Physical Axioms and Attractive Forces

As the only happilly moronic reader of this board, I have to ask about the arctan, arcsin thing [] At "low' velocities, say 30 km per second, we can use either and get the same answer. It's only as we approach c that we get 45 or 90 degrees rotation, and one gives us a hypotinuese the other a rotated radius. If the speed of gravity is much faster than c, then we can still use either equation, because the angle is very small.

So, my question is, why did Lorentz use arcsin?

On the question of gold v the vacuum, this has to be a straw man argument, thermal photons are big diffuse things, they cover vast numbers of electrons in a metal but only one electron absorbs one photon. The vacuum on the other hand has one atom per cubic metre. Light is waving in something other than these atoms.

The simple answer for this thread, is that some of us have to stop playing, a gunfighter comes to town.

Stoat wrote: “I have to ask about the arctan, arcsin thing . At "low' velocities, say 30 km per second, we can use either and get the same answer. It's only as we approach c that we get 45 or 90 degrees rotation...”

The formula you’re referring to represents the aberration angle for a ray of light coming from a source located in a direction perpendicular to the direction of the observer’s motion. As the observer approaches the speed of light, a star located perpendicular to his velocity will appear to be located at the point directly ahead of him. The general expression, applicable to light ariving from sources located in ANY direction, shows that ALL the light appears to be coming from the point directly ahead as the observer’s speed approaches c. Also, the corresponding Doppler formula shows that the light approaches infinite blue-shift (so the energy of the incoming light goes to infinity) as the observer’s speed approaches c. These are the formulas that must be used in order to be consistent with empirical observation, and of course it differs drastically from what is predicted by the arctan formula.

Stoat wrote: “If the speed of gravity is much faster than c, then we can still use either equation, because the angle is very small. “

The point is that, according to Lorentzian relativity (as well as Einsteinian relativity), no mass, energy, or information can propagate faster than light. (Be careful not to confuse aberration of a propagating wave or particle with aberration of the direction of a force exerted by a static field.)

Stoat wrote: “On the question of gold v the vacuum, this has to be a straw man argument, thermal photons are big diffuse things, they cover vast numbers of electrons in a metal but only one electron absorbs one photon. The vacuum on the other hand has one atom per cubic metre. Light is waving in something other than these atoms.”

Again, the original poster said “All the waves we know about are waves in a material medium, so electromagnetism ought to be conveyed by a material medium too.” That reasoning isn’t valid, because we now know that all material media are constructed from electromagnetic fields, so it would be senseless to imagine that electromagnetic fields are constructed from a material medium. This is a “straw man” only if you say the original was NOT suggesting the electromagnetism must be conveyed by a material medium. But of course, that is precisely what he said, so it is not a straw man. It directly addresses his actual statement.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by nonneta</i>
<br />The point is that, according to Lorentzian relativity (as well as Einsteinian relativity), no mass, energy, or information can propagate faster than light.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">Would you be kind enough to get up to speed on Lorentzian relativity so I don't have to keep correcting you? LR has no speed limit [ metaresearch.org/cosmology/gravity/LR.asp ], and SR has been falsified. [“Experimental Repeal of the Speed Limit for Gravitational, Electrodynamic, and Quantum Field Interactions”, T. Van Flandern and J.P. Vigier, Found.Phys. 32:1031-1068 (2002). Preprint under title “The speed of gravity – Repeal of the speed limit” available at metaresearch.org/cosmology/gravity/speed_limit.asp ] These papers are background for most posts in this "Meta Science" forum. If you have an issue with the papers, raise that. But don't confuse ordinary posters with uninformed opinions. Thank you. -|Tom|-

I assure you my comments are not uninformed. Lorentzian relativity is a known commodity in the scientific community, and my descriptions of it are entirely accurate. I think the problem, as discussed previously, is that you are using the term "Lorentzian relativity" to refer to something completely different, and this inevitably leads to confusion. The theory known in the scientific community as Lorentzian relativity is empirically indistinguishable from Einsteinian relativity, and superluminal speeds are incompatible with either of these interpretations. On the other hand, the thing YOU call Lorentzian relativity is abundantly falsified by experiment, as was explained in detail earlier in this thread. You declined to address the self-contradiction in your ideas. Presumably if you were able to answer you would have answered, so as it stands, your ideas have been falsified.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by nonneta</i>
<br />The theory known in the scientific community as Lorentzian relativity is empirically indistinguishable from Einsteinian relativity, and superluminal speeds are incompatible with either of these interpretations.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">I assume this is one of those cases where you saw the term misused on the internet and came to think of it as a short form of "Lorentz Ether Theory". But it is easy to show me wrong. Just cite any journal article that uses the term "Lorentzian relativity" in the sense you claim, a theory with a speed limit (which not even the Lorentz Ether Theory had). So produce such citation or stand corrected.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">the thing YOU call Lorentzian relativity is abundantly falsified by experiment<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">Once again, to show you are not just blustering, a citation or logical argument please. I gave you my citations showing just the opposite on both points you made here. -|Tom|-

Lorentzian relativity is well known, sometimes called neo-Lorentzian relativity, and sometimes the Lorentzian pedegogy, or the Lorentzian interpretation. These all refer to the same thing, which you can read about in, for example, Whittaker's "History of the Theories of Aether and Electricity", Vol 2, in which he describes the theory of relativity developed by Lorentz and Poincare, up to and including relativistic theories of gravity. (Whittaker disapproved of and downplayed the Einsteinian interpretation.) The standard reference for "Neo-Lorentzian Relativity" is S. Prokhovnik, who wrote "The Logic of Special Relativity" (Princeton University Press) and also "The Case for an Aether". More recently, Harvey Brown and Oliver Pooley have written extensively advocating the Lorentzian approach to special relativity. Of course there is the article by J.S.Bell on "How to Teach Special Relativity", in which he argues for the Lorentzian pedagogy, i.e., the Lorentzian interpretation based on a single absolute time coordinate. There are also articles by D. Giulini, Stuckey, Silberstein, etc... And of course this is all on top of the writings of Poincare and Lorentz, including the latter's 1915 edition, in which he defends his absolutist approach to relativity vis a vis Einstein's approach.

I repeat, the term "Lorentzian relativity" is understood by the scientific community to refer to the interpretation of special relativity that asserts the existence of an absolute time coordinate and absolute simultaneity, and accounts for the relativistic effects in dynamical rather than kinematic terms. In its mature form, it is experimentally indistinguishable from special relativity. Needless to say (or so one would have thought), this implies that momentum and energy go to infinity as speed goes to c, as demonstrated daily in particle accelerators.

Now, in an attempt to evade the obvious falsification of your ideas, you've claimed that the electric force in a particle accelerator propagates only at the speed of light. But you also claim that the electric force must propagate much faster than the speed of light (because it has no first-order aberration). And when I repeatedly ask you to account for this evident self-contradiction, all you can say is you're too busy to answer. Forgive me for being underwhelmed by your defense of your ideas. (And I'm not even pressing you on your claim that it takes no energy to accelerate an object...)