Einstein’s Mistake

 

According to Ohanian

 

Einstein’s synchronization procedure relies on the implicit assumption that the speed of light between the locations of the two clocks is the same in each direction: same speed from Berne to Lucerne and from Lucerne to Berne. And Einstein emphasized this meant that with the clocks synchronized by his procedure, it was not possible to perform a logically meaningful test of the constancy of light. As he told Besso, there is an “inseparable relation between (synchronized) time and signal velocity.” Any attempt to verify the constancy of the speed of light with these synchronized clocks would, of course, verify it. But the constancy is built into the synchronization, and therefore such an attempt would be circular reasoning – like a cat chasing its own tail, it would prove nothing.

 

[i.e., clocks synchronized assuming light speed constancy, so when measuring light speed by these clocks it comes out constant.]

 

Einstein had deliberately designed his synchronization procedure to hide the effect of the speed of the Earth on the speed of light, because he thought this was clever and the right thing to do. In essence, Einstein’s synchrononization procedure was a parlor trick to make the speed of light appear constant, regardless of what the speed “really” is.

 

But Einstein’s trick had a fatal defect, and this was what Donald Crowhurst, drifting in mid-Atlantic on June 24, 1969 recognized when he exclaimed, “You can’t do THAT!” and “swindler!” Crowhurst recognized that we can expose Einstein’s parlor trick by testing the synchronization of the clocks by other means,….

 

 

How could Einstein have failed to see something so obvious? The explanation is that Einstein was not thinking like a physicist, but like a patent clerk. The most accurate available method for clock synchronization in 1905 was synchronization by electric signals (equivalent to light signals). This is what Einstein learnt in the patent office, and so he assumed that this was the right method to use for synchronization. He forgot that in the discussion of the foundations of relativity, he needed to pay attention to principles, not practice. He forgot he was writing a paper about physics, not a patent application…..

 

 

 

The distinction between regarding the speed of light as constant by stipulation or as constant by experiment might seem like a splitting of hairs. ..But if you are planning an experimental test of some of the strange, counterintuitive predictions of the theory, then you need to know what part of relativity is a stipulation and what part is hypothesis, so you know what you can test- any part of relativity that is a (legitimate) stipulation cannot be tested in any meaningful way.

 

Ohanian also notes – Pauli treated Einstein as an idiot on issues not to do with relativity; Pauli was apparently a mega-genius; and Einstein was being treated like a scared cow on issues of relativity by academia  – so couldn’t question relativity.

 

c.RJAnderton2009-03-23