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[Phys-L] Re: Assignment for Einsteinians



Subject: Re: Assignment for Einsteinians


On Sat, 2 Jul 2005 at 1:56 AM, Pentcho Valev wrote:

"The situation is simple - it is Newton's particle model rather than the wave model that is relevant as one considers the speed of light moving through vacuum. According to the particle model, photons are analogous to bullets and their speed does depend on the speed of source or observer.
...
In my view, it would be easy to restore student's rationality by starting
from two hypoteses: 1. Speed of light is constant; 2. Speed of light is
variable; and derive everything that could be derived from them. The
derivations are not difficult, all students will understand them and,
believe me, ALL final results will confirm the truth of the second
hypothesis."



Considering light as particles is fine for some purposes, including the problem of their speed. Regarding the speed aspect, this proposal, known as ballistic hypothesis, had been discussed extensively for more than 100 years. It was abondoned due to hard scientific evidence - observation of binary stars, both - their directly observed motions and their spectra, according to which the maximum redshift in the light of one star is seen at the same instant as the maximum blue shift in the light of the other. These data are well known since the beginning of the last century.
In Relativity, the speed of the bullet generally also depends on motion of the gun, but this dependence is different from that in Newtonian Physics. It becomes less pronounced and eventually disappears as the speed of bullet approaches c (the bullet becomes a photon)(see, e.g. J. P. McKelvey and H. Grotch, Physics for Science and Engineering, Harper and Row Publishers, 1978, p. 903). Direct laboratory evidence for the source-independence of the light velocity was demonstrated experimentally as far back as 1964 (T. A. Filippas and J. G. Fox, Phys. Rev. 135, p. B1071, 1964)
In scientific matters, one would rather velieve scientific evidence rather than Valev's claims.

Moses Fayngold,
NJIT
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