56 of 62 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Petr Beckmann's Relativity, September 11, 2009
This review is from: Questioning Einstein: Is Relativity Necessary? (Perfect Paperback)
Questioning Einstein: Is Relativity Necessary
by, Tom Bethell
That a book by a great and established writer like Tom Bethell, who is a long-time science writer and political columnist at The American Spectator, hasn't been officially reviewed yet, says more about those who pose as the intellectual and editorial guardians of literature than it does about the quality of this book or the stature of its author. In fact, it is an engaging, well researched book about one of the most interesting paradigm struggles of the twentieth century (and still ongoing today). That Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity (SR) was influenced by and made quickly popular by the relativistic ideologies of its time (1905) seems to this writer a foregone conclusion. But it was the Michelson-Morley experiment that failed to detect a "luminiferous ether," which gave SR scientific credibility. But Michelson himself soon doubted its conclusions and proved it in the later Michelson-Gale experiment which did detect an ether.
H. Lorentz, a contemporary of Einstein, and a scientist of equal stature, argued in numerous debates with Einstein that all "relativistic effects" (such as the bending of starlight as it passes near the sun) were the result of light traveling through an "entrained ether" which surrounds and moves with planetary bodies--otherwise known as the gravitational field. Other well-known physicists of the day also doubted the veracity of SR, especially its principle of space-time distortion. A few were: Herbert Dingle, whose "paradox" asked the question of which "clock" would run slow (and thus experience time dilation predicted by SR) of two relativistic travelers; as for example two rocket ships in different inertial frames (i.e., going at different speeds relative to each other). Another physicist, H. Ives, of the famous Ives-Stillwell experiment to test the Doppler effect of fast moving mesons, became a lifelong enemy of Einstein because he felt that his results were being misinterpreted. And there were many others who disagreed with Einstein's fundamental conclusions.
Even Einstein himself, as Bethell points out, later in life admitted that forces propagating through empty space without a medium in which they could be conveyed, was a logical absurdity--a fact never mentioned in textbooks, or in other "easy Einstein" books. In the later part of the twentieth century, other scientific critics picked up where Lorentz and his contemporaries had left off. Among them were Tom Van Flandern, Carver Mead, and Petr Beckmann. Bethell concentrates on Beckmann's critique, written in a technical book called Einstein Plus Two, in which the author claims that all the effects of both Special and General Relativity can be explained using classical physics. Bethell brings Beckmann's book down to earth from the arcane heights of Mt. Olympus by rendering Beckmann's mathematical descriptions understandable to the layman.
If you are interested in the history of one of the most pivotal scientific ideas of our time, if you have always believed that the world should make sense but would still like to know about the mysteries of relativity, this book may be for you. And this reviewer might add that although Bethell might not know it yet, this may be his most significant book.
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17 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Relativity may not be relative, March 15, 2010
This review is from: Questioning Einstein: Is Relativity Necessary? (Perfect Paperback)
My fascination with science and mathematics began in the 1940s when I was a teenager, a fascination which has never abated. My present understanding of math and science derives from high school classes, university courses (undergrad EE, graduate math), and many years of reading uncounted books and articles in professional journals. In short, I am an old math/science junkie with an accumulated understanding sufficient to my own satisfaction of many abstruse ideas. But I've never been able to make sense of relativity, and have little hope that I ever will.
But Tom Bethell's book, "Questioning Einstein: Is Relativity Necessary?" makes a well documented and thoroughly convincing argument that relativity is not necessary for a satisfactory understanding of modern physics. Experimental results which are said to prove relativity theory, can be said to prove simpler theories as well. But such "proof" is deceptive. As I understand the idea of scientific proof, it can only be said that an unfalsifiable theory is consistent with known facts, not that facts prove the theory. Bethell reports on attractive alternatives to relativity which are also consistent with the facts and yet are more intuitive than relativity. Since the fully qualified contenders are simpler, Einstein's relativity may eventually be excised from the face of physics by Occam's razor, not in my lifetime surely, but eventually.
Bethell's book is a must read for science junkies of any age. Someone should expound on the (gravity-field)/(electromagnetic-ether) duality ala Petr Beckmann, and publish a book with a title something like "The Relatively Incorrect Guide to the New Ether". I will go to my grave a happier man for having read it.
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6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Overdue Skepticism, February 19, 2011
This review is from: Questioning Einstein: Is Relativity Necessary? (Perfect Paperback)
This is an engaging history of the evidence that is overlooked in the enthusiasm for the paradoxes of special relativity. Gee, are time and space really distorted at high velocity? Is there really no ether? As Bethell demonstrates there was no evidence leading to such conclusions. And there is solid theory and experiment to the contrary. If we accept that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence", it is clear that such a demand was not made on Einstein. And Occam's Razor, the principle that the simplest explanation of any phenomena should be preferred, seems to have been set aside at that point in 20th century physics and ignored henceforth.
Bethell has marshalled convincing evidence for overdue skepticism. It is alarming that this line of thinking is considered unconventional.
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