pedestrian physics 3

In 1905 Einstein published his ideas on a special relativity, different from the Galilean relativity espoused by Newton. At the core of Einstein’s ideas was the conviction that the velocity of light is independent of the motion of the source.

His ideas had wide-ranging consequences. He led us into a wonderland world where invariant scalar entities, time, space, frequency, mass, became malleable, while vector additions became warped, and where time and space lost their identities, to be blended into an unstable, imaginary time-space entity.

It worked! And who are we to argue with success?

Yet, it is counter-intuitive, and there is an alternative theory (Ritz) that might have worked if given a chance. Its postulate is that light is moving with speed -c- relative to the source.


Walter Ritz pointed out seven problems with Maxwell-Lorentz electromagnetic field equations:

• Electric and magnetic forces really express relations about space and time and should be replaced with non-instantaneous elementary actions (his emission theory).
• Advanced potentials don't exist (and their erroneous use led to the Rayleigh-Jeans ultraviolet catastrophe).
• Localization of energy in the ether is vague.
• It is impossible to reduce gravity to the same notions.
• The unacceptable inequality of action and reaction is brought about by the concept of absolute motion with respect to the ether.
• Apparent relativistic mass increase is amenable to a different interpretation.
• The use of absolute coordinates, if independent of all motions of matter, requires throwing away the time honored use of Galilean relativity and our notions of rigid ponderable bodies. (Wikipedia)
  

A Swiss scientist (Walther Ritz, b. February 22, 1878 in Sion, Switzerland - d. 7 July 1909 in Göttingen), published in 1908 several articles criticizing Einstein’s 1905 magnum opus and warned against its bizarre consequences. The two had a heated public debate for a year and then agreed to disagree. Ritz died in 1909 at the age of 31.

Things stood there, Einstein gaining ground for his point of view.
Then, in 1913, a Dutch astronomer and cosmologist, Willem de Sitter (May 6, 1872 – November 20, 1934) published a paper that delivered a final blow to Ritz. Einstein’s special Relativity stood unchallenged. Ritz was no longer around for a rebuttal. His theories were scrapped and his name all but forgotten.

de Sitter was hardly unbiased. He and Einstein were friends and life-long collaborators. Researchers have voiced concern about the premises of his paper. He did not account for the fact that interstellar space is a dispersive medium. The extinction theorem all but guarantees that the photon reaching the spectroscope is not the original but a tired replica. I shall, however, discuss the argument on de Sitter’s own terms.