--------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "Tom Van Flandern" <tvf@mindspring.com>
To: "'Bill Payne'" <bpayne15@juno.com>
Date: Sun, 12 Sep 1999 10:35:57 -0400
Subject: RE: Re: Fast gravity--calling David Bowman
Message-ID: <000701befd2c$290786a0$8e4af7a5@g6400>
Bill,
> FYI. If you want to reply, I'll post yours to the group.
I've added a response below. Unfortunately, I can't follow up on any
further discussion anytime soon because I leave within 24 jours for two
weeks in Europe, and don't expect to have internet access. Best
wishes. -|Tom|-
> From: David Bowman <dbowman@tiger.georgetowncollege.edu>
> there is also an internet version of Van Flandern's Phys. Lett. A
> paper posted at <http://www.ldolphin.org/vanFlandern/gravityspeed.html>
> which, besides containing everything in the journal article, also has
> some extra material of lower quality which, apparently, was edited out
> to get the paper past the Phys. Lett. A reviewers.
That material was removed only because of the length limitations for
Letters in that journal. Major parts of it will now be published as a
response to a critique by three relativists, who criticized my paper
because
it did not address certain issues. These were addressed in the omitted
material.
> Contrary to the hype that the Bethell article gave for it, the Van
> Flandern paper does not provide any evidence against either the special
> or general theories of relativity. Rather, it provides evidence which
> *confirms* their predictions.
My paper shows that the mathematics of general relativity (GR) is
correct,
but the common interpretation of GR now being taught to students is
wrong.
Specifically, the six experiments reported in the paper demonstrate that
faster-than-light propagation and communication in forward time can and
does
take place. As for special relativity (SR), the paper demonstrates that
Lorentz's version (Lorentzian relativity, LR) published a year before
Einstein's is a better description of reality than SR. The only known
test
that distinguishes the two theories is the existence of things
propagating
faster than light. And gravity now plays that role, showing that SR was
wrong about the speed of light being an absolute speed limit, and LR was
right about the universe apparently having no speed limit. This change
also
is one of interpretation, but does not affect the math of relativity;
e.g.,
the same Lorentz transformations apply to clocks in motion in either
theory.
> What the Van Flandern paper actually shows is that a naive (but
> understandably mistaken) understanding of relavity and gravitation
> could easily lead an unsuspecting person to conclude that the
> experimental evidence is against relativity.
The experimental evidence supports the mathematical theory and refutes
the
interpretation now being taught, showing that the interpretation violates
the causality principle.
> AFAIK, none of his evidence is anything new to workers in the field,
> and they are not upset by it.
The Walker-Dual experiment is new, and shows that both electrostatic and
gravitational fields propagate much faster than photons do. Accordingly,
some relativists are upset.
> For instance, in the slow speed limit of relativity the gravitational
> force on an orbiting planet *should* be toward the instantaneous
location
> of the Sun (at least up to terms of order 1/c^2) rather than toward the
> apparent direction toward it as seen by the aberrated image caused by
the
> time delay in the light propagating to the planet from the Sun, which
is
> merely a 1/c effect.
That claim is made and taught by relativists. It cannot be justified.
Forces that undisputably propagate at speed c (such as radiation
pressure,
the Compton effect, etc.) always act from the retarded position of the
source, not its instantaneous position. The magic "cancellation" of
retardation effects is a myth. Nothing actually cancels these effects in
relativity. They simply never existed in the mathematical theory from the
outset.
> *If* the Sun's gravitational force *had* been observed to align with
> the optical abberated image of the Sun, then the result *would*
> contradict relativity, rather than its *straw man* version.
The force of radiation pressure (e.g., sunlight pushing on a balloon
satellite) does come from the retarded (optical) position of the Sun.
Does
that therefore contradict relativity? It seems to me you can't have it
both
ways. Why do all forces that propagate at speed c or slower clearly show
retardation, whereas electrostatic and gravitational fields, which
experimentally seem to propagate much faster than c, show no retardation?
> in the case of general relativity at low speeds, (AFAIK since I'm not
> an expert) the behavior is similar *except* that the 'leading' action
> effect is even more sophisticated. In this case if mass A is moving by
> mass B then the gravitational force on mass B at time t points in the
> direction mass A would be then *if* at time t - L/c it kept the same
> velocity *and acceleration* it had then right up until time t.
This is a reasonable statement about what might be true if the premise
(that gravity propagates at speed c) were true. However, consider a
binary
pulsar. Whenever the two stars line up with a distant observer, the
gravitational force on that observer is a maximum; and when the two stars
are aligned perpendicular to the direction of the observer, the
gravitational force is a minimum. So as the stars revolve, the
gravitational
field fluctuates too.
If the observer is far enough away, so that the stars make several
revolutions during the light-time to the observer, then the observer sees
the stars at some phase quite different from their actual phase at that
instant. The question is, what does the gravitational field do? The
answer,
evident from either the field equations or the relativistic equations of
motion (such as those on p. 1095 of "Gravitation" by Misner, Thorne and
Wheeler), is that the gravitational field at the observer always agrees
with
the true, instantaneous positions of the source bodies, and not with
their
retarded (optical) positions, even if extrapolated forward using both
velocity and acceleration. General relativity actually assumes
instantaneous
propagation of gravitational forces (but not "gravitational waves", which
do
propagate at speed c in all theories), which is why it agrees with
Newtonian
gravity in the low-velocity, weak-field limit. If GR had propagation
delays,
it wouldn't agree with either Newton or observations in that limit.
> I suppose that the reason the Van Flandern was so coy about all of this
> in his paper is that he had ulterior motives in publishing it. He heads
> a fringe science (maybe pseudoscience) organization called Metaresearch
> that advocates a bunch of wierd non-mainstream theories.
Ah. Whenever you don't like the message, attack the messenger. Good
science. :-)
I suggest that we provide the URL, <http://metaresearch.org>, and let
readers decide for themselves whether the organization (which does
sharply
criticize theories that conflict with experiments or observations)
supports
science or pseudoscience.
> One of them is the "exploding planet" theory for the formation of many
> features of the solar system.
This theory has been around for 200 years, and has massive evidence in
support of it, as summarized in chapter 11 of my book "Dark Matter,
Missing
Planets and New Comets" (North Atlantic Books, 1993; 2nd edition 1999).
It
continues to make successful predictions that amaze and confound the
mainstream astronomers because they keep coming true. The latest example
is
the finding a few weeks ago of salt water in a meteorite, as if that
water
had once been part of an ocean on a planet.
> Another is a different theory of space and time (other than standard
> relativity theory) that has an "absolute time" and requires
instantaneous
> interactions between objects like Newtonian theory requires.
That seems to be Lorentzian relativity (LR) you are describing, if we
substitute "much faster than light" for "instantaneous" in your sentence.
You seem to be arguing that experimental evidence favoring Lorentz over
Einstein, or in general any argument that an accepted model may be
incomplete or mistaken, even when published in a major, peer-reviewed
journal (as is the case for all the examples you cite above),
automatically
qualifies as pseudoscience. IMO, such a view is too extremist. All of us
should remain open to well-reasoned and tested challenges to all
scientific
theories at all times. That is how science continues to grow.
Best wishes. -|Tom|-