Part VIII: Chronology of Scientific Events That Lead Our Scientists Down the Wrong Path.

The chronology of events that started our scientists down the wrong path starts back even before Isaac Newton (1642-1727), all the way back to Tycho Brahe (1546-1601) and Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) and Rene Descartes (1596-1650).  This is not to say that the contributions these men made to science was in any way wrong, but some of the thinking and the logic went astray as it progressed down through the years.

 Tycho Brahe was the last astronomer to actually measure the motion of Mars without the use of a telescope, and he was very good.  He created his own instruments for measuring the motion of Mars over the years and his accurate measurements helped Johannes Kepler decipher the laws of planetary motion.

The laws of planetary motion discovered by Kepler are as follows;

1)                  The orbit of a planet is an ellipse with the sun at one of the two foci.

2)                  The line joining a planet and the sun sweeps out equal areas in equal times.

3)                  The square of the orbital period is equal to the cube of the semi-major axis.

These laws and Galileo’s (1546-1642) experiments were particularly helpful in Isaac Newton’s development of the laws of motion and gravitation.  However, it was Descartes who set the precedent of man separating himself from reality in his famous, Cogito ergo sum, I think, therefore, I am.  He believed that one was only aware of oneself and that the senses could deceive you, so all things must be deduced logically.  In this way man became an observer of nature and not a participant and it continues that way even today in modern science.

When Newton formulated his laws of motion and gravitation it was based on the premise as an observer of nature rather than a participant.    Newton was aware of this separation as he stated in his last sentence of the definition of inertia, “…Resistance is usually ascribed to bodies at rest, and impulse to those in motion; but motion and rest, as commonly conceived, are only relatively distinguished; nor are those bodies always truly at rest, which commonly are taken to be so.”  However, when Newton stated his laws he was unable to make this separation.  We will restate the laws here and show how and why this makes a difference.

The third law should have come first because the first and second laws are natural consequences of the third;

1)         Law 1- Every body perseveres in its state of rest, or of uniform motion in a right line unless it is compelled to change that state by forces impressed thereon.

2)         Law 2-The alteration of motion is ever proportional to the motive force impressed; and is made in the direction of the right line in which that force is impressed.

3)         Law 3-To every action there is always opposed an equal reaction: or the mutual actions of two bodies upon each other are always equal and directed to contrary parts.

Now the reason I said the third law should have been first is by this simple formula

S+F_A = S-F_R

Or as the law is stated the total sum of positive action forces, +F_A, is equal to the total sum of negative reaction forces, -F_R, (or for every action there is an equal and opposing reaction.)

So, when we look at the first law we can see why this is a natural consequence of the third law by this formula;

S(+F_A) - S(-F_R) = 0.

This is the law of equilibrium.  When the total sum of forces acting on a body is equal to zero it is said to be in a state of equilibrium.  And the law is stated this way; when the total resultant, R, of forces acting upon a body is equal to zero, the body is said to be in a state of equilibrium and the formula for this is;

R = SF = 0.

The letters are in bold because forces have magnitude and direction and are considered to be vector forces, which are represented by bold letters.  But this could as easily be written in this fashion;

R = S(+F_A) - S(-F_R)= SF_T = 0.

The first law is the law of equilibrium as every college physics text book describes.  And as we look at the third law we also see how this is a natural consequence following the first law in this manner;

S(+F_A) - S(-F_R) ¹ 0 = ±ma.

Or simply stated the acceleration or deceleration is directly proportional to the “motive force impressed” and inversely proportional to the inertial resistance of the mass.  As long the force is impressed or continues and overcomes the inertial resistance of the mass, the mass will continue to accelerate or decelerate.  When the force ceases to be impressed or becomes equal to the inertial resistance the mass will once again maintain equilibrium, whether at relative rest with the observer or in uniform linear motion with respect to the observer. 

It would not be until Einstein (1879-1955) that we would realize that rest and uniform linear or right line motion are observer dependent motions, although it would seem Newton was aware of this.  If he could have stated his law of equilibrium or first law with relativity in mind, it would have been more along these lines;

Every body perseveres in its state of inertial equilibrium, whether at rest or of uniform motion in a right line with respect to the observer, unless compelled to change that state by forces impressed thereon.

This places both rest and uniform linear motion or uniform motion in a right line in its proper category of equilibrium and observer dependent motions.  This may not seem significant, but it is very significant when it comes to the theories of relativity.

Of course, the law of gravitation is Newton’s greatest insight he gleaned from Kepler’s laws of planetary motion.  In this law Newton expressed the inverse square law where the strength of the field reduces proportionally at the square of the distance between the two masses.  It is this inverse square law, also used by Charles-Augustin de Coulomb (1736-1806) when he expressed the law of attraction of charges, which kept us going down the wrong path.  It wasn’t until the latter part of the twentieth century that we would discover this law is common to all fields.  Note the similarity of the two formulas;

kqq’/r² … Gmm’/r².

It was the inverse square law which made physicists and Einstein assume that the law of charges and the law of gravitation were derived from the same force. However, when James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879) unified the electric and magnetic fields with his four equations he did not use neutral mass as a component of the equations.  And later when J. J. Thomson (1856-1930) discovered what he called the theoretical electromagnetic radius of the electron physicists assumed it to be the material radius of the electron also.  It was not.  Just as the magnetic radius of a magnetic bar is not the material radius of the bar itself, the electromagnetic radius of the electron is not the material radius of the electron either although to this day scientists still believe it to be so.

There is one other experiment that has kept us going down the wrong path for over a century, the Michelson-Morley experiment which was supposed to measure Earth’s velocity through the ether. 

The ether was a concept that dates as far back as Descartes.  He believed that all planets and stars floated in something called ether.  Descartes even believed that all matter was a vortex in the ether and that space was an extension of matter.  Space existed between two points of matter and if there was no matter between which space could exist there was just a void.

When Newton formulated his laws of motion and gravitation he was able to explain the motions of the planets without the necessity of the vortexes, so he discarded Descartes’ vortex concept.  His laws could explain all the motions of the planets except for Mercury’s precession around the sun.  It took Einstein’s general theory of relativity to explain it, even though he fudged his equations to do it.

Albert Michelson (1852-1931) and Edward Morley (1838-1923) believed they could measure the velocity of the Earth through the ether with a device they invented called an interferometer.  It sent split beams of light down two legs, perpendicular to one another, of the interferometer and then brought them back together to measure any interference that may occur due to Earth’s motion through the ether.  They discovered none and therefore concluded there was no ether and that remains the conclusion to this day.  The experiment, however, was designed to fail because it only measured the beams of light parallel to the surface of the Earth and had two-way travel (any energy loss going one way would be gained coming back the same way.).  They never thought to measure the beams perpendicular and parallel to the Earth at the same time, with one-way travel, which would have determined whether the Earth was a vortex in the ether or not.  This was not done until 1960 with the Pound-Rebka experiment.

This was the common consensus of the physics community under which Einstein labored when he began working on his theories of relativity; there was no ether and mass is wholly electromagnetic. 

The title of his original paper on relativity, ON THE ELECTRODYNAMICS OF MOVING BODIES, gives you insight that he believed just as the physics community of his day did, that all mass is electromagnetic in nature.  He continues this philosophy into his general theory as well as he states at the beginning of section 14, “We make a distinction between “gravitational field” and “matter” in this way, that we denote everything but the gravitational field as “matter.”  Our use of the word therefore includes not only matter in the ordinary sense, but the electromagnetic field as well.”  Matter is not wholly electromagnetic in nature as we have only recently discovered.

When Einstein established the upper limit of velocity at the speed of light he was referring to the speed at which an electromagnetic field could accelerate a charged particle.  James Clerk Maxwell had shown in his equations that the magnetic field and the electric field could only travel at the speed of light through a vacuum and that light was electromagnetic in nature.  Therefore, Einstein supposed that if all mass was electromagnetic in nature also it could only be accelerated to the speed of light.  In his 1905 paper he makes these remarks about ponderable masses, “…We remark that these results are also valid for ponderable material points, because a ponderable material point can be made into an electron (in our sense of the word) by the addition of an electric charge, no matter how small.”

He goes on to state in the next paragraph, “…If an electron moves …under the action of an electrostatic force…the energy withdrawn from the electrostatic field must be put down as equal to the energy of motion W of the electron….”  And he then goes on to formulate his equation W = mc²{[1/(1-v²/c²)]-1}.  But then he goes further to state, “…Velocities greater than light have—as in our previous results—no possibility of existence.

This expression for the kinetic energy must also, by virtue of the argument stated above, apply to ponderable masses as well.”

This argument would be valid if the electron was the only charged particle and all mass was electromagnetic in nature, but Einstein knew nothing of any other charged particles like the proton, because it wasn’t discovered until 1919.  By adding a proton to a ponderable mass that already has a negative electric charge one will nullify that charge and make the mass neutral and unable to be accelerated by an electromagnetic field.  (That is why neutrons, neutral particles discovered in the nucleus of atoms in 1931, are the functional particle in atomic bombs.  They are not deflected by an electromagnetic field.)

However, in his 1911 paper, ON THE INFLUENCE OF GRAVITATION ON THE PROPAGATION OF LIGHT, he makes a different argument for the way a neutral mass can gain energy that is not accelerated by an electromagnetic field.  Here is his argument…;

“1. The energy E, as measured in S₂, is emitted in the form of radiation in S₂, towards S₁, where, by the result just obtained, the energy E(1+gh/c²), as measured in S₁, is absorbed.

2.  A body W of mass M is lowered from S₂ to S₁, work Mgh being done in the process.

3. The energy E is transferred from S₁ to the body W while W is in S₁.  Let the gravitational mass M be thereby changed so that it acquires the value M’.

4.  Let W be again raised to S₂, work M’gh being done in the process.

5.  Let E be transferred from W back to S₂.

The effect of this cycle is simply that S₁ has undergone the increase of energy Egh/c², and that the quantity of energy M’gh- Mgh has been conveyed to the system in the form of work….

The increase in gravitational mass is thus equal to E/c², and therefore equal to the increase in inertia mass as given by the theory of relativity.”

            Hence mass can gain energy from the acceleration of a gravitational field also, and no one knows what the upper limit of acceleration of a gravitational field is?  It is obvious it can accelerate things faster than light or why else do we have “black holes?”

            Of course, Einstein was off by a factor of one-half in his equations in this 1911 paper.  When he figured out the perihelion orbit of Mercury in his 1915 paper he realized that Mercury needed an escape velocity to go from a lower orbit to a higher orbit, so he simply started with escape velocity rather than orbital velocity in his 1915 paper on the perihelion of Mercury.  This gave him the needed factor of two.  In his general theory in equation 49 he simply introduces a factor of a -2k and explains in a footnote that he will explain the introduction of this factor later.  And indeed, he does, it was simply to make his equations in the general theory work out properly.

I am surprised that no other physicist has taken note of this because in section 16 in the last paragraph he explains his reasoning; “…It must be admitted that this introduction of the energy-tensor of matter is not justified by the relativity postulate alone.  For this reason we have here deduced it from the requirement that the energy of the gravitational field shall act gravitatively in the same way as any other kind of energy.  But the strongest reason for the choice of these equations lies in their consequence, that the equations of conservation of momentum and energy, corresponding to equations (49) and (49a), hold good for the components of the total energy….”  The equation he fudged.

Although the general theory is a beautiful mathematical treatise it has faulty logic, but Einstein cannot be blamed for this.  He expressed the current philosophy of the day among physicists and the electron was the only known particle when this paper was published in 1916.  As I said before, the proton was not discovered until 1919 and the neutron in 1931, so at the time he was almost right.

Even today we continue along this wrong thinking. Physicists keep virulently studying their trees, each locked into his special unique study, trying to prove that his tree is the only one that matters, and they keep overlooking the forest.

The aliens have long since passed this ignorance and continue to watch us in amusement. They will not choose to reveal themselves until we have climbed out of this quagmire of thinking.