From: "JACK L. URETSKY (C) 1996; HEP DIV., ARGONNE NATIONAL LAB, ARGONNE, IL 60439" <JLU@hep.anl.gov>
Date: Wed, 3 Jul 1996 11:44:48 -0500 (CDT)
Hi Jim Green-
Your question:
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Jack, David, et al., I have changed the subject line but I am responding to
Jack's last post.
In my ignorance I am wondering how it is that Einstein came to think that
the speed of light was the limiting speed of communication. What experiment
did he know about? And what evidence is extant currently?
Didn't Einstein just say "Hey, it's just gotta be"???
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For the presumably correct answer to your question, see one
of the biographies or histories written by Pais or Laurie Brown.
My possibly correct answer is that Einstein recognized that
Maxwell's equations are not invariant under Galilean transformations.
At some point he recognized that the Lorentz (or Poincare) transformations
are the correct ones for Maxwell's equations. The next step (the giant
step) was to insist that the equations of mechanics must transform in
the same way. Whether he actually made use of the gedanken experiments
that he describes in his little book as part of his thinking is something
that I don't know. I suspect that he did.
I am sure that you will soon receive much longer answers.
Regards,
"What did Barrow's lectures contain? Bourbaki writes with some
scorn that in his book in a hundred pages of the text there are about
180 drawings (citation). (Concerning Bourbaki's books it can be said
that in a thousand pages there is not one drawing, and it is not at all
clear which is worse)." Arnold, "Huygens & Barrow, Newton & Hooke", p 40.
Jack