Extinction Shift Principle

Scientific Theory
Name	Extinction Shift Principle
Type	Emission theory; classical alternative to special and general relativity
Author(s)	Edward Henry Dowdye, Jr.
Keywords	emission theory, Galilean transformations, Euclidean space, gravitational lensing, solar plasma, Walter Ritz
Year	1991 (first edition)
Website	http://www.extinctionshift.com/

The Extinction Shift Principle is a purely classical emission theory developed by Edward Henry Dowdye, Jr., a laser optics physicist retired from NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. It proposes that the phenomena attributed to special and general relativity can be derived instead from the principles of optics, using Galilean transformations of velocities in Euclidean space geometry — with no spacetime curvature, no length contraction and no time dilation.

Dowdye presents it as a revival of a lapsed tradition. Emission theories — in which light is emitted at speed c relative to its source rather than relative to an absolute frame — were pursued in the early twentieth century, most notably by Walter Ritz (1878–1909), and largely abandoned after his death. Dowdye describes himself as the only emission theorist still working today, and his version differs from the earlier ones in an important respect: where Ritz and his contemporaries applied emission ideas to electromagnetism, the Extinction Shift Principle applies them to gravitation as well, and so challenges general relativity and special relativity together.

The principle

The name refers to the extinction of the original light signal and its re-emission by the intervening medium — the classical optical process by which light entering a medium is absorbed and re-radiated by the particles of that medium, taking on the velocity characteristics of the new source. In Dowdye's treatment this process, rather than the geometry of spacetime, accounts for the observed behaviour of light near massive bodies.

The framework is deliberately conservative in its mathematics. It uses Galilean velocity addition, ordinary Euclidean geometry, and the established principles of optics; what it rejects is the interpretive layer built on top of them. In his book Dowdye works through a series of problems normally treated as relativistic territory and offers classical solutions for each:

• the invariance of the wave equations;
• the Sagnac effect;
• gravitational redshift;
• solar light bending;
• the perihelion shift of Mercury;
• the perihelion shift of the binary pulsar PSR 1913+16.

The lensing argument

The theory's most testable consequence, and the one Dowdye has pursued hardest in the published data, is that gravitational lensing does not take place in empty vacuum space.

The argument turns on the impact parameter — the perpendicular distance of closest approach of a light ray to the Sun. Under general relativity the deflection of starlight should decrease smoothly with increasing impact parameter and remain readily detectable well beyond the Sun's thin plasma rim, out in the vacuum. Dowdye's reading of the observations is that deflection appears only at the minimum impact parameter corresponding to the solar plasma limb, and not beyond it.

That distribution, he argues, is the signature of refraction in the ionised plasma atmosphere of the Sun. Light bending is an optical effect in a medium; where there is no medium, there is no bending. Two further lines support the reading:

• the Shapiro delay shows microwave propagation delays that are frequency-dependent as well as impact-parameter dependent — frequency dependence being characteristic of a plasma, whereas a gravitational effect should be achromatic;
• observations at the galactic centre show no time-resolved gravitational lensing event at Sagittarius A* of the kind general relativity predicts.

Dowdye draws the general conclusion that astrophysical evidence shows no direct interaction between gravitation and electromagnetism in empty vacuum space.

The form of this argument distinguishes it from much of the critical literature. It does not dispute the measurements; it disputes whether their pattern — where deflection appears, where it does not, and how it varies with frequency — fits gravitation or plasma optics better. It is therefore checkable against data that both sides accept.

Publication and reception

The theory is set out in Discourses & Mathematical Illustrations Pertaining to the Extinction Shift Principle under the Electrodynamics of Galilean Transformations, published in editions from 1991 through 2001 and 2012, and summarised in "Extinction Shift Principle: A Purely Classical Alternative to General and Special Relativity", Physics Essays (2007). Dowdye has also published in Astronomische Nachrichten and presented at Electric Universe conferences.

It was set as a graduate seminar project in mathematics and physics at the Karlsruhe Institut für Technologie in Germany for two consecutive years, 2007 and 2008, under Dr. Edgar Kaucher, professor of applied mathematics and physics (retired) — an unusual degree of institutional engagement for a theory of this kind.

The conclusions are not accepted in mainstream astrophysics, which regards gravitational lensing as confirmed across a wide range of scales — solar deflection measurements, cluster lensing, and microlensing surveys — including in settings where no significant plasma is present. That last point is the natural test to put to the theory, and it is where the dispute rests.

Related work on this wiki

The Extinction Shift Principle belongs to the broader family of classical alternatives documented here. It shares its Galilean commitment with Curtis E Renshaw's Galilean-Newtonian relativity and its rejection of curved spacetime with Glenn Borchardt's neomechanics, though it differs from both in being an emission theory. Its reliance on plasma refraction rather than gravitation connects it to the plasma-centred approaches of the Electric Universe community. Papers on the emission-theory tradition more generally appear on this wiki as the Re-Developing Emission Theory series.

See also

• Edward Henry Dowdye — the author
• Discourses & Mathematical Illustrations Pertaining to the Extinction Shift Principle under the Electrodynamics of Galilean Transformations — the book
• General relativity
• Special relativity
• Sagnac Effect

External links

• Extinction Shift Principle — the theory's website
• Significant Findings