Richard Feynman Brainwashes His Students

Feb 9, 2023
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Richard Feynman: "Another consequence of the [Maxwell's] equations is that if the source of the disturbance is moving, the light emitted goes through space at the same speed c. This is analogous to the case of sound, the speed of sound waves being likewise independent of the motion of the source. This independence of the motion of the source, in the case of light, brings up an interesting problem: Suppose we are riding in a car that is going at a speed u, and light from the rear is going past the car with speed c. Differentiating the first equation in (15.2) gives dx'/dt=dx/dt-u, which means that according to the Galilean transformation the apparent speed of the passing light, as we measure it in the car, should not be c but should be c-u. For instance, if the car is going 100,000 mi/sec, and the light is going 186,000 mi/sec, then apparently the light going past the car should go 86,000 mi/sec. In any case, by measuring the speed of the light going past the car (if the Galilean transformation is correct for light), one could determine the speed of the car. A number of experiments based on this general idea were performed to determine the velocity of the earth, but they all failed - they gave no velocity at all. We shall discuss one of these experiments in detail, to show exactly what was done and what was the matter; something was the matter, of course, something was wrong with the equations of physics. What could it be?...As mentioned above, attempts were made to determine the absolute velocity of the earth through the hypothetical "ether" that was supposed to pervade all space. The most famous of these experiments is one performed by Michelson and Morley in 1887." http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/I_15.html

The light-from-rear-going-past-car experiment and the Michelson-Morley experiment are by no means analogous. In the former, the light source is OUTSIDE the moving system. In the latter, the light source is INSIDE the moving system. So applying the principle of relativity to the light-from-rear-going-past-car experiment is incorrect and the result c'=c-u is true, as demonstrated here:

"When an observer moves away from a stationary source...the velocity of the wave relative to the observer is slower than that when it is still."
View: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SC0Q6-xt-Xs


Applying the principle of relativity to the Michelson-Morley experiment is correct because both source and observer are INSIDE the moving system. The measured speed of light will always be constant, c'=c, and the two perpendicular beams of light will always return simultaneously. This implies, however, that relative to a stationary observer OUTSIDE the moving system, the speed of light will be c'=c±v, as posited by Newton's theory (it is THIS scenario that is analogous to the light-from-rear-going-past-car experiment):

"The null result of the Michelson-Morley experiment was unhelpful and possibly counter-productive in Einstein's investigations of an emission theory of light, for the null result is predicted by an emission theory." http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/12289/1/Einstein_Discover.pdf

"Emission theory, also called emitter theory or ballistic theory of light, was a competing theory for the special theory of relativity, explaining the results of the Michelson–Morley experiment of 1887...The name most often associated with emission theory is Isaac Newton. In his corpuscular theory Newton visualized light "corpuscles" being thrown off from hot bodies at a nominal speed of c with respect to the emitting object, and obeying the usual laws of Newtonian mechanics, and we then expect light to be moving towards us with a speed that is offset by the speed of the distant emitter (c ± v)." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emission_theory

Banesh Hoffmann, Einstein's co-author, admits that, originally ("without recourse to contracting lengths, local time, or Lorentz transformations"), the Michelson-Morley experiment was compatible with Newton's variable speed of light, c'=c±v, and incompatible with the constant speed of light, c'=c:

"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." Banesh Hoffmann, Relativity and Its Roots, p.92 https://www.amazon.com/Relativity-Its-Roots-Banesh-Hoffmann/dp/0486406768
 
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Feynman's light-from-rear-going-past-car hoax is an obvious plagiarism of Einstein's light-from-rear-going-past-carriage hoax:

Albert Einstein: "If a ray of light be sent along the embankment, we see from the above that the tip of the ray will be transmitted with the velocity c relative to the embankment. Now let us suppose that our railway carriage is again travelling along the railway lines with the velocity v, and that its direction is the same as that of the ray of light, but its velocity of course much less. Let us inquire about the velocity of propagation of the ray of light relative to the carriage. It is obvious that we can here apply the consideration of the previous section, since the ray of light plays the part of the man walking along relatively to the carriage. The velocity W of the man relative to the embankment is here replaced by the velocity of light relative to the embankment. w is the required velocity of light with respect to the carriage, and we have w = c - v. The velocity of propagation of a ray of light relative to the carriage thus comes out smaller than c. But this result comes into conflict with the principle of relativity set forth in Section 5." http://www.bartleby.com/173/7.html

The same fraudulent argument: Variable speed of light, w = c - v, "comes into conflict with the principle of relativity", and therefore the speed of light is constant, w = c. In other words, Einstein misleads the public into believing that his 1905 second postulate, the constancy of the speed of light, is a logical consequence of the first postulate, the principle of relativity.

Today's Einsteinians diligently teach the Einstein-Feynman hoax:

Dave Slaven: "Einstein's first postulate seems perfectly reasonable. And his second postulate follows very reasonably from his first. How strange that the consequences will seem so unreasonable." http://webs.morningside.edu/slaven/Physics/relativity/relativity3.html

Professor Raymond Flood: "A consequence of Einstein's principle of relativity is that the speed of light in vacuum has the same value in two uniformly moving frames of reference."
View: https://youtu.be/IjRSYv7u3T4?t=304


Chad Orzel: "The core idea of Einstein's theory of relativity can fit on a bumper sticker: The Laws Of Physics Do Not Depend On How You're Moving. Absolutely everything else follows from the simple realization that physics must appear exactly the same to person in motion as to a person at rest - the constant speed of light, the slowing of time for moving observers, E=mc2, black holes, even the expanding universe (I've written a whole book about this, explained through imaginary conversations with my dog)." http://www.forbes.com/sites/chadorzel/2015/05/29/four-reasons-to-not-fear-physics/

Michael Fowler: "Therefore, demanding that the laws of physics are the same in all inertial frames implies that the speed of any light wave, measured in any inertial frame, must be 186,300 miles per second. This then is the entire content of the Theory of Special Relativity: the Laws of Physics are the same in any inertial frame, and, in particular, any measurement of the speed of light in any inertial frame will always give 186,300 miles per second." http://galileo.phys.virginia.edu/classes/109/lectures/spec_rel.html

Leonard Susskind: "The principle of relativity is that the laws of physics are the same in every reference frame. That principle existed before Einstein. Einstein added one law of physics - the law of physics is that the speed of light is the speed of light, c. If you combine the two things together - that the laws of physics are the same in every reference frame, and that it's a law of physics that light moves with certain velocity, you come to the conclusion that light must move with the same velocity in every reference frame. Why? Because the principle of relativity says that the laws of physics are the same in every reference frame, and Einstein announced that it is a law of physics that light moves with a certain velocity."
View: https://youtu.be/toGH5BdgRZ4?t=626
 
Feynman's light-from-rear-going-past-car hoax is an obvious plagiarism of Einstein's light-from-rear-going-past-carriage hoax:

Albert Einstein: "If a ray of light be sent along the embankment, we see from the above that the tip of the ray will be transmitted with the velocity c relative to the embankment. Now let us suppose that our railway carriage is again travelling along the railway lines with the velocity v, and that its direction is the same as that of the ray of light, but its velocity of course much less. Let us inquire about the velocity of propagation of the ray of light relative to the carriage. It is obvious that we can here apply the consideration of the previous section, since the ray of light plays the part of the man walking along relatively to the carriage. The velocity W of the man relative to the embankment is here replaced by the velocity of light relative to the embankment. w is the required velocity of light with respect to the carriage, and we have w = c - v. The velocity of propagation of a ray of light relative to the carriage thus comes out smaller than c. But this result comes into conflict with the principle of relativity.

The same fraudulent argument: Variable speed of light, w = c - v, "comes into conflict with the principle of relativity", and therefore the speed of light is constant, w = c. In other words, Einstein misleads the public into believing that his 1905 second postulate, the constancy of the speed of light, is a logical consequence of the first postulate, the principle of relativity.

Where one man on a platform is passed by a man in a traincar, at the moment they meet a flash of light is given off in the middle of the train car. To the man on the platform the light hits the ends of the car at opposite moments in time. To the man in the train car they hit at the same time.

The man on the train sees the ends of the car at a fixed distance from each other, thus the light hits each end at the same time (same distance to travel). The man on the platform however sees the rear of the car catching up to the light while the front is moving away from it (light going to the front of the train has longer distance to go).

So, the only reason the light ever reaches the front of the wall is because it is not moving at the speed of light. Light catches up to it.

How would this experiment be different if the train is moving at the speed of light?

To the man on the train nothing would change I would have to say, because he is in his same reference frame of the train still. The man on the platform though, what would he see?

Would he see light hit the back of the train at the exact same time the flash happens, and never see the flash hit the front of the train but always [length of train car]/2 meters away from the front of the train car?

The observer on the train is the least well defined part of this thought experiment. The thing is, Lorentz transformations and such are only valid for relative velocities of strictly less than the speed of light. All sorts of things go to 00 and/or ∞∞ if you start boosting at 𝑐c, and so you cannot boost into and out of a photon's frame.

We can still ask about the person on the ground. Let's recast the problem as there being three equally-spaced photons moving along the tracks in the same direction.

At some point, the middle one splits into two photons, one moving in the same direction, the other moving backward.

Then clearly the backward-propagating photon would meet the forward-propagating photon at the rear in time 𝐿/(2𝑐)L/(2c).

On the other hand, the new forward-going photon would forever remain a distance 𝐿/2L/2 behind the original front photon. Thus your intuition for this frame (the only legitimate one of the two) is correct.

See: https://physics.stackexchange.com/q...what-if-the-train-is-moving-at-the-speed-of-l

We believe in causality: certain physical processes are observed to happen always in a certain order, never otherwise. For example, I have never eaten boiled eggs in my existence on this planet without my having to cook them first.

There is no causal link from event 𝐴 to event 𝐵 that can lie outside 𝐴's future light cone, often stated "no signal can propagate faster than 𝑐".

Certain processes can travel at faster than 𝑐c if there is no causal relationship between the events within the process. The travel of a material object is just a special case of a process whose events are causally linked.

It's postulated that the order between my cooking my eggs and my eating them is not changed when one observes these processes from relatively moving frames: there is no inertial observer moving relatively to me whose motion causes them to see me eating my eggs before I cook them. This is a crucial point once one derives the Lorentz transformation, because the Lorentz transformation shows that there is a relativity of simulteneity. Different, relatively moving observers do indeed observe different before/after time relationships between certain events. So how do we save our notions of causality?

Causal links cannot travel faster than 𝑐. For example, the link between my cooking my eggs and my eating them is (1) directed forwards in my time (pointing to my future) and (2) lies inside my future light cone. As long as this inside-my-future-lightcone condition is fulfilled, the basic properties of the Lorentz group guarantee that a boost cannot change the order of events linked by such relationships, even though it does change the time and space co-ordinates of those events.

There are other ways to motivate no-faster-than-light travel: for example, that the energy required to accelerate something with nonzero restmass to 𝑐 would be infinite. However, the upholding of causality is the overarching and most forceful motivation: there is no way to uphold the observed orders of events within a process if any pair of events on that process's worldline lie outside each others' future/past lightcone. If we believe in causality, no faster than light signalling is an inescapable conclusion.

Applying the principle of relativity to the Michelson-Morley experiment is correct because both source and observer are INSIDE the moving system. The measured speed of light will always be constant, c'=c, and the two perpendicular beams of light will always return simultaneously. This implies, however, that relative to a stationary observer OUTSIDE the moving system, the speed of light will be c'=c±v, as posited by Newton's theory (it is THIS scenario that is analogous to the light-from-rear-going-past-car experiment):

"The null result of the Michelson-Morley experiment was unhelpful and possibly counter-productive in Einstein's investigations of an emission theory of light, for the null result is predicted by an emission theory."

"Emission theory, also called emitter theory or ballistic theory of light, was a competing theory for the special theory of relativity, explaining the results of the Michelson–Morley experiment of 1887...The name most often associated with emission theory is Isaac Newton. In his corpuscular theory Newton visualized light "corpuscles" being thrown off from hot bodies at a nominal speed of c with respect to the emitting object, and obeying the usual laws of Newtonian mechanics, and we then expect light to be moving towards us with a speed that is offset by the speed of the distant emitter (c ± v)."

See: https://physics.stackexchange.com/q...n-that-nothing-can-travel-faster-than-the-lig

See: http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/12289/1 ... scover.pdf

See: https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/gsjournal/richard-feynman-brainwashes-his-students-t13733.html