Relativity theory is dead

Scientific Paper
Title	Relativity theory is dead
Read in full	Link to paper
Author(s)	Joe Alexander Nahhas
Keywords	relativity, Einstein, General, special, Mercury, perihelion, Shaprio, mass, length, contractio
Published	1977
No. of pages	12

Read the full paper here

Abstract

A detailed proof that Relativistic experimental proofs means signal measurements time delays visual effects; meaning that the claims of modern physcis and physicists of past 150 yeras are not only wrong but silly to say the least and at the top of them is Einstein.

Overview

Joe Nahhas presents this document as a "Relativity Theory Death Certificate". Its thesis is that every classical test of relativity measures not a physical effect but a visual one — the delay between an event happening and its being seen — and that once these "real time relativistic delays" are subtracted, nothing is left for either special or general relativity to explain. The framework is announced in a few lines: "Present time = past time + real time delays", so that "real time physics = event time physics + real time relativistic delays", and "what happened in an event is absolute".

The technical apparatus is a single device applied throughout. Every physical quantity is written as a state S = mr — mass times location — and given a complex time factor, S = m(0)r(0) e^{[λ + iω]t}, in which λ is a decay rate and ω a rotation rate. Measurement is taken to project this complex quantity onto the line of sight, and the projection is evaluated at the moment ωT = arctan(v/c). What relativists call length contraction, time dilation, perihelion advance, the Shapiro delay, the Pound–Rebka shift and light bending are, on this account, all the same trigonometric projection appearing in different dress. Nahhas applies the resulting formula to seven target phenomena, produces numbers for each, and closes with a list of eleven binary star systems he says the same formula solves.

The argument

The projection formula

Writing S = r e^λt(cos ωt + i sin ωt), the component along the line of measurement is S_x = r e^λt√[1 − sin²ωt] and the perpendicular component S_y = r e^λt sin ωt. Setting the decay rate λ = 0 and evaluating at ωT = arctan(v/c) gives

S_x = r √[1 − sin²(arctan(v/c))]

which for v ≪ c reduces to r√[1 − (v/c)²]. Nahhas identifies this as "Lorentz's length contraction 150 years historical mistake" — the same algebraic form arrived at without any physical contraction, purely as the foreshortening of a rotating vector seen edge-on. Substituting S_x = cΓ and r = ct gives Γ = t√[1 − (v/c)²], which he labels the time-dilation mistake, and replacing v/c by 1/n for propagation in a medium of refractive index n yields a delay he applies to the 1953 Reines–Cowan neutrino experiment at Savannah River, quoting a range of roughly 4.7 to 5 μs against the experiment's 25 μs window and calling the residue the "historical dark energy mistake".

Perihelion advance

The longest development concerns orbits. Taking the areal velocity |S×P/2| = |r×v/2| e^2[λ+iω]t and projecting it, the real part falls short of the Newtonian r²θ'/2 by −r²θ' sin²ωt, which for small v/c is −r²θ'(v/c)². Converting to arc seconds per century for an ellipse of eccentricity ε and period T in days gives the paper's master formula:

W ″ = −(720 × 36526 × 3600/T) × [√(1 − ε²)/(1 − ε)²] × [(v° + v*)/c]²

where v* is the orbital velocity and v° the spin velocity of the observer. For Mercury, with ε = 0.206, T = 88 days, v* = 47.9 km/s and v° = 0.3 km/s for a European observer, this returns 43.10 arc sec per century — "400 years of wrong Astronomy", in the paper's heading. The same formula applied to Venus is quoted as 7.6192 arc sec per century, and is said to solve the apsidal motion of eleven binary systems including DI Herculis, V1143 Cygni and CM Draconis.

The other four general-relativistic tests

Three variants follow. GPS is handled by the same expression rescaled to seconds per day. Interplanetary radar delay is replaced by what Nahhas calls the Nahhas constant, Γ(0) = 16πGM/c³ = 247.597 μs, modified by a factor [1 ± v°/v*]² to give 250 μs for the Mars round trip, "Shapiro's historical mistake". Pound–Rebka is treated as an aberration effect: projecting the wavelength gives Δλ/λ = −(v/c)² with v² = 2gh, so for h = 22.5 m the fractional frequency shift is 4.93×10⁻¹⁵. Light bending is obtained from the same areal-velocity projection as Δθ = 4(v/c)² with v² = GM/R at the solar limb, giving 1.757857″; the 1936 Soviet eclipse value of 2.74″ is then recovered by multiplying by an area factor set equal to π/2.

Mass, energy and the closing polemic

Two short sections dispose of E = mc². In the first, the complex velocity P = [v + iωr]e^iωt is squared with v = ωr = c, giving E = (m/2)[c² − c² + 2ic²]e^2iωt; taking moduli, E = (m/2)(2c²) = mc². In the second, requiring mP_x = m(0)v with P_x = v√[1 − (v/c)²] yields m = m(0)/√[1 − (v/c)²] and hence mc² ≈ m(0)c² + mv²/2. The paper closes with the claim that special relativity has "scientific value of less than two dollars in food stamps" and that dark energy constituting eight-ninths of the universe is a further consequence of building on visual effects.

Assessment

There is a defensible instinct at the bottom of this paper. Every astronomical measurement is a measurement of light that left its source in the past, light-time corrections are applied routinely, and asking which parts of a relativistic effect are propagation artefacts is a legitimate question — one that Ritz, and later emission theorists, pressed seriously. The paper also does its arithmetic, which is worth checking rather than dismissing, and several of the individual computations are correct as arithmetic: 16πGM_⊙/c³ is indeed 247.6 μs, 4GM_⊙/Rc² is indeed 1.75″, 2gh/c² for h = 22.5 m is indeed 4.9×10⁻¹⁵, and the Mercury number does follow from the stated inputs — 94,675,392,000/88 × 1.552 × (48.2/300000)² = 43.1.

But those last three are not results the paper has won from relativity; they are relativity's own predictions rewritten. 4GM/Rc² is Einstein's 1915 deflection formula, and 2gh/c² is precisely what general relativity gives for the difference between the upward and downward shifts, which is what Pound and Rebka in fact measured. Reproducing a prediction is not refuting it. The same holds for the mass section: starting from mP_x = m(0)v the paper derives m = m(0)/√[1 − (v/c)²], the relativistic mass formula exactly, and then E ≈ m(0)c² + mv²/2 — the very relation being denounced. The "visual E = mc²" derivation is worse than redundant: it obtains (m/2)(c² − c² + 2ic²), discards the real part because it is zero, then takes the modulus of the imaginary part alone to turn mc²/2 into mc². The factor of 2 comes from |2i| = 2, not from physics.

The central kinematic claim can be checked and fails. Since sin(arctan β) = β/√(1 + β²), the paper's own S_x = r√[1 − sin²(arctan β)] is exactly r/√(1 + β²), which agrees with r√(1 − β²) only to order β² and diverges from it completely as β → 1: the Lorentz factor goes to zero, Nahhas's projection to r/√2. The corresponding "dilation" factor can therefore never exceed √2 ≈ 1.414. This is directly measured. In the CERN muon storage ring (Bailey et al., 1977) circulating muons at γ = 29.33 were found to live 29.33 times longer than muons at rest, to a precision of two parts in a thousand; the same factor is read off daily in the flight lengths of unstable particles at collider experiments. A kinematics capped at √2 cannot accommodate a measured factor of 29. No amount of reinterpreting the observation as "visual" changes the count of surviving muons.

The orbital formula fails a different and more revealing test — one internal to the paper. For a near-circular orbit the paper's coefficient is 4π(v/c)² per revolution, whereas general relativity gives 6π(v/c)²: a shortfall of exactly one third. Mercury conceals this because at ε = 0.206 the factor √(1−ε²)/(1−ε)² = 1.552 happens to make up most of the difference. Venus, at ε ≈ 0.007, cannot conceal it, and the paper's Venus entry is where the machinery visibly breaks down. It states "ε = .206" — Mercury's eccentricity, not Venus's 0.0068 — while actually using a factor of 1.00761 that corresponds to ε ≈ 0.004; it gives Venus's period as 244.7 days, when the correct value is 224.7; and it inflates the velocity to 41.94 km/s by adding 6.52 km/s and an observer spin term to Venus's orbital speed of 35.02 km/s. Recomputing the paper's own formula with the correct period and orbital velocity gives 5.82 arc sec per century, against the measured Venus perihelion advance of 8.6 arc sec per century — the missing third, exactly as the 4π-versus-6π comparison predicts. The published 7.62 is reached only through the substituted period and the padded velocity. The same padding appears for Mercury, where adding the Earth-bound observer's 0.3 km/s rotation speed to Mercury's orbital speed has no physical justification and moves the answer from 42.6 to 43.1.

Three smaller problems compound this. The Shapiro treatment replaces a quantity that varies logarithmically with the impact parameter by a single constant, 247.6 μs; but the Viking lander ranging of 1976–79 traced the delay continuously through superior conjunction and matched the general-relativistic curve to about 0.1 per cent, and the Cassini measurement of 2002 reached one part in 10⁵ — a fixed number cannot reproduce a measured curve. The 1936 eclipse value of 2.74″ is fitted by an area factor of π/2 introduced for that purpose alone and used nowhere else. And the paper's opening list gives the GPS relativistic offset as "45 micro second per century"; the figure is 45 μs per day for the gravitational term, against which 7 μs/day of kinematic dilation is subtracted to give the 38 μs/day actually programmed into the satellite clocks — an error of seven orders of magnitude in a quantity the argument depends on. The Reines–Cowan numbers are also mislabelled: the quoted 4.7–5 μs is the difference t − Γ(x), not Γ(x) as the equation states.

Finally, the paper is written as invective rather than as argument — "100,000 living physicists", "physics for dummies and for dummies only", "less than two dollars in food stamps" — and the tone is not incidental, because it substitutes for the checks the work most needs. A projection formula that reproduces Mercury to a tenth of an arc second is a result worth taking seriously; the honest next step is to test it on Venus, Earth, Icarus and the binaries at their true parameters and report what comes out. The paper announces that it has done so for eleven binaries without showing a single one of the calculations, and the one additional planet it does show contains three substituted values. On its own numbers, the theory is a third short.

See also

• Joe Alexander Nahhas
• Special Relativity
• General Relativity
• Perihelion Precession of Mercury
• Length Contraction
• Time Dilation
• Muon
• GPS
• Gravitational Lensing
• Speed of Light
• Dark Energy