Questioning Relativity 1: Herbert Dingle

Modern physics is deeply troubled by the incompatibility of Einstein’s theory of relativity and quantum mechanics, which has resisted almost 100 years of fruitless efforts of forming a unified theory of gravitation and electro/quantum mechanics.

Einstein’s (special and general) theory of relativity was widely questioned from start in 1905 into the 1950s but the criticism was then effectively suppressed. Today relativity theory is a dogma which cannot be questioned: The debate is over and questions to physicists will not get any response. Try yourself if you don’t believe this experience.

The last attempt to question Einstein’s theory of relativity was made by the English physicist Herbert Dingle in a long debate in Nature in the late 1950s claiming logical inconsistency of the special theory of relativity with two clocks A and B both running slower than the other:

• The theory unavoidably requires that A works more slowly than B and B more slowly than A –which it requires no super-intelligence to see is impossible.

Dingle’s criticism was effectively suppressed, as summarized by Wikipedia:

• The consensus in the physics community is that Dingle’s objections to the logical consistency of special relativity were unfounded.

Dingle did not realize that special relativity is a non-physical theory which is true by definition. In a non-physical theory the reading of clocks do not have to follow any logics of physics, but such a theory has nothing to say about reality and thus is empty. This argument is developed in detail in

• Many-Minds Relativity (article, book and blog)

One aspect of the argument can be illustrated by considering two persons A and B viewing each other at distance, which both can argue that the other is smaller. The contradiction is here resolved by understanding that the reduction in size is an apparent non-physical reduction as an effect of viewing at distance and not a real shrinking.

Another example is given by simplified form of the Lorentz transformation which is the essence of special relativty: Consider the following coordinate transformation between two space-time systems of coordinates (x,t) and (x´,t´) associated with two observers X and X´:

• x´ = – x, t´ = – t,

corresponding to reversing the direction in both space and time. Both observers can argue that the directions of space and time of the other is reversed, however only as a non-physical effect of a coordinate transformation without any reality.

The space contraction/time dilation of the Lorentz transformation is similarly non-physical and special relativity is only a formality true by definition and thus empty. Science by consensus is science by definition and is thus pseudo-science without connection to reality.

Dingle recorded his experience of questioning relativity theory in Science at the Crossroads including harsh truths about physicists:

• They are, briefly, that the great majority of physical scientists, including practically all those who conduct experiments in physics and are best known to the world as leaders in science, when pressed to answer allegedly fatal criticism of the theory, confess either that they regard the theory as nonsensical but accept it because the few mathematical specialists in the subject say they should do so, or that they do not pretend to understand the subject at all, but, again, accept the theory as fully established by others and therefore a safe basis for their experiments. 
• The response of the comparatively few specialists to the criticism is either complete silence or a variety of evasions couched in mystical language which succeeds in convincing the experimenters that they are quite right in believing that the theory is too abstruse for their comprehension and that they may safely trust men endowed with the metaphysical and mathematical talents that enable them to write confidently in such profound terms. 
• What no one does is to answer the criticism.

This is also my experience.