arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0806/0806.1234v1.pdf
Mitchell J. Feigenbaum: "In this paper, not only do I show that the constant speed of light is unnecessary for the construction of the theories of relativity, but overwhelmingly more, there is no room for it in the theory. (...) We can make a few guesses. There is a "villain" in the story, who, of course, is Newton."

That is, the speed of light may depend on or be independent of the speed of the light source - in either case Einsteinians should sing "Divine Einstein" and "Yes we all believe in relativity, relativity, relativity" and criticise Newton the Villain:

www.haverford.edu/physics/songs/divine.htm
No-one's as dee-vine as Albert Einstein
Not Maxwell, Curie, or Bohr!
He explained the photo-electric effect,
And launched quantum physics with his intellect!
His fame went glo-bell, he won the Nobel --
He should have been given four!
No-one's as dee-vine as Albert Einstein,
Professor with brains galore!
No-one could outshine Professor Einstein --
Egad, could that guy derive!
He gave us special relativity,
That's always made him a hero to me!
Brownian motion, my true devotion,
He mastered back in aught-five!
No-one's as dee-vine as Albert Einstein,
Professor in overdrive!


We all believe in relativity, relativity, relativity.
Yes we all believe in relativity, 8.033, relativity.
Einstein's postulates imply
That planes are shorter when they fly.
Their clocks are slowed by time dilation
And look warped from aberration.
We all believe in relativity, relativity, relativity.
Yes we all believe in relativity, 8.033, relativity.

Jean-Marc Levy-Leblond was the first to discover that, even if the speed of light varies in accordance with the prediction of Newton the Villain's emission theory of light (c'=c+v), this will not shake in any way Divine Albert's Divine Theory:

o.castera.free.fr/pdf/Chronogeometrie.pdf
Jean-Marc Lévy-Leblond "De la relativité à la chronogéométrie ou: Pour en finir avec le "second postulat" et autres fossiles": "D'autre part, nous savons aujourd'hui que l'invariance de la vitesse de la lumière est une conséquence de la nullité de la masse du photon. Mais, empiriquement, cette masse, aussi faible soit son actuelle borne supérieure expérimentale, ne peut et ne pourra jamais être considérée avec certitude comme rigoureusement nulle. Il se pourrait même que de futures mesures mettent en évidence une masse infime, mais non-nulle, du photon ; la lumière alors n'irait plus à la "vitesse de la lumière", ou, plus précisément, la vitesse de la lumière, désormais variable, ne s'identifierait plus à la vitesse limite invariante. Les procédures opérationnelles mises en jeu par le "second postulat" deviendraient caduques ipso facto. La théorie elle-même en serait-elle invalidée ? Heureusement, il n'en est rien ; mais, pour s'en assurer, il convient de la refonder sur des bases plus solides, et d'ailleurs plus économiques. En vérité, le premier postulat suffit, à la condition de l'exploiter à fond."

www.hep.princeton.edu/~mcdonald/examples/mechanics/levy-leblond_ajp_44_271_76.pdf
Jean-Marc Levy-Leblond: "This is the point of view from wich I intend to criticize the overemphasized role of the speed of light in the foundations of the special relativity, and to propose an approach to these foundations that dispenses with the hypothesis of the invariance of c. (...) We believe that special relativity at the present time stands as a universal theory discribing the structure of a common space-time arena in which all fundamental processes take place. (...) The evidence of the nonzero mass of the photon would not, as such, shake in any way the validity of the special relalivity. It would, however, nullify all its derivations which are based on the invariance of the photon velocity."

Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com

Actually, the speed of light in water is different than the speed of light in air. Medium is invariable for the space it occupies to Newton.


I prefer to say that Foucault who measured the speed of light in water around the beginning of the nineteenth century could be the villain.

The claim that Divine Albert's Divine Theory is independent of the constancy/variability of the speed of light (truth/falsehood of Einstein's 1905 light postulate) is obviously idiotic and yet too many Einsteinians (some quite clever) desperately teach that (Mitchell J. Feigenbaum and Jean-Marc Levy-Leblond have already been quoted):

groups.google.ca/group/sci.physics.relat...msg/dc1ebdf49c012de2
Tom Roberts: "If it is ultimately discovered that the photon has a nonzero mass (i.e. light in vacuum does not travel at the invariant speed of the Lorentz transform), SR would be unaffected but both Maxwell's equations and QED would be refuted (or rather, their domains of applicability would be reduced)."

www.amazon.com/Einsteins-Relativity-Beyo...etical/dp/9810238886
Jong-Ping Hsu: "The fundamentally new ideas of the first purpose are developed on the basis of the term paper of a Harvard physics undergraduate. They lead to an unexpected affirmative answer to the long-standing question of whether it is possible to construct a relativity theory without postulating the constancy of the speed of light and retaining only the first postulate of special relativity. This question was discussed in the early years following the discovery of special relativity by many physicists, including Ritz, Tolman, Kunz, Comstock and Pauli, all of whom obtained negative answers."

www.newscientist.com/article/mg20026801....bout-relativity.html
Why Einstein was wrong about relativity
29 October 2008, Mark Buchanan, NEW SCIENTIST
"This "second postulate" is the source of all Einstein's eccentric physics of shrinking space and haywire clocks. And with a little further thought, it leads to the equivalence of mass and energy embodied in the iconic equation E = mc2. The argument is not about the physics, which countless experiments have confirmed. It is about whether we can reach the same conclusions without hoisting light onto its highly irregular pedestal. (...) But in fact, says Feigenbaum, both Galileo and Einstein missed a surprising subtlety in the maths - one that renders Einstein's second postulate superfluous. (...) The idea that Einstein's relativity has nothing to do with light could actually come in rather handy. For one thing, it rules out a nasty shock if anyone were ever to prove that photons, the particles of light, have mass. We know that the photon's mass is very small - less than 10-49 grams. A photon with any mass at all would imply that our understanding of electricity and magnetism is wrong, and that electric charge might not be conserved. That would be problem enough, but a massive photon would also spell deep trouble for the second postulate, as a photon with mass would not necessarily always travel at the same speed. Feigenbaum's work shows how, contrary to many physicists' beliefs, this need not be a problem for relativity."

True, in Einsteiniana's schizophrenic world you can safely teach anything but still openly teaching that the falsehood of Einstein's 1905 light postulate "need not be a problem for relativity" is strange. Perhaps clever Einsteinians fear that their secret belief in Newton's emission theory of light cannot be kept secret any longer:

en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Development_o...Essence_of_Radiation
The Development of Our Views on the Composition and Essence of Radiation by Albert Einstein, 1909
EINSTEIN'S 1909 CONFESSION: "A large body of facts shows undeniably that light has certain fundamental properties that are better explained by Newton's emission theory of light than by the oscillation theory. For this reason, I believe that the next phase in the development of theoretical physics will bring us a theory of light that can be considered a fusion of the oscillation and emission theories. The purpose of the following remarks is to justify this belief and to show that a profound change in our views on the composition and essence of light is imperative.....Then the electromagnetic fields that make up light no longer appear as a state of a hypothetical medium, but rather as independent entities that the light source gives off, just as in Newton's emission theory of light......Relativity theory has changed our views on light. Light is conceived not as a manifestation of the state of some hypothetical medium, but rather as an independent entity like matter. Moreover, this theory shares with the corpuscular theory of light the unusual property that light carries inertial mass from the emitting to the absorbing object."

www.perimeterinstitute.ca/index.php?opti...&lecture_id=3576
John Stachel: "Einstein discussed the other side of the particle-field dualism - get rid of fields and just have particles."
EINSTEIN'S 1954 CONFESSION: "I consider it entirely possible that physics cannot be based upon the field concept, that is on continuous structures. Then nothing will remain of my whole castle in the air, including the theory of gravitation, but also nothing of the rest of contemporary physics."
John Stachel's comment: "If I go down, everything goes down, ha ha, hm, ha ha ha."

www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/einstein/genius/
"Genius Among Geniuses" by Thomas Levenson
A clue to EINSTEIN'S 1954 CONFESSION: "And then, in June, Einstein completes special relativity, which adds a twist to the story: Einstein's March paper treated light as particles, but special relativity sees light as a continuous field of waves. Alice's Red Queen can accept many impossible things before breakfast, but it takes a supremely confident mind to do so. Einstein, age 26, sees light as wave and particle, picking the attribute he needs to confront each problem in turn. Now that's tough."

books.google.com/books?id=JokgnS1JtmMC
"Relativity and Its Roots" By Banesh Hoffmann
Another clue to EINSTEIN'S 1954 CONFESSION: "Moreover, if light consists of particles, as Einstein had suggested in his paper submitted just thirteen weeks before this one, the second principle seems absurd: A stone thrown from a speeding train can do far more damage than one thrown from a train at rest; the speed of the particle is not independent of the motion of the object emitting it. And if we take light to consist of particles and assume that these particles obey Newton's laws, they will conform to Newtonian relativity and thus automatically account for the null result of the Michelson-Morley experiment without recourse to contracting lengths, local time, or Lorentz transformations. Yet, as we have seen, Einstein resisted the temptation to account for the null result in terms of particles of light and simple, familiar Newtonian ideas, and introduced as his second postulate something that was more or less obvious when thought of in terms of waves in an ether."

Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com

"A large body of facts shows undeniably that light has certain fundamental properties that are better explained by Newton's emission theory of light than by the oscillation theory. For this reason, I believe that the next phase in the development of theoretical physics will bring us a theory of light that can be considered a fusion of the oscillation and emission theories. The purpose of the following remarks is to justify this belief and to show that a profound change in our views on the composition and essence of light is imperative.....Then the electromagnetic fields that make up light no longer appear as a state of a hypothetical medium, but rather as independent entities that the light source gives off, just as in Newton's emission theory of light......Relativity theory has changed our views on light. Light is conceived not as a manifestation of the state of some hypothetical medium, but rather as an independent entity like matter."

But is light explained, or is it sensually an example of a filler of space though time? Light when explained travels in a vacuum: the cgs system of measurement refers to light traveling through a vacuum, OR as you seem to prefer empty space. Fine we have a theory of light but we've lost the Law of Nature about It.

Theories are idealistic only if they are determining of phenomenon. I seem to prefer the mks system of measurement.

There is the element in experimental physics for the measure of the juxtapositional Remoteness of the exact object, as opposed to the sensuality of the object-in-itself.

As I said in my previous message, clever Einsteinians secretly believe in Newton's emission theory of light - it is relatively easy to infer the falsehood of Einstein's 1905 light postulate as one synchronously analyses the Michelson-Morley and Pound-Rebka experiments:

groups.google.com/group/sci.physics.rela...msg/44abc7dbb30db6c2
John Norton (a very clever Einsteinian): "THE MICHELSON-MORLEY EXPERIMENT IS FULLY COMPATIBLE WITH AN EMISSION THEORY OF LIGHT THAT CONTRADICTS THE LIGHT POSTULATE."
Tom Roberts (an Einsteinian relatively clever and famous on sci.physics.relativity): "Sure. The fact that this one experiment is compatible with other theories does not refute relativity in any way. The full experimental record refutes most if not all emission theories, but not relativity."
Pentcho Valev: "THE POUND-REBKA EXPERIMENT IS FULLY COMPATIBLE WITH AN EMISSION THEORY OF LIGHT THAT CONTRADICTS THE LIGHT POSTULATE."
Tom Roberts: "Sure. But this experiment, too, does not refute relativity. The full experimental record refutes most if not all emission theories, but not relativity."
_____________________________
end of quotation

On the other hand, clever Einsteinians know that that the adoption of c'=c+v, the emission theory equation showing how the speed of light varies with the speed of the emitter, would destroy Einsteiniana's schizophrenic world completely (Einsteinians would not be able to make any money in a world which is not schizophrenic). So, although the rallying cry "Back to Newton" is not forbidden in Einsteiniana, Einsteinians preserve the schizophreny by calling in on Lorentz and borrowing crucial idiocies (e.g. "Lorentz invariance" or "length contraction"):

www.amazon.com/Relativity-Simultaneity-R...osophy/dp/0415701740
Einstein, Relativity and Absolute Simultaneity (Routledge Studies in Contemporary Philosophy)
"Einstein, Relativity and Absolute Simultaneity is an anthology of original essays by an international team of leading philosophers and physicists who, on the centenary of Albert Einsteins Special Theory of Relativity, come together in this volume to reassess the contemporary paradigm of the relativistic concept of time. A great deal has changed since 1905 when Einstein proposed his Special Theory of Relativity, and this book offers a fresh reassessment of Special Relativitys relativistic concept of time in terms of epistemology, metaphysics and physics. There is no other book like this available; hence philosophers and scientists across the world will welcome its publication."
"UNFORTUNATELY FOR EINSTEIN'S SPECIAL RELATIVITY, HOWEVER, ITS EPISTEMOLOGICAL AND ONTOLOGICAL ASSUMPTIONS ARE NOW SEEN TO BE QUESTIONABLE, UNJUSTIFIED, FALSE, PERHAPS EVEN ILLOGICAL."
Craig Callender: "In my opinion, by far the best way for the tenser to respond to Putnam et al is to adopt the Lorentz 1915 interpretation of time dilation and Fitzgerald contraction. Lorentz attributed these effects (and hence the famous null results regarding an aether) to the Lorentz invariance of the dynamical laws governing matter and radiation, not to spacetime structure. On this view, Lorentz invariance is not a spacetime symmetry but a dynamical symmetry, and the special relativistic effects of dilation and contraction are not purely kinematical. The background spacetime is Newtonian or neo-Newtonian, not Minkowskian. Both Newtonian and neo-Newtonian spacetime include a global absolute simultaneity among their invariant structures (with Newtonian spacetime singling out one of neo-Newtonian spacetimes many preferred inertial frames as the rest frame). On this picture, there is no relativity of simultaneity and spacetime is uniquely decomposable into space and time."

www.amazon.co.uk/Physical-Relativity-Spa...ective/dp/0199275831
"Harvey Brown thinks that most philsophers are confused about relativity. Most centrally, he thinks they're confused about the relativistic effects of length contraction and time dilation. (...) Physical Relativity explores the nature of the distinction at the heart of Einstein's 1905 formulation of his special theory of relativity: that between kinematics and dynamics. Einstein himself became increasingly uncomfortable with this distinction, and with the limitations of what he called the 'principle theory' approach inspired by the logic of thermodynamics. A handful of physicists and philosophers have over the last century likewise expressed doubts about Einstein's treatment of the relativistic behaviour of rigid bodies and clocks in motion in the kinematical part of his great paper, and suggested that the dynamical understanding of length contraction and time dilation intimated by the immediate precursors of Einstein is more fundamental. (...) Physical Relativity is the well-deserved co-recipient of the Lakatos Prize for Philosophy of Science."

philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00001661/01/Minkowski.pdf
Harvey R. Brown and Oliver Pooley: "One then appeals to the relativity principle again - the principle entails that these coordinated contractions and dilations must be exactly the same function of velocity for each inertial frame, along with the principle of spatial isotropy, in order to narrow down the deformations to just those encoded in the Lorentz transformations. What has been shown is that rods and clocks must behave in quite particular ways in order for the two postulates to be true together. But this hardly amounts to an explanation of such behaviour. Rather things go the other way around. It is because rods and clocks behave as they do, in a way that is consistent with the relativity principle, that light is measured to have the same speed in each inertial frame."

Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com