Dingle and the Einsteinians
Herbert Dingle (above) was born in London in 1890.
After his father’s 1904 death Dingle left school to work as a clerk; studying in spare moments. Aged 24 he won a scholarship to London’s Imperial College; then a world-leading physics hub.
Dingle’s research, conducted under pioneering spectroscopist Alfred Fowler, ranged from laboratory analysis of mercury and iron to telescopic analysis of stars and galaxies. Dingle’s Modern Astrophysics (1924) proved formative.
Dingle’s spectroscopic prowess secured a fellowship in the Royal Astronomical Society in 1922. He was Society Secretary from 1929 to 1933, then library committee chair in the 1940s, before donning presidential robes in 1951. Dingle also presided over the International Astronomical Union’s history commission.
Dingle’s Science and Human Experience (1931) wrought a Rockefeller scholarship to Caltech.
Dingle’s 1936 Harvard lectures were reformatted into the applauded Through Science to Philosophy.
In 1935 Dingle took over Imperial College’s Spectroscopy Section. He soon also chaired their Natural Philosophy Department. He oversaw Imperial’s entire Physics Department during WWII.
In 1946 Dingle relocated to London’s University College to run their History and Philosophy of Science Department and serve as Vice President of the International Union for the History of Science.
Dingle co-founded the British Society for the History of Science (BSHS); presiding during the late 1950s. From BSHS’s philosophy group Dingle forged the British Society for the Philosophy of Science and its eponymous journal. These institutions remain active. BSHS awards an annual Dingle Prize.
Dingle died in Hull in 1978.
*
Dingle learned relativity theory from Alfred North Whitehead who encouraged Dingle to write the popular: Relativity for All (1922). Whitehead scrutinised the manuscript.
At Caltech Dingle discussed relativity with Albert Einstein. Dingle enjoyed similar conversations with: Arthur Eddington, Erwin Schrodinger, Max Born and practically every scholar associated with relativity’s conceptualization.
Dingle spent 1932-3 helping Richard Tolman write his landmark Relativity, Thermodynamics and Cosmology. The book incorporates equations that Tolman dubbed the ‘Dingle Formulae’.
In 1935 the Anglican Church bade Dingle explain relativity to the Episcopate.
Of Dingle’s The Special Theory of Relativity (1940) Born wrote:
“…your explanations of the difficult subject are very clear and well presented. I hope the book will find many readers.”
The text’s several editions became required reading across English-speaking campuses.
After E.T. Whittaker, who had firsthand knowledge of relativity’s origins, published his authoritative two-volume history of the field, he thanked Dingle for correcting earlier drafts.
Dingle was one of two English-speaking scholars selected by Library of Living Philosophers to contribute to their 1949 volume, Einstein.
Upon Einstein’s 1955 death the BBC summoned Dingle for the tribute.
Granada Television approached Dingle about hosting a series on relativity. (He declined.)
Dingle wrote Encyclopaedia Britannica’s original entry on relativity and decades later was asked to pen an update. When Dingle refused Britannica’s editors persisted. Ultimately, Dingle crafted a long controversial piece which stayed in print into the 1970s.
*
Gradually, Dingle rejected Einsteinian relativity. Glimpses of estrangement appear in broad critiques of 1930s scientific and cultural trends. His Harvard lectures praise rising popular interest in science but note:
“…no sooner does this state of things come into existence than knowledge of all kinds of things begin to assume a cloak of absurdity.”
Dingle proceeds:
“If there is one word that more aptly than another describes modern intellectual activity in its widest generality, that word is ‘unintelligibility’… In physics the name of relativity is notorious…Yet even here relativity shrinks before the spectre of quantum theory in which a particle and a wave are the same thing and we are left at last as one physicist put it ‘firmly grounded on the principle of uncertainty’.”
The avalanche of nouveau physics books tumbling over the public domain didn’t demystify enigmas. Paradoxes, instead of being invitations to investigate, remained delights to be relished. Readers weren’t enlightened, they were drugged; and told insights came only to genii who devoted their lives to study.
This obscurantist flood inundated the arts as well. Dingle relays Harold Nicholson’s proviso that modern literature readers: “divest themselves of all preconceived notions of clarity and comprehension.” Nicholson added that modern painters eschewed communications with the masses.
In all departments of thought the public confronted, not stimulating challenges, but crushing impossibilities. This march into the bog of nescience sabotaged democratic governance:
“When the witnesses speak in unknown tongues and the judge seems mad, what is a poor jury to do?”
*
At the behest of life-long ally, Richard Gregory (under whose 20-year editorship Nature became a world-class journal) Dingle wrote Modern Aristotelianism (1937).
Aristotelians believe it possible to deduce a universal array of conclusions from first principles. Scientists, in contrast, draw conclusions from observation. Scientists believe reality exists independently of the human mind. Aristotelians configure reality as a matrix embedded in the mind; albeit influenced by apparently external stimuli.
Prejudice-laden Aristotelians, armed only with reason, were routed in the 17th century’s Scientific Revolution. Never vanquished, pseudo-science regrouped and counter-attacked. Dingle accused Arthur Eddington, James Jeans, E. A. Milne et al of seeking to eclipse empirical science behind mathematical obfuscation. Eddington’s The Nature of the Physical World (1928) boasts a mission of: “emancipat(ing) us from the shackles of classical science.”
According to Eddington:
“An intelligence, unacquainted with the universe, but acquainted with the system of thought by which the human mind interprets to itself the content of its sensory experience should be able to attain all the knowledge of physics that we have attained by experiment.”
Believing betrayal of science constituted treason, Dingle warned the Royal Society:
“…every age has its delusions and every cause its traitors. But the danger here is radical. Our leaders are bemused, so that treachery can pass unnoticed and even think itself fidelity… there is now something so rotten that this very council violates its charter and thinks it is doing science service.”
*
Overtures of Dingle’s clash with the Einsteinians sounded in a 1939 Nature article wherein Dingle aired frustration with “time dilation” while rebuffing another “proof” of the non-existence of simultaneity.
Dingle found it “over the top” for algebraic doodling, conducted without clocks, to pass as physics experiments. Clocks were physical instruments recording certified standard intervals of time. The effect of motion upon a clock depended on its construction. It was wrong to assume all moving clocks ran slow.
Dingle’s article elicited virulent reactions from Einsteinians; igniting bitter exchanges between Dingle and Paul Epstein. Dingle’s subsequent The Special Theory of Relativity won academic acceptance despite Einsteinian efforts to suppress it. Epstein’s attack generated such acrimony an arbitrator was sought. Science oligarchs maneuvered Leopold Infeld into the role. Infeld, who recently co-authored a book with Einstein, sided with Epstein.
His detractors’ dogmatism focussed Dingle’s suspicions. In his 1953 presidential address to the Royal Astronomical Society, which dwelled on science’s derailment, Dingle speculated:
“I think the process began with the advent of the theory of relativity.”
*
Dingle’s unequivocal break with relativism came amidst the famous “twins paradox” controversy. The last straw was George Thomson’s The Foreseeable Future (1955) wherein the Nobel Laureate surmised that should one of a pair of identical twins soar from Earth in a spaceship, he would be younger than his sibling upon return. Thomson invoked Special Relativity’s canonical expression: On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies – the most exalted of Einstein’s wunderjahr (1905) papers.
Einstein’s paper begins:
“The theory to be developed is based on kinematics and lack of understanding of kinematics is the root of current problems in physics…”
The paper’s operative “Kinematical Part” concludes:
“We have now deduced the requisite laws of the theory of kinematics corresponding to our two principles, and we proceed to show the application to electrodynamics.”
Kinematics self-advertises as a branch of physics concerned with the motions of objects, explicitly without consideration of the objects’ mass or of the forces causing their motion. Such restrictions demote kinematics to a branch of mathematics. Kinematics consists of geometric-algebraic argumentation regarding imaginary movements of abstract objects. Its name derives from “cinema” (moving pictures).
Einstein “proves” absolute time’s non-existence through symbolic manipulation. His paper does not entertain: mass, gravity, means of propulsion, nor the mediums through which objects, or their accompanying light waves, travel. His experiment does not use real clocks. It is a thought experiment on hypothetical clocks floating around amidst a generic triple-axes coordinate system. From this Einstein deduces his “peculiar consequence”:
“If at the points A and B of K there are stationary clocks which, viewed in the stationary system are synchronous; and if the clock at A is moved with the velocity v along the line AB to B, then on its arrival the two clocks no longer synchronize, but the clock moved from A to B lags behind the other which has remained at B…”
Einstein reiterated his “moving-clocks-run-slow” finding in 1911; adding that biological aging also slowed with movement. He re-affirmed this thesis in 1912 and again in Relativity: the Special and General Theory (1916). He noted with disappointment, disciples who dodged discussion of his “peculiar consequence.”
*
The early 1960s found Dingle in open rebellion. He assailed the “twins paradox” (a.k.a. clock paradox) in two papers; one appearing in Nature.
As illustrated by the Einsteinian cliché: What time does Manchester stop at the train? – a cardinal principle of relativity requires that, when dealing with relative motion of two observers, either observer has the right to claim to be at rest and the other to be moving. Relativists never accept one location as the absolute point of view. Be they called “reference frames” or “coordinate systems” or “observers” their essential feature is equivalence; interchangeability.
Relativity regards all motion as relative. If two bodies are in relative motion, their motion is divided equally between them. Einstein’s clocks are in uniform relative motion. Einstein’s theory makes it impossible to ascribe motion to only one clock. Abiding kinematic strictures, there is no way to tell which clock is moving.
Despite Einstein’s stipulation that ‘stationary’ and ‘moving’ clocks be interchangeable; his paper has one clock running slower than the other. If there is no way of telling which clock is moving then there is no way of telling which clock runs slow. Einstein sacrificed the sacred equivalence principle on the altar of the exquisitely baffling time dilation enigma.
To Dingle, clock retardation occurred equally or not at all. If two similarly constructed, synchronised clocks separated they would synchronise upon reunion. Dingle upheld absolute universal simultaneity – the Einsteinians’ nemesis.
*
Dingle’s critique struck the Einsteinians’ heart. They responded evasively. Special Relativity was above criticism. Refusal to accept it could only arise from misunderstanding.
Relativists portrayed Dingle as a doddering well-meaning fool whose delusions received over-generous attention. One claimed Dingle’s critique “possessed a fallacy so elementary as to preclude the effort to identify it.” Another accused Dingle of straying from Einstein’s definition of “event.” Einstein never defined “event.”
Max Born (photo, right) claimed Dingle used outmoded Einsteinian formulae. Dingle said he 
impugned the precise paper of Einstein’s which remains relativity gospel. Born refused to look at further writings by Dingle.
Later Einsteinians contended acceleration, not motion, caused time dilation; implying G-forces deformed time-keeping mechanisms. (Einstein’s paper says nothing of this.) Others brandished the Hafele-Keating hoax as proof. They conceded Einstein’s math and logic didn’t deliver advertised results; but countered that, inexplicably, observations bore Einstein out.
Einsteinians circulated hearsay about Dingle having been refuted. Never happened.
*
Dingle’s apostasy wracked relativism. Einsteinians typically dismiss non-believers for lacking either scientific stature or familiarity with the topic. Such arrows could not be loosed upon Dingle.
Moreover, Dingle crusaded. In 1967 he wrote 300 Royal Society Fellows complaining of dogmatism in the physics establishment. This cleared the grounds for Nature’s 1967 Dingle-McCrea essay duel.
Mathematical-physicist W. H. McCrea, the establishment’s combatant, scribed an obfuscatory masterpiece embellished with gratuitous diagrams re Minkowskian space-time to pique phobias about relativity being incomprehensible to the uninitiated. McCrea skewered strawmen then castoff Dingle’s “meaningless” grievances.
Alongside the competing essays Nature ran the op-ed “Don’t Bring Back the Ether” declaring McCrea the winner. Thereafter Nature rejected Dingle’s submissions.
*
To write his fabled 1905 paper Einstein copied and pasted Maxwell’s electromagnetic equations below Lorentz’s transformation equations. Einstein’s sole input was aether denial.
Maxwell’s equations presume an aether; i.e. a physical medium carrying light and other electromagnetic waves. Lorentz’s scribblings on time dilation contemplate the effect motion through an aether might have on clocks. Contemporaries never denied aether’s existence. Acknowledging the aether also allowed a body’s motion to be described relative to a stable space-like arena rather than to another moving body.
Einstein’s paper commences:
“…a “luminiferous ether” will prove to be superfluous inasmuch as the view here to be developed will not require an “absolutely stationary space” provided with special properties, nor assign a velocity-vector to a point of the empty space in which electrodynamic processes take place.”
This sleight freed Einstein to collate Maxwell’s and Lorentz’s equations regardless of attendant physical absurdities. Silliness having gone unpunished, mathematicians took flight; proposing zany interpretations on their symbology heedless of physical inconceivability.
By the time Dingle wrote Science at the Crossroads (1972) belief in an aether was roundly 
denounced as a superstition. Fronting this intellectual witch-hunt is Einstein’s signature legacy:
“…it was Einstein, who had no qualms about abolishing the ether and still retaining light waves whose properties were expressed by formulae that were meaningless without it, who was the first to discard physics altogether and propose a wholly mathematical theory.”
Definitively:
“…‘relativity theory’ should be applied only to a theory that regards motion as a purely relative phenomenon – i.e. a theory that, like Einstein’s, allows no ether.”
Dingle walks us through Einstein’s solitary benefaction with a hat tip to Alice in Wonderland:
“Light consisted of vibrations in that ether, that had physical properties, which also were, in principle, determinable. What Einstein was proposing, therefore, was to retain finite velocity of light without the existence of any standard with respect to which that velocity had a meaning. Light consisted of waves, with definite length, frequency and velocity, in nothing; it was the grin without the Cheshire cat… Einstein saw a way of saving the (Maxwell) equations, and did not consider it worthwhile to “explain” light… the non-existence of the Cheshire cat was regarded as a triviality; the grin remained, and all was well. “
*
Mindful that physics meant much measurement and math, Dingle declared:
“The moment mathematics assumes a primary instead of a secondary role in research, the research becomes unscientific and full of danger.”
Dingle watched mathematics enslave physics. Mathematical definitions and proofs displaced material things and experiences. Misconceptions about math’s relationship to physics swirled.
Galileo and Newton took experiments and observations as starting points. Faraday was innocent of theoretical mathematical knowledge. Ampere’s math interpreted experiments; it didn’t dictate them.
The first serious case of mathematics ruling, as opposed to serving, physics came circa 1870 with Maxwell’s now-idolised electromagnetic field equations. Contemporary physicists dismissed Maxwell’s constructs as unobserved phenomena invented to solve irrelevant mathematical conundrums. Kelvin complained Maxwell sought to explain light by introducing things we knew even less of. Hertz said Maxwell’s entire “theory” consisted of profitless algebra.
Early 1900s physics papers took on the appearance of geometry proofs i.e. givens followed by syllogisms. Symbols were arbitrarily assigned properties. Justifications for those assignments eluded everyone. Mathematical-physicists divined implications of those properties through abstruse calculations couched in tedious jargon. Mathematical-physicists disdained nature. Only mathematical-physicists had standing to criticise.
To Dingle mathematics was a language; a medium for expressing ideas. Languages express false and true ideas. The fact a statement is expressed with mathematical exactitude says nothing of its truthfulness; its correspondence to reality. Truthfulness is determined by summoning reasons outside of mathematics. The question must be:
“Is there anything in nature corresponding to this mathematical equation?”
Kinematical relativist and mathematical supremacist, E. A. Milne, thought otherwise. Milne spouted:
“I attach no weight whatever to verbal descriptions… critics should find flaws in the trains of mathematical deduction.”
Adding:
“…whether the actual universe follows the details of the extrapolation is immaterial.”
Dingle identified mathematical-physics’ core fallacy as the illegitimate assumption that there must exist physical manifestations of every balanced mathematical equation i.e. what’s bred on the blackboard must out in the world. This bias bears baleful baggage. For starters, algebraic puzzles often have more than one answer. This defect, however, pales beside mathematics’ accommodation of fiction.
Dingle contemplates calculating the number of workers needed for a project. Mathematicians might frolic about until they arrive at negative numbers of workers; then carry on dividing and subtracting units despite the unreality of “negative workers.”
If a mathematician has nine apples and unicorns eat five, he has four apples left. A scientist still has nine apples because unicorns don’t exist. When scientists espy fictitious elements in a theory they draw conclusions about the whole theory. Mathematicians blissfully construct impeccable, elegant equations about negative humans feeding squared peaches to flying horses.
Contrary to the message signalled by ubiquitous photo-ops of “physics genii” propped before blackboards scrawled with algebraic hieroglyphics, Dingle observed that mathematical aptitude and ability to conduct physical experiments seldom co-existed in the same person. He also observed men atop mathematical departments lacking common sense. Unfortunately, politicians mistook a Math PhD as evidence of high intelligence.
*
In the Anglosphere, before Eddington’s 1919 solar eclipse shenanigan “relativity” was a little known 
curiosity synonymous with Hendrik Lorentz; and Hermann Minkowski was an even lesser known avante garde mathematician.
In Minkowski’s germinal 1907 paper, which his former pupil Einstein dutifully incorporated, “time” consists not of the precise instances and intervals of a proper physics paper but rather is an opaque oceanic generality. Physical implications go undiscussed. Minkowski begins:
“I would like to show how it might be possible, setting out from the accepted mathematics of the present day, along a purely mathematical line of thought, to arrive at changed ideas of space and time.”
And concludes:
“Henceforth space by itself, and time by itself, are doomed to fade away into mere shadows, and only a union of the two will preserve an independent reality.”
In 1919 relativity burst into the Anglosphere, falsely labeled “Einsteinian”, and cloaked in Minkowski’s metaphysical wizardry. Here’s Dingle:
“It is to Minkowski that we owe the idea of space-time as an objective reality – which is perhaps the chief agent in the transformation of the whole subject from the ground of intelligible physics into the heaven (or hell) of metaphysics, where it has become, instead of an object for intelligent inquiry, an idol to be blindly worshipped.”
Relativity’s inaugural ceremonies also unveiled the terrifying mathematical machinery of tensor calculus which, with four dimensions and esoteric notation, proved difficult to master. Physicists knew “space-time” was balderdash but faced aggressive counter-challenges insisting on tensor calculus interpretations. The proclamation that all physicists speak tensor calculus caused panic.
Relativist ranters rejoiced. James Jeans jibed: “one man’s space is another man’s time”
*
Dingle didn’t stand alone. Essen, Ives, Lorentz, Fowler, Rutherford and Lovell rejected Einsteinianism. Rutherford pooh-poohed relativity and continued with his experiments. Fowler admitted he hadn’t a clue what Einstein was on about. Lovell seconded:
“I have never been one of those who pretended to understand either the theory of relativity or its implications.”
Meanwhile, Einsteinians scaled the Ivory Towers. Post-1920s academic physics meant imposing metaphysical interpretations on abstruse equations to obscure physical impossibilities. 1950s physics Profs confessed privately they didn’t understand relativity, or thought it nonsensical, but continued teaching it and referencing it in publications. 1970 saw relativity entrenched. Criticising Einstein became a badge of ignorance, if not lunacy. The public fled the field amidst barrages of mind-numbing absurdities.
Dingle’s epitaph:
“The superior minds acknowledged that they did not understand it (relativity), but the majority could not rise to that height. Nothing is more powerful in producing the illusion that one understands something that one does not, than constant repetition of the words used to express it, and the lesser minds deceived themselves by supposing that terms like ‘dilation of time’ had a self-evident meaning, and regarded with contempt those stupid enough to imagine they required explanation. Anyone who cares to examine the literature from 1920 to the present day… can see the gradual growth of dogmatic acceptance of the theory and contempt for its critics, right up to the extreme form exhibited today by those who leant it from those who learnt it from those who failed to understand it at the beginning.”
Sources
British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, Herbert Dingle, Oxford Academic, 1981
http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Extras/Dingle_books.html
Dingle, Herbert. Address Delivered by the President, Professor H. Dingle, on Science and Modern Cosmology; Oxford Academic, 01 June 1953
https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/113/3/393/2603808
Dingle, Herbert. Modern Aristotelianism; Nature, May 8, 1937.
https://www.nature.com/articles/139784a0
Dingle, Herbert. Science at the Crossroads; Martin Brian and O’Keefe, London 1972.
Dingle, Herbert. The Sources of Eddington’s Philosophy; Cambridge University Press, 1954.
http://www.hist-analytic.com/DingleonEddington.pdf
Dingle, Herbert. The Time and the Need (from Through Science to Philosophy), Oxford, 1937.
https://www.questia.com/read/98409677/through-science-to-philosophy
Einstein, Albert. On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies; Annalen der Physik, June 30 1905.
http://hermes.ffn.ub.es/luisnavarro/nuevo_maletin/Einstein_1905_relativity.pdf
Ricker, Harry Hamlin. Herbert Dingle Maverick Scientist and Anti-Einstein Philosopher of Science; John Chappell Natural Philosophy Alliance, May 25, 2015.
Ricker, Harry. Herbert Dingle was Correct! Part II. The General Science Journal.
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/e678/ee2b0d5788906b5aabba12b5c12e4884ba94.pdf
Ricker, Harry. Herbert Dingle was Correct! Part III; The General Science Journal.
Ricker, Harry. Herbert Dingle was Correct! Part IV. General Science Journal.
Ricker, Harry. Herbert Dingle was Correct! Part VI. General Science Journal.
Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society. Obituary: Dingle, Herbert; SAO/NASA AOS 1980.
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1980QJRAS..21..333W
PRINCIPIA SCIENTIFIC INTERNATIONAL, legally registered in the UK as a company 
incorporated for charitable purposes. Head Office: 27 Old Gloucester Street, London WC1N 3AX.
Please DONATE TODAY To Help Our Non-Profit Mission To Defend The Scientific Method.
Trackback from your site.
Al Shelton
| #
Dingle’s Epitaph is exactly what is going on with human induced global warming/climate change in today’s world. IMO.
Reply
James McGinn
| #
From Dingle’s epitaph:
Nothing is more powerful in producing the illusion that one understands something that one does not, than constant repetition of the words used to express it,
JMcG:
Pretending to understand what actually doesn’t make sense is the number one skill to be successful in science in general and academia in particular.
James McGinn / Self Declared Genius
Reply
William Walter Kay
| #
Wow!, James did you write your quote before reading the quote by Dingle?
What I see in university math departments young people learning useless formulae by rote. They remind me of Islamic madressas outside the Arab world where kids memorise the Koran in Arabic. They chant long equations but haven’t a clue what their saying; and its nonsense.
Reply
Geraint Hughes
| #
AKA Radiation Greenhouse Effect.
Reply
Geraint Hughes
| #
Can Relativity explain “NULL SPACE” These are areas of space, in which time can not pass, it can only move around. If not, then it should be ignored. Null space are pockets / areas where a TRUE VACUUM exists, light can not pass through it because it is wave motion on an invisible material, where that material isn’t present, it has no mechanism to pass.
Reply
Geraint Hughes
| #
LOL. I Meant “LIGHT” not “TIME!” Light can not pass through null space.
Reply
Reidar Moberg
| #
“Null space are pockets / areas where a TRUE VACUUM exists”.
“Null space” is a pure mathematical concept. It does not exist in the physical world. Examples of “null spaces” are the IMAGINARY CENTRAL POINT of a circle or a sphere.
A null space can never be a pocket or area. It is an imaginary POINT and thus cannot CONTAIN anything, not even “true vacuum”.
I guess that might be why they called it NULL space….
Reply
William Walter Kay
| #
I have to side with Reidar on this. “Null space” is an extraordinary claim and thus requires extraordinary evidence. Geraint should perhaps show us an actual example. Why wouldn’t matter fill this void? Geraint’s definition of Null Space reminds me of Newton’s definition of matter. Note how the the phrase “purely mathematical concept” is a synonym for “fictitious.”
Reply
Ken Hughes
| #
What a brilliant, if long, articles. Sadly, as with all such objections to relativity, it does not suggest a conclusion that fits all the known science and resolves all the objections. After over a century of debate It still goes nowhere.
The objection to purely relative motion is correct. Motion cannot be purely relative. The defence of acceleration being the cause of time dilation is a fudge. It is incorrect by relativists’ own arguments because the accumulated lapsed time difference is due to the velocity and the duration of the velocity. It has little to do with acceleration, only that there are some velocities in action over the course of the acceleration. Move a clock at the same speed over twice the duration and you will get twice the lapsed time difference. Move a clock at greater speed and you will get greater time dilation and lapsed time difference in accordance with Lorentz. Time dilation is clearly due to speed, not acceleration.
So what IS the solution?
I will give you the solution here, but the deductive proof is in my book “The Binary Universe” (A Theory of Time). So don’t argue with me until you have read it. If you don’t decide to read it, then you have no authority to argue against it (as I am sure some of you will wish to).
There IS an Aether, but it is not a physical “substance. It is a field of energy, a wavelike field of energy which alters in frequency (energy) for the traveller going through it. This is why the changes in its energy conform to a circular function, (Lorentz). Think of it as simple harmonic motion in reverse. Travel through a sine wave and the result is the equation of a circle describing the energy experienced. This model describes many things as well as conforming to accepted mathematical science – Lorentz, the limiting speed of light/time, etc.
The field is the field of energy we know as time! It move everything on into the next state of existence, whether that be in a different place (motion) or simply into the future if it doesn’t move. A Planck time is an opportunity to move a mass through time by one Planck time, or through one Planck length at the speed of light, but it cannot do both, only one. Motion uses some of then for kinetic energy and so there are less to move it through time. THIS is the fundamental causality for inertial time dilation.
The field reduces in energy, lowers its frequency, when energy is used for kinetic purposes, either for inertial motion, or when some energy is being used for the internal kinetic processes going on in matter particles. These atomic scale time dilations spread outwards spherically, decaying (but never quite to zero) and accumulating with the other local fields of nearby atoms to eventually reduce the field energy at the surface of the Earth to ) 0.9999999993044123 of the time rate in empty space at Earth’s orbital distance from the Sun. The result is the decaying field of time dilation away from the Earth which increases in frequency in an attempt to reach its natural frequency away from all mass. This is the Newtonian “gravitational” field.
“What about general relativity?” you ask. “If gravity is purely due to time, then how does space “curve” or compress?” I can also answer that question, mathematically as well as deductively, but not here. You’ll just have to read my book if you want to know the whole story.
Read the book or stay ignorant for another century. I don’t care which. I only one ONE physicist to read it and understand and I doubt it will be anyone from here.
Reply
William Walter Kay
| #
Hey Ken, I’m glad you liked the article, and kudos to John for going with a longer piece. It has 3,300 words. The first draft had 7,900 words. I believe in aiming at Gestalt in writing which, among other things, means – completeness and economy.
Continuing on that theme, the Comment section isn’t the best venue to hammer-out disagreements about relativity and aether. I believe time doesn’t dilate and that aether consists of actual particles of matter which are themselves composites of smaller particles… ad infintum. Gravity is aetherial pressure – it operates on the surface of a sphere the same way air pressure raises the wing of an aeroplane.
Reply
Geraint Hughes
| #
Gravity is aetherial pressure – it operates on the surface of a sphere the same way air pressure.
So why would larger planets have higher gravity than smaller planets? Because the surface area of smaller planets represents a larger proportion of the volume of a smaller planet than a larger planet, so surely its effects would be dispropotionatly larger than that of a larger object. This is contrary to observation and must be wrong.
Aether isnt particulate matter, its invisible, its something else, hence why everyone cant find it.
Reply
William Walter Kay
| #
Gravity increases with the diameter and density of the sphere. The first scale of aether, the building blocks of electrons and protons, is comprised of particles so small that most would flow right through the planet. The wider and thicker the planet, the more of this aether is blocked and the opposing pressure’from the aether becomes stronger.
There is clearly a medium through which light waves travel. These waves become visible through their agitation of electrons. Radio waves are not visible but they are clearly real and operate in outer space. They possess identifiable wavelengths. Wave means medium. Medium means matter.
Reply
Shawn Marshall
| #
I’m just a dumb engineer but your comment appeals to my common sense.
Herb Rose
| #
Hi William,
It was very interesting to read your article and see that there were always people who saw the insanity of Einsteinian physics and believed that physics should be based on evidence and reason.
I don’t believe in time as a thing, it being a unit of measurement based on energy that allows for comparison in communication similar to the units meter or gram.
The aether consists of the fields of matter (electric) and energy (gravity, magnetic) in which a disturbance of one field produces a change in the other field. We know that the empty space between the sun and the Earth is full of energy (that decreases with distance from the sun) even though we see no evidence of this energy in this space because of the absence of matter. If an object is in this empty space the light striking it will be stronger than when it strikes the Earth which indicates the aether is denser in this “empty space” than closer to the Earth. If the aether consisted of matter particles with mass their concentration and the resulting intensity of light should be greater closer to more massive objects like the Earth.
Herb
Reply
William Walter Kay
| #
Hi Herb, glad you found the article interesting. The term “field” merely refers to the spacial area wherein a certain process is noticeable; however in “quantum woo” it takes on spooky-at-a-distance properties.
There is no “empty space” between Earth and Sun. This area is filled with aether. “Energy” can’t exist on its own. “Energy” is the motion of matter.
Reply
Herb Rose
| #
Hi William,
For me the size of an object is not the size of its matter but also the area where it influences or effects other objects. Think of it as the size of the United States is not just its land area but it includes its territorial waters and to a lesser extend its economic zone extending out into the oceans.
Since I do not believe E=mc^2 I believe the universe is composed of two building blocks: matter which produces both a positive and negative electrical fields (that interact with other objects electrical fields) and energy-t (to distinguish it from the energy properties of objects) that produce an energy field that we identify as a gravity field and a magnetic field. The matter and energy-t radiate from the object that is their source decreasing with distance. (Not as the distance squared. Newton used Kepler’s law that all the velocities of the planets squared times their distance from the sun give the same value which he converted to the sun’s mass by creating the gravitational constant, G. V^2 is an energy unit and is the energy of the sun not its mass.) These fields extend from an object until they meet the field of another object, filling empty space. (In deep space where there is one atom/cm^3 an atom has a 1 cm diameter.) The electrical fields keep object apart by the repelling of their negative fields while their energy-t fields combine trying to pull the objects together (gravity and magnets) When their fields are in equilibrium the objects will orbit each other with both objects having the same kinetic energy (binary asteroids). Falling objects are trying to equalize with energy-t field of another object. If energy is added to an orbiting object it will no longer be inn equilibrium and will move into a weaker energy-t field losing energy-1 to the field of the other object which results it going slower. When meteors encounter the Earth’s energy-t field they are coming from the sun’s energy-t field and have an excess of energy-t. They lose this energy by “burning up” and slowing down long before (at 80 to100 km) they encounter the Earth’s atmosphere.
My concept of energy-t is very close to your concept of the aether being a result of matter but the energy-t has no mass. The fields (areas of influence) of both matter (electric) and energy-t (gravity/magnetic) can impart motion or energy to another objects and it is the interaction of these two separate fields that is the aether in which light travels.
(I did an experiment with magnets which showed that the force of a magnet decreases linearly with distance (not as an approbate cube of distance) and the force between two magnets is really the strength of a third magnetic being created as the two magnetic fields add together. I wrote an article for PSI called “AN EXPERIMENT WITH MAGNETS” which is difficult to understand because I am not a good writer and I can’t do illustrations to show what I am talking about)
Herb
Carbon Bigfoot
| #
PHYSICS THE BASTION OF INTELLECTUAL MASTURBATION. JUST SAYIN’
Reply
Toto's fan
| #
It is a pity that as a young man Einstein did not meet up with Dr Timothy Leary so we could have all born witness to some truly psychedelic mathematical equations which would have left earthly physics rather deflated and rather flat.
Reply
Shawn Marshall
| #
I’m just a dumb engineer but your comment appeals to my common sense.
Reply
William Walter Kay
| #
Enough of this “dumb engineer” stuff, Shawn. My two previous posts on PSI regarding physics a) Ives, Einstein and the Aether; and b) American Copernicus: Grote Reber and the Big Bang, deal with engineers who have weighed in on physics disputes. Engineers make for far better physicists than do woolly-minded professors.
Reply
Zoe Phin
| #
I’m just an economist, but even I understand that
a) Time does not exist. Only matter and motion.
b) Michaelson-Morley experiment did NOT get a null result. 0.1 is not ZERO.
Reply