Matterless Motion Wins Again

This is a review of "E=mc2: A biography of the world's most famous equation" by David Bodanis, Walker & Company, NY, 2000, 337 p.

If you are looking for the real biography of E=mc² , this isn't it. If you are looking for the usual glorification of Einstein and cohorts, this will do. In tune with the second objective rather than the first, there is the usual absence of the long history of the equation, which stems from Newton's implication that matter and the motion of matter somehow were related. Hegel's dictum on inseparability ("Just as there is no motion without matter, so there is no matter without motion") is nowhere to be found. And like Einstein's 1905 paper, there is little or no mention of those, such as Preston, Poincaré, and De Pretto, who were important in the development of the equation. Like Einstein, Bodanis completely omits Hasenöhrl's work, which was published in the same journal a year earlier, with a very similar equation (m = (8/3)E/c² ) and a very similar title ("On the radiation of the bodies in motion" vs. Einstein's "On the electrodynamics of the bodies in motion"). Like most modern physicists and cosmologists, Bodanis perpetuates the conception that matter can, with a wave of the magic wand, turn into "pure energy." One never finds out exactly what that "pure energy" is supposed to be. The fact is, that the equation merely describes the conversion of one type of the motion of matter into another type of the motion of matter. This can be done with the use of classical mechanics simply by assuming that the supposed "empty space" of Einstein contains matter capable of receiving motion released from the atom during fission or fusion. Einstein's premature rejection of the ether therefore gave scientific credence to the idea of "matterless motion," an oxymoron near and dear to the hearts and "souls" of the religiously trained and mystically inclined populace. With that background, Einstein could speculate that space was nevertheless "curved" even though it supposedly contained nothing at all. The speculation has continued to be evermore rampant and ridiculous, with the whole universe supposedly exploding out of nothing, 13 dimensional "strings," and the equally oxymoronic parallel and multi-universes. On the plus side, Bodanis has some interesting gossip about the physics establishment before and after 1905. He tries better than most to give credit for the women, such as du Chatelet, who made significant, mostly unheralded contributions mostly to the scientific end of things. I didn't mind the advertised dumbed-down aspect of the book so much as the fact that we never really found out what it was that matter was turning into. Bodanis fell for the indeterministic "pure energy" propaganda hook line and sinker. Penance for writing this book should include repeating Hegel's most important assumption out loud 100 times: "Just as there is no motion without matter, so there is no matter without motion," "Just as there is no motion without matter, so there is no matter without motion”…

Matter and Space

The concepts of matter and space form opposite ends of a continuum, with ideal solid matter on one end and pure empty space on the other. These are only ideas. Real matter and real space lie on the continuum between. Thus, all "solid matter" contains "matter" and "space;" all "empty space" contains "space" and "matter." In tune with the assumption of microcosmic (and macrocosmic) infinity, there are no partless parts; just as there can be no absolute vacuum. Those who believe in ether as a medium for light transmission, as I do, simply are giving up the indeterministic idea held at various times by Einstein that empty space is a possibility. I assume empty space to be impossible, with the larger philosophical implication that nonexistence itself is impossible. The ether contains particles every bit as "mechanical" as any other part of the universe.

I find the idealizations of "matter" and "space" to be useful in describing the universe, but I don't think of matter as being "partless" or "solid" and I don't think of space as being "pure" or completely empty.

Is Ether Negatively Charged?

My response to Jim Wright, a member of the NPA Chat group, who presented charge data for some of the planets in the solar system under the heading “The Aether-Intrinsically Negative?”:

Jim:

Excellent work and extremely interesting! I also ran across some data that might be explained by a negatively charged ether. I plotted the ether drift measurements of Galaev (2002) and Miller (1933) with respect to altitude and got a relationship that was a square-root function instead of the direct function I expected to see as a result of gravitation (see Fig. 8-2 below from p. 202 in my recent book, “The Scientific Worldview: Beyond Newton and Einstein”). As you know, atmospheric pressure reduction is a direct function of altitude, being mostly the result of gravity’s effect on nitrogen and oxygen molecules. None of my physicist friends has been able to explain the result for the ether drift data though. It seems to me that, with the surface of the earth being negatively charged, a negative ether would tend to be repelled. I suspect that the square-root function means that the etherosphere follows Coulomb's Law. Jim, can you or anyone else write the equation for it?



Fig. 8-2. Maximum ether drift measurements versus altitude from the experimental data of Galaev in 2002 and Miller in 1933. Ether drift measurements (V) vary as the square root of altitude (A), whereas atmospheric pressure reduction (Pr) is a nearly direct function of altitude. Projection of the data shows that the full complement of drift due to the Earth’s orbital velocity (30 km/s) could not be measured within the troposphere. [From Borchardt (2007)]

References

Borchardt, Glenn. The Scientific Worldview: Beyond Newton and Einstein. Lincoln, NE: iUniverse, 2007, p. 202.
Galaev, Y.M. "The Measuring of Ether-Drift Velocity and Kinematic Ether Viscosity within Optical Waves Band (English Translation)." Spacetime & Substance 3, no. 5 (2002): 207-24.
Miller, Dayton. "The Ether-Drift Experiment and the Determination of the Absolute Motion of the Earth." Reviews of Modern Physics 5, no. 2 (1933): 203-42.