Special relativity
This Natural Philosophy wiki page disputes content found on Wikipedia page wikipedia:Special relativity
| Scientific Theory | |
|---|---|
| Name | Special relativity |
| Type | Theory of space, time, and motion |
| Author(s) | Albert Einstein |
| Keywords | Relativity, special relativity, simultaneity, time dilation, length contraction, Lorentz transformation, E = mc2 |
| Year | 1905 |
Special relativity is the physical theory published by Albert Einstein in 1905 in the paper On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies. It describes the relationship between space and time for observers moving uniformly relative to one another, and it replaced the Galilean transformations of classical mechanics with the Lorentz transformations. In mainstream physics it is regarded as extensively confirmed by experiment; this wiki documents a substantial body of work that disputes it, collected in the criticisms section below.
Postulates
The theory is conventionally built on two postulates:
- Principle of relativity — the laws of physics take the same form in all inertial (non-accelerating) frames of reference.
- Constancy of the speed of light — light propagates in vacuum at the same speed c for all observers, regardless of the motion of the source or the observer.
Principal consequences
From these postulates the theory derives a number of well-known results:
- Relativity of simultaneity — events judged simultaneous in one inertial frame need not be simultaneous in another.
- Time dilation — a moving clock is observed to run slow relative to a stationary observer.
- Length contraction — a moving object is observed to be shortened along its direction of motion.
- Lorentz transformation — the equations relating the space and time coordinates of different inertial frames.
- Mass–energy equivalence — expressed by the relation E = mc2.
Criticisms of special relativity on this wiki
The community of the John Chappell Natural Philosophy Society, which maintains this wiki, has produced an extensive literature challenging special relativity. There have been hundreds of papers and dozens of books written on the refutation of special relativity over the last century. The arguments summarized below are drawn from works catalogued here and are attributed to their authors; they run contrary to the mainstream scientific consensus. Many more are indexed under Category:Relativity.
Logical and philosophical objections
A central line of criticism holds that the theory rests on logical and conceptual errors. In Fourteen Arguments Against Einstein's Theory of Special Relativity (1998), Francisco J Müller argues among other things that Einstein's 1905 derivation of the Lorentz transformations was never re-used even by Einstein, that the theory covertly requires a third postulate, that length contraction is as ad hoc as the earlier Lorentz–FitzGerald contraction, and that the relativity of simultaneity is logically invalid. He charges the theory with the "fallacy of misplaced concreteness" — treating space and time as substantive things — and with holding that one object can have different real lengths or ages for different observers, violating its objective identity. Related critiques of the theory's logical structure appear in John E Chappell's Crucial Flaws in Special Relativity: Logic and Simultaneity (1996) and Joseph F Cuny's A Refutation of Special Relativity (2002).
Mathematical objections
Several authors argue that the mathematics of the original derivation is itself defective, as in Are there Mathematical Errors in Einstein's 1905 Derivation of Special Relativity (SRT)? and Frequent Errors in Special Relativity. Objections include the integration of a purely numerical equation and the illegitimate transfer of a result obtained for a longitudinal light ray to the transverse case.
The twin paradox
Critics point to the twin paradox as a symptom of internal inconsistency: if each of two relatively moving observers sees the other's clock run slow, the theory appears to give contradictory predictions about which twin ages less. On this wiki the paradox is presented not as a resolved feature of the theory but as evidence that its treatment of time is incoherent.
Redundancy of reference frames
In the framework of Autodynamics, Dr. Ricardo Carezani argues that the concept of two or more frames of reference is redundant, both mathematically and physically, and proposes replacing special relativity with a single-frame formulation.
Preferred frame and asymmetric phenomena
A major objection is that several real effects are not symmetric between observers and therefore require a preferred (absolute) frame of reference that special relativity forbids — including the Doppler effect, the Sagnac effect, GPS timing, stellar aberration, and unipolar induction. On this view a Lorentzian or "absolute" interpretation is preferable to Einstein's; see Critical Flaws in Special Relativity and Its Possible Replacement by Doppler Concepts.
The mass–energy relation
Müller and others argue that Einstein's derivation of E = mc2 begs the question, and dispute the popular beliefs that the equation was the essential basis for the atomic bomb and that atomic energy arises from the transmutation of mass into energy.
The Sagnac effect and ring laser gyroscopes
The Sagnac effect — the travel-time difference between light beams sent in opposite directions around a rotating loop — is treated on this wiki as among the most direct experimental difficulties for special relativity, because the effect is real, first-order in v/c, and manufactured commercially. The orthodox reply, due to Paul Langevin, is that the rotating apparatus is non-inertial and that special relativity accounts for the effect exactly; critics reply that the effect nonetheless exhibits an anisotropic one-way speed of light, and that appeals to non-inertiality do not dispose of the problem.
The most striking testimony collected here comes from Cynthia Kolb Whitney, and carries unusual weight because she began as a defender of the theory with the credentials to defend it. Whitney took her MIT Ph.D. in mathematical physics in September 1967 with a thesis on special relativity itself — Pauli Algebra Techniques in Special Relativity, written under Laszlo Tisza — and in that same year joined the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, where she was assigned to the ring laser gyroscope, an instrument whose entire operating principle is the Sagnac effect. It was the first application of her doctoral subject to a working device. In her 2013 John Chappell Memorial Lecture she recorded the result:
The engineers did not believe in SRT. Some of them, including myself, were dealing with ring laser gyroscopes, which are based on the Sagnac effect. For SRT, the Sagnac effect is a very inconvenient physical truth. But I argued with those engineers for quite a while. In fact, I argued for a whole decade. And I lost.
Whitney subsequently became Editor of Galilean Electrodynamics and developed a revised model of light-signal propagation intended to yield the mathematics the Sagnac effect requires without the second postulate. She has also reported that Tisza later told her of MIT physics faculty voicing private doubts about the substance of special relativity at a departmental tea, one of them remarking that it would take decades to correct all of Einstein's mistakes.
Related arguments on this wiki include Ruyong Wang's report of a Sagnac-type travel-time difference in a uniformly moving fibre — published in the mainstream literature as Physics Letters A 312 (2003), pp. 7–10 — which removes rotation from the phenomenon altogether; Franco Selleri's argument that the infinite-radius limit of a rotating frame is locally inertial yet retains light-speed anisotropy; Alphonsus G Kelly's work on clock synchronization around a rotating Earth; and the question posed by Howard C Hayden and Whitney in "If Sagnac and Michelson-Gale, Why Not Michelson-Morley?" (1990) — if rotation is optically detectable, why is translation not? The full literature is gathered at Sagnac Effect.
Experimental challenges
Authors on this wiki argue that the experimental record contradicts the theory:
- In An Experimental Disproof of Special Relativity Theory (Unipolar Induction) (2003) and a series of related papers, Francisco J. Müller argues that experiments on unipolar induction — the effect of Faraday's 1832 unipolar inductor, or homopolar generator — directly falsify relativistic electrodynamics. Modifying the apparatus so that the whole circuit except one radial conductor is magnetically shielded, Müller reports electromotive force and motor action across field-free regions, where the local magnetic field is zero and a purely local field theory should predict nothing. By building a continuous magnet system that avoids all transversal magnet edges (his "edge effect"), he obtains induction where special relativity predicts none, and concludes that neither special nor general relativity can account for this "edge effect at a distance." Because Einstein's 1905 paper opens precisely with the magnet-and-conductor problem of moving-body electrodynamics, Müller presents unipolar induction as a disproof at the theory's own starting point.
- In Einstein's Time Dilation Experimentally Refuted (2009), Peter Ripota cites a 1996 entangled-photon experiment by Antoine Suarez and Valerio Scarani at CERN in which a rapidly rotating detector produced no expected phase shift, concluding that "there is no time dilation."
- In Data That Allegedly Proves Special Relativity Disproves It (2013), Nick Percival re-analyzes the GPS, Hafele–Keating, and muon-decay data usually cited in support of time dilation and argues that it does not support — and in places contradicts — special relativity.
Priority and originality
A separate strand of criticism holds that the key mathematics of the theory was developed earlier by Hendrik Lorentz and Henri Poincaré, so that special relativity was not original to Einstein; see Errors Before Einstein.
Systematic catalogues
The scale of the dissenting literature is itself documented here. Chapter 2 - Catalogue of Errors for Both Theories of Relativity (2012), translated from the documentation of G O Mueller, surveys "95 years of criticism (1908–2003)" and identifies some 3,789 critical works.