A Critique of the Einstein Model
| Scientific Paper | |
|---|---|
| Title | A Critique of the Einstein Model |
| Read in full | Link to paper |
| Author(s) | Rati Ram Sharma |
| Keywords | Einstein, Lorentz transformations, photoelectric effect, gravitational field, Special Relativity |
| Published | 2009 |
| No. of pages | 10 |
Read the full paper here
Abstract
A wave exists only in its propagating medium but Einstein erred to discard the medium for light wave and to introduce the non-existent 4-D spacetime continuum instead. It denied him the chance to address the intrinsic wave-quantum Unity of light and predict the new entity of 'basic substance' to compose all forms of E & m so compellingly demanded for the interconversions of E & m by the eqn. E=mc2, which is now re-derived. Unified Theory gives cogent arguments and experimental support for the existence of a real physical medium in space, the allcomposing & all-pervading 'sharmon medium' as Basic Substance. It propagates light as a wavequantum UNITY. The non-substantive abstract concepts of space & time evolve from our perceptions of successive motions & changes in the surrounding objects and cannot fuse into any concrete spacetime continuum. If existent it would retard motion of heavenly bodies and of even photons to propagate light, which is not actually observed. The non-composite static spacetime cannot undulate to transmit light. Various multidimensional spacetime continua are mere mathematical constructs and theories based on them unrealistic. Unified Theory explains from sharmon medium the constancy & invariance to source-observer motion, the two pillar postulates of Special Relativity without validating SR. It explains the Michelson-Morley and Sagnac experiments as also the observed variability of light velocity and superluminality, which invalidate Relativity Theories. Lorentz transformations do not describe any natural motion since no velocity can vary (like v) with, and be invariant (like c) to, a source-observer motion at the same time. The actual length of an object, viewed by say, 100 differently moving observers cannot undergo 100 different objective contractions at the same time, making 'contraction of length' an unrealistic concept. So is 'dilatation of time'. But the results of Gravity Probe-A are consistent with Unified Theory. Unified Theory re-explains Photoelectric Effect and Bending of Light in a Gravitational field, proving that photon has a gravitational mass and gravitation is not a curvature of nonexistent spacetime continuum. In Unified Theory, as against Relativity, no particle or energy quantum is massless or sizeless point.
Overview
This is a chapter from Sharma's Realistic Foundations of Physics & Cosmology, presented as a systematic audit of what he calls the "Einstein Model" — not the mathematics of relativity but the conceptual assumptions underneath it. Sharma first sets out a "Maxwell Model" and a "Planck Model" as the forerunners, then reduces the Einstein Model to eleven lettered propositions (a)–(k), and finally answers each from his own Unified Physical Theory.
The theory offered in place of relativity is a material aether with a name: the sharmon medium. Sharmons are built from two "micromost" charged elements, the positrino and negatrino, collectively cosminos, out of which every form of mass and energy is said to be composed. On this account there is no massless particle, no sizeless point particle, and no photon in the conventional sense; and the constancy of c is not a postulate but a consequence of the fixed permittivity and permeability of the medium. Where the mainstream treats spacetime as the arena and the field as fundamental, Sharma treats space and time as abstractions derived from perception — the concept of space from successive perceptions of "there, here, there", time from "then, now, then" — and the medium as the only substance.
The argument
The three models
The Maxwell Model is reduced to four propositions, of which the load-bearing one is that c = (ε0μ0)−1/2 and is constant because ε0 and μ0 are. Sharma's complaint is that this created "the seed idea of a wave without its propagating medium". The Planck Model contributes quantised exchange, E = hν, and — through the Stefan-Boltzmann law giving zero energy density at T = 0 — the supposed possibility of an absolutely empty vacuum. Einstein then extended quantisation from emission and absorption to propagation, which Sharma reads as a revival of Newton's corpuscular theory.
Against the continuum
The central objection to the spacetime continuum is stated as a physical, not a philosophical, one: "the existence of any continuum would have retarded, nay prevented, the motion of heavenly bodies through it, which is not actually observed". A non-composite static continuum, Sharma adds, cannot undulate, so it cannot carry light. He extends the objection to the 5-, 10-, 11- and higher-dimensional continua of later theories, all of which he calls mathematical constructs.
The sharmon medium
Numbers are supplied. A cosmino has diameter 1.6 × 10−33 cm — the Planck length — mass 2.596 × 10−48 g, charge ±1.3729 × 10−30 esu and spin ±½. The sharmon, made of two cosminos, has mass 5.192 × 10−48 g and spin 0 or 1. The time-averaged inter-sharmon distance is ~10−5 cm, giving a number density ns ~ 1015 cm−3, and the medium is described as "a kinetic gas". Light is propagated as an "energized 1-spin sharmon" handed contiguously from neighbour to neighbour: the carriers do not themselves travel, so the transmission is a wave-quantum unity rather than a wave-or-quantum duality. Because light "begins creatively at the origin and ends vanishingly at the terminus", both events in the medium, its speed is independent of both source and observer motion — the two postulates of Special relativity recovered without the theory.
Applications
- Photoelectric Effect: with the energised sharmon replacing the photon, E = hν − w. Sharma states that this "is exactly the well-known Einstein equation".
- Sagnac Effect: he gives the beam time difference as dt = 2πrn/c, with r the platform radius and n the rotations per second, and claims no other account is as natural.
- Superluminality: for the Wang, Kuzmich and Dogariu caesium-gas experiment, L = 6 cm gives L/c = 0.2 ns, and the observed 62 ns advance gives (ng − 1) = −310, hence ng = −309 and vg = −c/309. These he attributes to local changes in the medium's ε0 and μ0.
- Bending of light: the photon's sharmons have mass, so the beam falls under g = GM/R2 for a transit time t = 2R/c, giving s = ½gt2 = 2GM/c2 and a deflection s/D = 2GM/Dc2.
- Aether drift: Dayton Miller's non-null results, as reviewed by James DeMeo, are read as the drag of the sharmon medium by the Earth's spin and orbital motion.
Against the Lorentz transformations
The rejection is not mathematical. Sharma argues that c and v are kinematically incommensurable — one invariant to source-observer motion, the other not — so no formula combining them describes real motion. And he presses a realist objection to contraction: one object viewed by a hundred differently moving observers cannot undergo a hundred different objective contractions at once. Time dilatation falls with it. He also holds that E = km need not have k = c2 in general, since conversion efficiency in irreversible processes is below 100%.
Assessment
The paper is clear about what it is doing and honest about the standing of its rivals, and the parts of the arithmetic that can be checked line by line are mostly right. The caesium-gas numbers are correct: 6 cm / c really is 0.2 ns, and a 62 ns advance really does give a group index of about −310, which is what Wang and colleagues reported in 2000. The photoelectric formula is correct. The algebra of the falling-photon calculation, ½(GM/R2)(2R/c)2 = 2GM/c2, is also correct.
But the deflection result is the paper's own strongest claim and it does not survive checking. General relativity predicts 4GM/Rc2 — 1.75 arcseconds at the solar limb. Sharma quotes Einstein's prediction as 2GM/Rc2 in §3.3, and his own Newtonian-style derivation reproduces exactly that same 2GM/Rc2, or 0.87 arcseconds. This is the classic half-deflection, the value Soldner obtained in 1801 and the value the 1919 eclipse expedition was designed to distinguish from Einstein's. Eddington's measurements — 1.98″ ± 0.16″ at Sobral and 1.61″ ± 0.40″ at Príncipe, and every subsequent VLBI measurement to fractions of a percent — excluded it. So the calculation that "provides support to the Unified Physical Theory" in fact reproduces the number the observation ruled out, and the paper's claim that it is "exactly the Einstein formula" rests on having misquoted Einstein's formula three pages earlier.
Two further numerical problems. The paper twice prints μ0 = 1.26 × 10−8 H/m; the SI value is 4π × 10−7 = 1.2566 × 10−6 H/m. With the printed figure, (ε0μ0)−1/2 comes out as 3.0 × 1011 cm/s — ten times the 2.9979 × 1010 cm/s quoted in the same sentence. And the Sagnac formula dt = 2πrn/c is not a time at all: 2πrn is the rim speed, so the expression is the dimensionless ratio v/c. The measured Sagnac shift goes as 4Aω/c2, quadratic in the radius and inversely quadratic in c; the formula offered here is linear in r and cannot reproduce the observed fringe displacements. The Lorentz transformations are also printed with the factor inverted, β = (1 − v2/c2)1/2 and x′ = β(x − vt), where the transformation requires the reciprocal.
The deepest difficulty is internal. Sharma's principal argument against the spacetime continuum is that a continuum "would have retarded, nay prevented, the motion of heavenly bodies through it". He then replaces it with a kinetic gas of number density 1015 cm−3, describes that gas as viscous, and says the Earth "distorts" and drags it. Whatever drag objection defeats the continuum defeats the sharmon medium a fortiori — a continuum with no discrete scatterers is precisely the case in which no drag arises. Relatedly, the medium's mass density works out to about 5 × 10−30 kg m−3, some three orders of magnitude below the cosmological critical density, which is hard to reconcile with its being the substance out of which all matter is composed. The comparison offered for the 10−5 cm spacing — the mean free paths of hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen — also compares unlike quantities: mean free path in a real gas is far larger than the intermolecular spacing, not equal to it.
Finally, several of the successes claimed are recoveries of standard results rather than departures from them. E = hν − w is Einstein's equation, as the paper concedes; the Wang experiment's negative group index is not superluminal signalling and is fully described by ordinary dispersion theory in an absorbing-then-gain medium; and the medium's own account of why c is source-independent — emission and absorption both occurring in the medium — is the Aether answer of Lorentz, which the Michelson–Morley experiment and its successors were designed to test and which is why the ad hoc contraction Sharma rejects was introduced in the first place.