to attempting to resurrect discredited work by Ritz and Weber attacking Maxwell's theory (some anti-relativity nuts recognize that to "exorcise" relativity from physics, at the very least you would need to "exorcise" Maxwell's theory of EM, so they try to do just that), and supporting cranky notions that gravitation is an electromagnetic effect, etc., the site advocates a weird "nuclear model" of one Robert J. Moon. But the site is hostile to the Unification Church, aka "the Moonies":
www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/articles/wint02-03/Moonification.html

Moonification of the Sciences
Today, this lunatic leader of a mass cult is the titular head of a multitrillion-dollar, worldwide apparatus of government influence-peddling and control that knows no equal. Moon literally owns whole countries in South America and Asia. His apparatus is rapidly buying up the U.S. Congress, the Presidency, and all potential opposition forces of left, right, and center. Moon?s stock-in-trade is cash and sex-- lots of it. The cash comes from the worldwide drug- and gun-running operations, part of which came to the surface in the Iran-Contra scandal: cocaine from the South American trade run under cover of the Moon-linked CAUSA group; heroin from Afghanistan and the Far East, laundered through dirty-money operations of the Moon cult that overlapped Ollie North's extracurricular activities while at the National Security Council.

Evidently there is nothing one personality cult hates so much as another personality cult

I spotted one article in this magazine which looked like an attempt to revive Kepler's notion of the "harmony of the spheres". That probably sounds incredible, but it is in fact not implausible at a site like this. Certainly I know of at least one other crank with a "Bode's Law" fixation. Another crank has declared his opposition to the Copernican system, another to Galilean kinematics, still another to the Round Earth theory (no, it seems he wasn't joking).

As far as the specifics of debunking the claims you cite go, I don't think I can offer anything more authoritative than the sci.physics FAQ, but since I raised the issue of connections between 21stcenturysciencetech.com and Lyndon LaRouche, I should perhaps state that although John Baez and I have both contributed to the FAQ we constitute three distinct entities.

 

[Prune]

Of course, despite the hosting site being cranky (and I noticed the association with LaRouche, as I found this site linked from another LaRouche site) and that fact having some weight when I'm unqualified to evaluate specific claims directly, Weber himself certainly has not been regarded as a crackpot by any reference I've found. So I really want to get to the bottom of this, despite the case almost certainly being that Weber had errors and/or the article is misrepresenting his claims.

Where else can I look for help with this?

[Edit:] I had posted this question at a chemistry forum, and someone pointed out the following paper:
J. J. Caluzi and A. K. T. Assis. "A Critical Analysis of Helmholtz's Argument against Weber's Electrodynamics." Foundations of Physics, Vol. 27, No. 10, 1997. http://www.ifi.unicamp.br/~assis/Found-Phys-V27-p1445-1452(1997).pdf

I'm not sure if their defense of Weber holds water as I'm not a physicist. If anyone here is familiar with this field perhaps they can comment. In any case, that addresses only the first question I was having, that of whether Helmholtz validly discounted Weber's electrodynamic theory, and this paper argues he did not. But the more interesting claim regarding thermodynamics from above remains and I've not found any reference discussing it.

 

[Chris Hillman]

I think I've already said all I have to say

Of course, despite the hosting site being cranky (and I noticed the association with LaRouche, as I found this site linked from another LaRouche site) and that fact having some weight when I'm unqualified to evaluate specific claims directly, Weber himself certainly has not been regarded as a crackpot by any reference I've found.

Prune, nobody called Weber a crackpot. There's a huge difference between proposing a rival theory in Maxwell's time and promoting a scientifically discredited theory in our time.

I deplore attempts to hijack science for political goals, regardless of how "laudable" or "deplorable" I or anyone else might consider those goals. I feel that PF might be one place where puzzled students or science teachers might ask questions about specific sites, but I don't want to see PF drawn into essentially political conflicts under the pretext that some pseudophysics might be tangentially involved. Just so you know.

 

[Prune]

I simply don't care about the political side, and I don't know why you keep bringing it up. I didn't come here to discuss politics. You're quoting the part of my post that was not a question, and replying to it when no reply was necessary, and thus trying to turn this into a political discussion. My question in that post was asking for comments on the Assis paper. Unless you think Foundations is a fringe journal, which you're free to say.

 

[JANm]

In one thread of this site (two questions) there arose a constant force (as What if?). Webers constant is yet not allowed here, but I am very interested in what an integral of gammma^2*dv/dt is if a constant force is excerted...

 

[WarPhalange]

LaRouchies are to be terminated on sight. They came into my friends' QM class with a sign that said "F = MA is Bull****" or something like that and saying "Are you going to believe this old man?"

They are idiots because they likely DROVE to school, and constantly annoy people with their CELL PHONES. To explain both of those things is to utilize a huge chunk of physics right there.

 

[JANm]

LaRouchies are to be terminated on sight. They came into my friends' QM class with a sign that said "F = MA is Bull****" or something like that and saying "Are you going to believe this old man?"

They are idiots because they likely DROVE to school, and constantly annoy people with their CELL PHONES. To explain both of those things is to utilize a huge chunk of physics right there.

Dear WP,
What in heavens name are LaRouchies... with cell phones? Do they take those with them? Am I one of them? You mean Newton with "this old man"?

Three questions you have given me!

Good Night.

 

[Proton Soup]

prune, i think if he knew the answer, he would have told you.

 

[JANm]

Who is he?
It is not appropriate to speak of somebody in the third form If HE is present.
Secondly what kind of mystical speach is used here?

 

[JANm]

Electron Soup

 

[WarPhalange]

Dear WP,
What in heavens name are LaRouchies...

Followers of Lynden LaRouch. They came into my friends' QM class with a sign that said Newton's laws weren't true.

with cell phones?

My counter-point to their argument of "Newton's laws don't work". Why do they think satellites work, then? It's not God keeping them afloat in space. And cell phones need satellites.

Do they take those with them? Am I one of them? You mean Newton with "this old man"?

What.

 

[Proton Soup]

now you're just being silly. an electron soup will never do, in fact, i can tell you that it is absolutely repulsive.

 

[Vanadium 50]

LaRouchies are to be terminated on sight.

I don't like them either, but I wouldn't advocate murdering them "on sight".

 

[JANm]

now you're just being silly. an electron soup will never do, in fact, i can tell you that it is absolutely repulsive.

In old TV's there is electron soup...

No I had been reading Weber for about one and a half hour and then your message came on my screen (Led-based...). I wanted to say things about the style in which he worked, like:
I always thought it was Faraday alone as the experimenter who connected: Volta, Ampere, Coulomb, etc and that Maxwell was the one who put those things in mathematical form. I was familiar with Gauss *. I did not know that his assistent was in this context perhaps a Faraday and a Maxwell at the same time...

Such carefully experimenting with combinations of direction of currents, open mind to what are the results, putting results in interesting numbers. Integrity...

* Gauss book of (I translate the title here freely) what if the planet orbits were threads with a mass density proportional to the time they reside there...
I read this book and calculated the gravity center of the ellipses...