Einstein’s Relativity ‘Postulates’ are wrong, a short summary as to why.
Wave theory, whilst better than Relativity, also accepts invariant light speed which is wrong.
Confusing Bemusion
In teaching physics at a local college, I was bemused and confused by the contradictions I could see in the students. Many were very intelligent and intellectually engaged in knowing more about ‘science’. Few, however, questioned what they were taught. They were motivated by grades and attaining degrees, not by knowledge itself. Few if any of them would ever challenge the ‘system’.
When I confronted them by saying ‘controversial’ things such as ‘evolution is demonstrably false and unscientific’, or ‘Einstein’s theories are unproven and largely incorrect’, the disbelief and horror were palpable. Only a few would dare to pursue or even argue the topic. Most just wished I would shut up and force feed them what they needed to pass their exams. The system to manufacture graduates, grinds on.
A cult
In my experience not a single student knows the motivation behind Relativity. Such ignorance indicates a system of propaganda not ‘education’.
Before the cult of Einstein, a pervasive, stationary aether is how physicists understood the universe. The straightforward and intuitive laws of Isaac Newton and others were employed to understand rest and motion, all within an absolute ‘frame of reference’, namely the aether. When Michelson-Morley in 1887 could not find the Earth’s motion to be 30 km per second, which is what Copernicanism demands, they hastily declared in a profusion of fear and loathing, that the aether could not be found. This is simply a lie. Their interferometer calculations found a circa 5 km / sec movement, so the aether was not refuted. The Earth’s purported speed was unproven. What now?
Einstein and the Relativists had to eradicate the aether to explain this experiment away. They demanded that all inertial reference frames are equivalent, and that each observer could consider themselves to be at rest. In other words, you are the centre of the universe (which is a common belief of atheists and most moderns). But not just you. Everyone is. This means that we will never detect the Earth’s motion.
This is not how reality works, nor how our common sense interprets the world. It is a domain of fantasy.
Spaceships and frames
In some classes I would present ‘alternative’ viewpoints outside of the curriculum, which will endanger anyone’s career. We know that the disproofs for the Earth’s motion was the key impetus for Relativity. We also know that to explain away this lack of motion, Einstein fabricated 2 ‘postulates’:
One: The laws of physics are identical in all inertial frames of reference,
Two: The speed of light in a vacuum, designated as c, is the same for all observers regardless of the motion of the light source or observer.
An inertial reference frame is one where the observer is not accelerating, meaning they are either at rest or they are traveling in a straight line at constant velocity. Acceleration is the process where you speed up, slow down, or turn. Formally, acceleration is defined as a change in velocity per unit of time.
Many posts here eviscerate both, but what I used to do with students was simplify many of the complexities as to why they are false.
Take the first one. An ‘inertial frame of reference’ refers to an ‘observer’ and their map or grid. This means that every single observer, anywhere in the universe, at any time, can state that ‘their view of the universe is the right one’. No absolute standard exists to determine the laws of physics. Rather, all frames of reference are equivalent.
Consider how absurd this ‘postulate’ is in reality. It means nothing.
Sitting in my chair, my ‘observer’ position indicates that I am at the centre of the universe. Concomitantly, Chewbacca and Hans Solo, speeding along at a constant Mach 10 to save the universe from the Death Star, will also maintain that they are at the centre of the universe. There is no way to compare myself, my motion or lack of it, to that of Hans and Chewbacca. ‘Relativity’ supports the following ‘states’ and using Einstotle’s (Einstein + Aristotle) dictums there is no argument, scientific or philosophical against these assertions:
1-I am at rest and Hans and Chewbacca are moving around me (geocentricity),
2-Hans and Chewy are at rest and I am moving around them with the entire universe, even if I am not moving,
3-The entire universe is moving around Hans, Chewbacca and myself and all of us are at rest,
4-I am moving around the universe as an observer on Earth, and Hans and Chewy are also moving around the centre of the universe in their endlessly provisioned and fuelled starship (variant of Copernicanism)
If I was to send myself into motion on the Enterprise with Spock and friends and we passed Chewy and Hans and gave them the actornaut thumbs up as we sped by them, both starships could maintain that they were at rest and the other starship in motion. Or vice-versa. In other words, there is no reality.
Atomic Clocks and Light
The second ‘postulate’ that the speed of light is always the same whether the source of the light is moving or stationary, and whether the observer is moving or stationary, is also wrong. A vacuum does not exist, and light-speed is a human calculation subject to error and in fact probably not measurable. It is of course variant depending on gravity and the media it passes through.
Specifically, this 2nd postulate asserts that a single event is not simultaneous for different observers, that objects contract at high speed in the direction of motion, and that the mass of objects increases with speed, hypothetically reaching infinity if the object travels at c or the speed of light (Penrose, 2010).
It is often claimed that ‘atomic clocks’ have proven that clocks run slower where gravity is more profound (see Hafele-Keating experiment, 1968). In the absence of gravity, ‘clocks’ supposedly run ‘faster’. At face value this claim is fair enough, but ‘time’ itself is unchanged. It is the measurement which indicates that ‘time’ is slower or faster. Gravity and the medium obviously affect our calculation of time. The object’s speed has no impact on ‘time’. Time does not speed up or slow down. There is no ‘time dilation’ due to motion. Mass does not increase. A human calculation is what identifies velocity variation. Time and space are independent domains and are not merged.
A simple example. You run on concrete and post a time. You run the same distance on sand. Your ‘time’ will likely be much slower. You are slower, not time. The more resistance, the slower your time.
You run against an Olympic athlete on concrete. Their time will be faster. Their measured ‘time’, calculated by a human device, is faster. ‘Time’ did not speed up for them because their velocity was faster. The ‘object’, a very fit and fast Olympic runner, does not mean that time ‘dilated’ or was quicker for that ‘object’. Their mass did not change. Their absolute speed compared to your speed is faster, as measured by human tools.
We know that gravity and the medium through which the object is passing can reduce ‘time’, but it does not retard ‘time’ itself. It only impacts the measurement of that process. A cardinal sin of Relativity (amongst many), is the merging of time and space, a depravity concocted to explain away ‘absolutes’ and impose a fictitious universe of non-absolutes.
Slower and Faster?
Physicist and renowned Relativist Herbert Dingle apostasied from the Einstotle cult over the ‘clock’ issue. His complaint has never been refuted. Dingle correctly observed that according to ‘Relativity’ there are situations with time and movement where two ‘observers’ can each claim their clock is running slower than the other. This is a logical impossibility and was never answered by apostle Einstotle or his disciples.
Dingle: “The criticism of Einstein’s theory made here is that his assumption is, after all, not self-consistent because it requires each of two clocks to work steadily faster than the other, which is clearly impossible. The way is now clear for a description of Einstein’s theory and an account of the circumstances that have led to the remarkable oversight of what is, in fact, a very simple defect.” (Dingle, 1972)
Imagine that Chewbacca and Captain Kirk pass each other in ‘space’ at a constant velocity, say near the speed of light. Each could claim, pace Einstotle, that the other person is in motion and that ‘time’ will move ‘faster’ for that starship due to ‘time dilation’. Each ‘observer’ will therefore make the same claim that the other person, in the other starship, is clocked at being older than they are. Thus, both Kirk and Chewy are both older and younger than each other at the same time (Cahill, 2006). The nonsense is breathtaking.
We can also add the obvious claim that the speed of the object will impact the transference of light. Light speed cannot really be measured, it is not invariant, and it will be impacted by the velocity of the object sending a light wave. A simple example explains this.
Imagine 2 cars approaching each other, one at 50 mph, and a second at 100 mph.
If you were to throw a rock or a beam of light from the second car, the ‘velocity’ of the rock or light beam will obviously be greater than from the first car.
If the second car moved away from the first at the speeds given above, a thrown rock or beam light would move ‘slower’ in comparison to the example where the cars were travelling towards each other (Sjöström, 2011).
Yet, premised on Maxwell’s equations, Relativity preaches that there is no such variation in velocity from a thrown rock or beam of light, from moving objects with variations in speed or velocity. This violates Newton’s 2nd law of motion. This claim is also demonstrably and provably false. Source object speed will always affect the speed of objects transferred to a receiver, be they rocks, waves, particles, light or curses.
Waves
Another theory, based on an absolute-Newtonian framework to explain the reality of motion and light, is the ‘wave theory’. This is premised on ideas of gravity found in Nicolas Fatio, Georges-Louis Le Sage, Louis de Broglie, David Bohm and others. This proposition has two features namely, 1: physical entities in the real world such as energy, gravity, sound, light, planets, atoms, and all molecules are based on waves and 2: there are ‘shadow’ waves or macro transverse planes of force moving through the universe in multiple directions and at multiple angles (Riordan, 2023). This would explain what we observe, would allow us to maintain an absolute reference, and use Newtonian physics to calculate variations in speed and velocities between objects.
Wave theory indicates that the universe, its structure, and its laws are all objective and independent of humans and our reference frames. One cannot arbitrarily claim they are always at rest and at the centre of the universe at the same time as Relativity does. This approach is far more sensible than Relativity. The issue with ‘wave theory’ is that it still preaches the gospel of light speed invariance. To have relevance it would need to accommodate the reality that as the Big Bang, Sagnac and many others claim and have proven, light speed is variant.
Bottom Line
Critical thinking is not a part of the school curriculum. It is memorisation and the granting of degrees which matters. The program of classical Western education, based on the Socratic-Schoolmen tradition of going where the evidence leads, has largely disappeared. You memorise; therefore, you are.
Einstein’s 2 ‘postulates’ or theories, are simply wrong. Yet they are rarely challenged. This is mostly due to inertia and group-think. The greater your emotional, intellectual and financial investment in the paradigm, the less likely it is that you will dissent. This is why ‘Kuhn’s paradigms’ take so long to die out. The vested interests who profit from the paradigm will never give up their power - $cientism.
Relativity as a real ‘science’ has little merit, yet the entire edifice of physical and cosmological ‘thought’ is built on it. Few teachers, and fewer students are equipped to criticise it. I know PhD’s in physics who have never heard of Herbert Dingle, Ole Rømer, Louis Fizeau, DC Miller, Georges Sagnac, or what Michelson-Morley really discovered in 1887, repeated in 1904 (Morley) and 1925 (Michelson). How is that possible in a system which supposedly empowers critical thinking?
Given the above it is clear that Einstotle’s ‘Relativity’ is a cult, given it demands obeisance, blind worship and does not allow criticism or investigation.
All hail.
Sources
Herbert Dingle, Science at the Crossroads, 1972.
Roger Schlafly (2011), How Einstein Ruined Physics: Motion, Symmetry, and Revolution in Science
Garrett Lisi, An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything, 2007.
Roger Penrose, Fashion, Faith and Fantasy in the New Physics of the Universe, 2010.
M. E. Riordan, Einstein’s Lock: Why Special Relativity is Wrong (And Why it Matters), 2023.
R. Sjöström, The Search for Gravity: Why Einstein was wrong, 2019.
Reginald Cahill, “The Einstein Postulates: 1905-2005: A Critical Review of the Evidence,” in Einstein and Poincaré: The Physical Vacuum, 2006
Excellent, as usual. Thanks to your work I finally have an understanding of the issues. I too find the "cult of memorization'' and the "cult of guessing" beneath our intellectual duty. It is such like corruption that has led to the abuses we see. Perhaps idea systems have a thousand year life span, starting off as a reaction the the corruption of a previous system but becoming corrupt by orthodoxy themselves as history progresses. Yesterday I tried to find out what a fuel cell is and how a fuel cell works and do you think I did? Of course not. Plenty of stuff to memorize and guess about in multiple choice tests but no explanation. I am getting to the stage now where I question almost anything that science claims to be true simply because it does.