Related papers: Herbert Dingle and "Science at the Crossroads"
In the line of thought of Einstein's 1905 paper on relativity, I get a physical derivation of Lorentz transformation (LT) answering its main criticism and considerably enlarging the area of applications of the theory of relativity.
We deduce from Poincare's ellipsoidal wavefronts a relativistic Doppler-Fizeau formula that is not the same as 1905 Einstein's one. Longitudinally, Einstein's formula and Poincare's formula are the same. The question of an experimental test…
In his Autobiographical Notes, Einstein mentioned that on his road to the final theory of general relativity it was a major difficulty to accustom himself to the idea that coordinates need not possess an immediate physical meaning in terms…
In recent centuries the world has become increasingly dominated by empirical evidence and theoretic science in developing worldviews. Advances in science have dictated Roman Catholic doctrine such as the acceptance of Darwinian evolution…
In the past years, variable speed of light (VSL) theories have been of growing interest but also a subject of controversial discussion. They have been accused both for tautologies and for violating special relativity, and concerns have been…
Heisenberg's uncertainty relation is commonly regarded as defining a level of unpredictability that is fundamentally incompatible with the deterministic laws embodied in classical field theories such as Einstein's general relativity. We…
Einstein based his special theory of relativity on two postulates: (a) physical laws appear the same in all inertial frames, and (b) the speed of light in vacuum is an observer-independent constant. However, it is already known that the…
The nature of 'time', 'space' and 'reality' are to large extent dependent on our interpretation of Special (SRT) and General Relativity Theory (GRT). In SRT essentially two distinct interpretations exist; the "geometrical" interpretation by…
Lorentz [of the Lorentz transforms and Lorentz contractions fame] contended against Einstein that there had to be a medium in which electro-magnetic waves exist and propagate, and that that would of necessity be an absolute frame of…
Physics was in crisis at the beginning of the twentieth century because the newborn Maxwell's electromagnetism defied mechanistic preconceptions. Albert Einstein understood that the solution to the crisis required an audacious reworking of…
We look afresh at the deduction of the "Lorentz contraction" of a "rod" from the Lorentz transformation equations of the special theory of relativity. We show that under special conditions, which include acceleration of the "rod", length…
Einstein claimed that the fundamental dynamical insight of special relativity was the equivalence of mass and energy. I disagree. Not only are mass and energy not equivalent (whatever exactly that means) but talk of such equivalence…
The quantum description of reality is quite different from the classical one. Understanding this difference at a fundamental level is still an interesting topic. Recently, Dragan and Ekert [New J. Phys. 22 (2020) 033038] postulated that…
The teaching of modern physics often uses the history of physics as a didactic tool. However, as in this process the history of physics is not something studied but used, there is a danger that the history itself will be distorted in, as…
Heisenberg's uncertainty relation means that one observer cannot know an exact position and velocity for another (finite mass) observer. By contrast, the Poincare transformation of classical special relativity assumes that one observer…
A century ago, Einstein formulated his elegant and elaborate theory of General Relativity, which has so far withstood a multitude of empirical tests with remarkable success. Notwithstanding the triumphs of Einstein's theory, the tenacious…
In 1887 Woldemar Voigt published the paper "On Doppler's Principle," in which he demanded covariance to the homogeneous wave equation in inertial reference frames, assumed the invariance of the speed of light in these frames, and obtained a…
It is rarely emphasized in modern physics textbooks that our definitions of space and time have to reflect their complete interdependence. Our intuitive methods of always picturing one-dimensional space as a sum of unit-length rods and of…
A short review of the motivations for supersymmetry in astrophysics and particle physics is given. Despite the amount of theoretical research conducted in the past decades, no observational evidence for supersymmetry has yet been found.…
A little error was eliminated from Hertz equations. New Hertz equations do not contradict to all electromagnetic experiments. Therefore Hertz electrodynamics is the alternative to Einstein electrodynamics. It means that the question about…