I once had the good fortune to be invited to Dr Essen's house to
discuss my work on the Beta-aether/atmosphere. The other day
whilst googling "Mikhail Gershteyn" I came across this rather
interesting essay of his.
I hope it's not considered too off topic - it does after all
finish up with an observation I'm sure most Vortexians will
agree with, viz.,
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It is sad if [Vall�e's] ideas were not fully studied
because the nuclear fusion programmes throughout
the world seem to make little progress in spite
of the billions spent on them.
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...and many more billions since Louis wrote that.
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RELATIVITY
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Einstein�s theory of relativity was dealt with very
briefly in my university course but we were told that we
must not expect to understand it. I accepted this
situation and I have since discovered that most
physicists are content to remain in the same position
assuming that it must be right because it is generally
accepted. My doubts about it arose when I found that the
experts did not understand either. An exchange of
letters in Nature between Dingle and McCrea showed that
they had opposite views about some of the predictions of
the theory and the arguments advanced on both sides were
in my view illogical and unconvincing. Much of the
discussion about the theory was concerned with the
readings of clocks when they are moving relatively to
each other, and since I had a wide experience of
comparing clocks and measuring time it seemed to be
almost a duty to take a closer interest in the
controversy especially as some of the so-called
relativity effects although very small were not
insignificant in the definition of the atomic second
and the use of atomic clocks.
It is always better to refer to the original papers
rather than to second hand accounts and I, therefore,
studied Einstein�s famous paper, often regarded as one
of the most important contributions in the history of
science. Imagine my surprise when I found that it was in
some respects one of the worse papers I had ever read.
The terminology and style were unscientific and
ambiguous; one of his assumptions is given on different
pages in two contradictory forms, some of his statements
were open to different interpretations and the worst
fault in my view, was the use of thought-experiments.
This practice is contrary to the scientific method which
is based on conclusions drawn from the results of actual
experiments. My first thoughts were, that in spite of
its obvious faults of presentation, the theory must be
basically sound, and before committing my criticisms to
print I read widely round the subject. The additional
reading only confirmed my belief that the theory was
marred by its own internal contradictions. Relativitists
often state that the theory is accepted by all
scientists of repute but this is quite untrue. It has
been strongly criticised by many scientists, including
at least one Nobel prize winner. Most of the criticisms
are of a general nature drawing attention to its many
contradictions, so I decided to pin-point the errors
which give rise to the contradictions, giving the page
and line in Einstein�s paper, thus making it difficult
for relativitists to dodge them and obscure them in a
morass of irrational discussion.
Special Theory flawed
There were definite errors about which there can be no
argument. One was the assumption that the velocity of
light is constant. This is contrary to the foundations
of science and the fact that it is repeated in all the
textbooks I have seen, shows how little these
foundations are understood by theoretical physicists.
Science is based on the results of experiment and these
results must be expressed in a single coherent set of
units. The unit of length was the metre and the unit of
time was the second. Velocity was a measured quantity as
so many metres per second. Even though it was found to
be constant under certain conditions, it was quite wrong
to make it a constant by definition under all
conditions. Only the unit of measurement can be made
constant by definition and Einstein�s assumption
constituted a duplication of units. It was this
duplication that led to puzzling and contradictory
results and not the profundity of the theory as
relativitists like us to believe.
The question of units is a rather complicated one; and
in this instance some writers are confused by the fact
that the velocity of light is now often used as a
standard, distances being calculated from the time of
travel of a pulse of light or radio waves; but the value
used is the measured value and the conditions of
measurement are carefully defined. Quite recently a
further complication has arisen. At the end of our work
at the NPL we made the suggestion that as the techniques
improved it might be advantageous to redefine the units
of measurement, keeping the atomic second, giving a
defined value to the velocity of light and discarding
the unit of length. This has now been done, but these
developments do not affect the criticisms of the theory.
Even with these units it would still be absurd to assume
that the velocity would be the same for two observers in
relative motion. Units must be used with common sense.
Thought experiments
The other glaring mistake occurred in the course of one
of his thought experiments. Einstein had never made any
actual experiments, as far as I can find, and he
certainly had no idea of how to compare clocks. He
imagined two identical clocks side by side and supposed
one of them to move away at a uniform velocity and then
return. According to one of the results deduced from the
theory a moving clock appears to go slower than the
stationary one when viewed from the stationary position.
Calling the clocks A and B the predictions are:
B is slower than A as seen from A
and since velocity is only relative and either of the
clocks can be regarded as the moving one:
A is slower than B as seen from B
This is certainly strange although not logically
impossible. It implies that something happens to the
signals during their transmission. He then outlines his
experiment without giving any details of how the
measurements are made and concludes that:
B is slower than A
and although he does not specifically say so:
A is slower than B
in accordance with the relativity principle.
This result is of course impossible, and is usually
called the clock paradox. Many thousands of words have
been written about it, but the explanation is simply
that he did not go through the correct procedures in
making his experiment. It is a very simple experiment,
being carried out every day in clock comparisons, and
the correct result agrees with his predictions as indeed
it must do since a thought experiment cannot give a new
result. The predictions themselves are also inexplicable
but this is one of the consequences of the duplication
of units.
I had rather naively thought that scientists would be
glad to have an explanation of the confusion which had
existed for so long and would at least pay some
attention to my explanation, since I had more practical
experience in these matters than all the relativitists
put together. But I was wrong. No one attempted to
refute my arguments although they justified Einstein by
repeating his thought experiment and his mistakes in
different forms. I was, however, dropped some pretty
broad hints that if I continued to criticise the theory
my reputation and career prospects were likely to
suffer. It was only a sideline to my experimental work
but I found it so interesting that I did not feel like
dropping it, and felt that it was very important that
the theory should be exposed. My Director was good about
it and said he had no objection himself as long as I did
not involve the NPL. I was beginning to realise that
scientists could be just as irrational as anyone else
and having accepted the theory as a faith without
understanding it they closed their minds to argument.
They also tried to suppress opposition and two of my
papers after being accepted by the referees were
mysteriously never published.
I was not entirely without support and was invited to
write an article by the Oxford University Press. It was
not so comprehensive as they hoped, since I was not able
to devote as much time to it as I would have liked, and
lacked the secretarial assistance of my department, but
it was accepted and published as one of their Research
Papers (No. 5). The Director of the Royal Institution
also invited me to give one of their Friday Evening
Discourses. This was quite enthusiastically received and
I had many letters of congratulation, although, as I
noticed with some amusement, most of them were written
on private notepaper and not on the paper of their
organisations as one would normally expect.
The history of relativity would make a fascinating study
and I regret that I do not feel competent to do it
myself. I have kept to those aspects dealing with units
of measurement and the comparison of clocks which I know
something about. It was inspired by the puzzling results
of an experiment made by Michelson and Morley. They
argued that if light travelled at a steady velocity
through the medium, or aether, and the surface of the
earth was moving through this medium there should be a
detectable effect on the movement, but they failed to
detect any. Fitzgerald and Lorentz gave an empirical
explanation that moving rods were shortened and moving
clocks were slowed down. Scientists badly wanted a more
detailed satisfactory explanation and this is what
Einstein thought he had done. All he did was to
introduce irrational ideas into physics and incorporate
the Lorentz explanation into electromagnetic theory as
an assumption. The original puzzling results, therefore,
remain and it is important to science that a true
explanation should be found.
Joke or swindle?
The famous paper published in 1905 does not appear to
have attracted any attention until Eddington returned
from an expedition to study the eclipse in 1919, and
with great publicity announced to a meeting of the
Astronomical Society in London that the results had
proved Einstein�s theory. What he thought he had
confirmed was Einstein�s value for the bending of light
round the sun. Scientists were prepared to go to a lot
of trouble to obtain experimental evidence for the
theory as they realised that this was necessary and yet
Eddington is supposed to have said that the theory was
so satisfactory that if the experimental results did not
confirm it then they must be wrong. A criticism of the
results made later pointed out that in order to obtain
the result he wanted, some of the observations which did
not fit were ignored. Also someone has pointed out, with
some evidence, that Einstein himself had predicted two
results differing by 2 to 1 for the deflection. Finally
the deflection of the sun�s rays has nothing to do with
the special theory and the clock paradox and yet in some
mysterious way it was claimed to confirm it. Still
searching for experimental support an experiment was
made in the US some years ago. Four atomic clocks were
carried by plane in opposite directions round the world.
The discrepancies between the results for different
clocks were many times greater than the effect being
sought, and yet by ignoring the results they did not
like and performing some undescribed statistical
analysis the authors claimed to have confirmed
Einstein�s theory and specifically the clock paradox.
There was a spectacular television programme about it in
which a well-known actor was installed in a simulated
space shuttle and told that he would come back younger
than if he had stayed on earth. Being an intelligent man
he appeared to regard it as a lot of nonsense as I hope
the viewers did.
Unified field theory
My intrusion into theoretical physics must be regarded
as a failure in that I did not convince the
relativitists of their mistakes. It may have had some
benefit in encouraging scientists to look for a rational
extension of electromagnetic theory to explain the many
mysteries not yet explained. There have been several
attempts, that of Rene L Vall�e being in my view
particularly encouraging. It is a unified field theory
giving an electromagnetic explanation of gravitation,
and including a most important suggestion that it might
be possible to harness the gravitational energy of space
safely and economically. He argued that the nuclear
energy programme in France was wasteful and misdirected
and was in consequence obliged to leave the authority
for which he worked. It is sad if his ideas were not
fully studied because the nuclear fusion programmes
throughout the world seem to make little progress in
spite of the billions spent on them.
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