by: CARL A. ZAPFFE, (deceased)
Scoutmaster & Friend - Troop 35
6410 Murray Hill Rd.,
Baltimore, MD 21212

For those who admire the orderliness of epistemology in theoretical physics, and are committed to the requirements of logic in experimental physics, the following should be of interest, and particularly because it knifes through the confusion of a century's wrangling over c ± v values for the velocity of light.

Seven steps of factual information come under present consideration, the first two of which serve to shake loose the long-standing and generally unquestioning fixation upon Einstein's special theory of relativity (STR) so that it can be re-examined without bias:

I. The mass-energy relationship E = mc² does not depend upon the STR, whereupon the fate of the two are not inseparable.

As Lewis [1] demonstrated in 1908, and Einstein himself admitted in 1950 [2], the fact of mass-energy equivalence has been inherent within the charge-momentum relationships of Maxwell's field equations since long before Einstein was born.

II. Elementary-particle phenomena in nuclear physics, which do exhibit the (1 - v²/c²)^-1/2 relationship of an asymptotic c for both decay life t and mass increase in terms of e/m , do not necessarily confirm the Lorentz transfomation for t and x .

This traditional identity is pure surmise, following from the convenience of the

(1 - v²/c²)^-1/2 term already appearing in the Lorentz transformation, and the heuristic appeal of an argument that, since even the complex structure of the human being is composed of elementary particles, that which measures time t for the one measures time t for the other. But on the one hand, these velocity-dependent changes - and specifically if velocity be proved absolute - submit as well to the same treatment as the rate equations of chemistry and thermodynamics, which of course support neither one transformation nor another; while on the other hand heuristics is scarcely the dependable tool for bridging such a gap as that between pions and hemoglobin. Metallurgists use similar t measurements for the decay behaviour of the positron [3,4], which is about as elementary as a particle can get; and the changes in this case have no relationship whatever with velocity, the velocity being v = 0 .

Next we encounter these two massive criticisms of the STR epistemology, one pinpointing the long debate over the chronometric paradoxes, the other using the steps of logic to return the physical model from Einstein back to Lorentz:

III. An impossible contradiction stands in the prediction of the Einstein equations that two clocks, in motion relative to one another, can each be found running slow.

This classical controversy was spearheaded by the late Herbert J. Dingle, whose book Science at the Crossroads [5] should be read. Despite the widely ranging imagination of STR apologists, the only acceptable answer next follows.

IV. Only if the velocity is absolute can this contradiction be resolved; and if velocity is absolute so is space.

This was the monumental work of Ives [6], and the classical papers of Builder [7,8], recently confirrned experimentally by studies of isotropy and anisotropy of the 3°K background radiation [9].

V. But if both velocity and space are absolute, then so is time.

This follows simply from v = x/t ; and the time t is presumably that d²s/dt² of the cosmically unfolding "Big Bang", or its competing models. Therefore any velocity-dependent features, and specifically those of elementary particles, are referable on the one hand to the chronometry of this cosmic unfolding, and on the other hand to the isotropy of its radiative framework.

There only remains to resolve certain problems with the seemingly electromagnetic or Maxwellian substructuring of this space.

VI. An elementary principle of geophysics is that light from the aurora borealis or australis, and indeed every other electromagnetic disturbance within the domain of the terrestrial magnetosphere, arrives upon the surface at velocity c relative to geocentric rest coordinates. Similarly, it is presumed in astrophysics that all radiation traversing a stellar magnetosphere does so at velocity c relative to the coordinates of the repective magnetosphere.

VII. Since experimental physics has similarly proved, from the time of Arago's starlit prisms in 1810 [10], to such recent tests as those of Brillet and Hall [11], that light from either terrestrial or extraterrestrial sorces similarly traverses the local magnetosphere at velocity c , .simple principles of geometry and trigonometry then require that c ± v light velocities do obtain, though the differential is only discoverable along the magnetosheath which separates the Maxwellian domain of one magnetosphere from that of another.

This is the main thrust of the Magnetospheric Ether-Drag Theory [12, 13], which merely calls attention of relativists to principles already welI established in geophysics.

From this progression of seven observations, one can only arrive at the following seven conclusions:

1. Einstein's physical model for his special theory of relativity must be abandoned in favour of that of Lorentz.

2. Lorentz's physical model must similarly be abandoned because of its outmoded field features from standpoints of magnetospheric physics.

3. The Einstein-Lorentz transformation must then be abandoned also because of these errors in points of physical model.

4. With abandonment of the Lorentz transformation, velocity-dependent phenomena such as those in elementary-particle physics enter the province of mere rate equations:

dj /dv , d^2j /dt² , dt = f(v) = t ₀ (1 - v²/c²)^-1/2 , ... etc.

5. All (1 - v²/c²)^-1/2 relationships in general become interpreted merely as asymptotic cosine or sec q functions, identical with the linear equations for subsonic aerodynamics and hydrodynamics, and unrelated except fortuitously to this same factor in the Lorentz-Einstein transformation.

6. No alteration at all attends the mass-energy equivalence E = mc² .

7. A physical model is new at hand, long known to geophysics but completely novel to relativistic physics, in which space is structured in terms of the phenomenology of electrodynamics, and which not only permits experimental confirmation, but promises an entirely new navigational approach to astronautic odometry - measuring of one's position in celestial reaches of so-called "empty" space.

[1] Lewis, G.N.: A Revision ol the Fundamental Laws of Matter and Energy, Phil. Mag. 16, 70517 (1908).

[2] Einstein, A.: Out of My Later Years, Philosoph. Lib., New York, viii + 282 (1950).

[3] Lynn, K. G. and Byrne, J. G.: Positron Lifetime Studies Made in Fatigue-Damaged AISA 4340 Samples, Metall. Trans. (A) 7, 604-6 (Apr. 1976).

[4] Hadnagy, T. D.; Byrne, J. G.; and Miller, G. R.: Effect of Porosity on the Mean Lifetime of Positrons in Scintered and Hot-Pressed Alpha-Alumina, J. Am. Ceramics Soc. 60, 461-3 (Sept.-Oct. 1977).

[5] Dingle, H.: Science at the Crossroads, Martin Brian and O'Keefe, London, 256 pp. (1972).

[6] Hazelett, R. and Turner, D. (ed. by): The Einstein Myth and the Ives Papers, The Devin-Adair Co., Old Greenwich, CO. ix + 313 (1979).

[7] Builder, G.: Ether and Relativity, Australian J. of Phystcs 2, 279-97 (1958).

[8] Builder, G.: The Constancy of the Velocity of Light, Australian J. Phystcs 2, 457-80 (1958).

[9] Smoot, G. F.; Gorenstein, M. V.; and Muller, R. A.: Detection of Anisotropy in the Cosmic Blackbody Radiation, Phys. Rev. Letts. 39, No. 14, 898-901 (3 Oct. 1977).

[10] Arago, F.: (Fr.) The Velocity of Light, Abs. Procès-verbaux des Séances de 1'Académie des Sciences, Paris, p. 399 (l0 Dec. 1810).

[11] Brillet, A.; and Hall, J. L.: Improved Laser Test of the Isotropy of Space, Phys. Rev. Lett. 42, 549-52 (1979).

[12] Zapffe, C. A.: A Magnetospheric Ether-Drag Theory and the Reference Frames of Relativistic Physics, SST. 2 No. 4, 439-54; disc. 455-9 (1979); 3, No. 4, 483-5 (1980).

[13] Zapffe, C. A.: The Magnetosphere in Relativistic Physics, Ind. J. Theoret. Phys. 30, No. 1 (1982).

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This essay first appeared in The Toth-Maatian Review, Volume 3, Number 4, January 1985, pp. 1531-1535.