Harvey Scribner
Harvey Scribner | |
|---|---|
| Known for | Transverse relative time shift; time dilation as a two-signal time delay; classical geometric alternatives to Special Relativity |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Physics, Relativity, Electromagnetism |
Harvey Scribner is an independent researcher working in relativity and electrodynamics who argues that the time and length effects usually attributed to Special Relativity can be derived from ordinary Euclidean geometry and Galilean transformations applied to signal propagation. He has published his work through the viXra preprint archive and has presented in the online seminar series of the John Chappell Natural Philosophy Society (CNPS).
Scientific contributions
Scribner's central claim is that the standard derivation of relativistic time dilation contains what he calls an undiscovered "physics disconnect": in his reading, the signals used to obtain the time-dilation expression are effectively signals from fixed sources in space rather than from the moving source itself. On that basis he reinterprets time dilation as a two-signal time delay — a difference in the arrival times of two separately emitted signals — rather than as a change in the rate of time itself. This argument is set out in his paper Relativity Time Dilation a Two Signal Time Delay Theory (2023), and formed the core of his 2023 CNPS presentation, in which he examined two textbook cases, the light clock at rest and the light clock at rest with a moving observer.
The geometric machinery behind this reinterpretation is what Scribner calls the transverse relative time shift. He considers a source S moving with constant velocity along an axis in Euclidean space, emitting spherical signals that expand at the velocity of light c relative to the position from which they were emitted. An observer placed transversely to the source's line of motion receives successive signals at different times, and the measured difference between those arrival times is the transverse relative time shift. Scribner derives this shift using Galilean transformation of velocities in plain Euclidean space geometry, and shows how the same construction yields a corresponding transverse relative length shift. A practical consequence he emphasises is one of observability: an observer perpendicular to the path of a fast source may have to wait an impractically long time for the later signal to arrive, so he analyses strategic observer placements — for instance on or inside the signal light cone — that make the delayed signal detectable. In his treatment the geometrical construction remains well defined for source velocities greater than c, which leads him to discuss the observability of signals from hyper-light-velocity sources. These results are developed in Source Signal Observability at Hyper Light Velocity (2019) and Transverse Relative Time and Length Shift Explained (2023).
Scribner presents this work as a way of appreciating Edward Dowdye's Extinction Shift Principle, a purely classical replacement for Special and General Relativity built on Galilean transformations of the electrodynamics of moving bodies. His CNPS talk was framed explicitly as showing how the transverse relative time shift illuminates Dowdye's principle, and his geometric, emission-style treatment of light signals belongs to the same classical tradition: effects are attributed to signal propagation and observer geometry rather than to the deformation of space and time.
In a separate line of work, Permittivity and Permeability in the Vacuum of Space Revisited (2020), Scribner re-examines the electromagnetic properties of the vacuum and argues that the velocity of a transverse electromagnetic (TEM) wave in vacuum implicitly involves the presence of charge. He concludes that in a genuinely empty vacuum — free of matter and charge — the propagation speed set by the vacuum's own electromagnetic properties need not be limited to c. This provides a physical rationale for the superluminal source velocities that appear in his geometric analyses.
CNPS talks
He has presented in the CNPS online seminar series:
- "Transverse Relative Time Shift with Harvey Scribner" (19 August 2023)
Works
- Relativity Time Dilation a Two Signal Time Delay Theory, viXra:2312.0015 (2023)
- Transverse Relative Time and Length Shift Explained, viXra:2312.0013 (2023)
- Permittivity and Permeability in the Vacuum of Space Revisited, viXra:2004.0450 (2020)
- Source Signal Observability at Hyper Light Velocity, viXra:1901.0339 (2019)