Jewish hero worship has blocked progress in physics for nearly a century

[PangaeaProxima]

The pushing of certain scientific theories solely because of the Jewish ethnicity of their originators has done quite some damage to science. A good example is Sigmund Freud - the hyping of his non-scientific, arbitrary "Psycho Analysis" did set back psychology for a long time.

But the situation in physics is even worse: Here the worship of Albert Einstein and his Theory of General Relativity is still unabated. The continuing dominance of GR is a huge problem for physics, since the relativistic conceptual base of both special and general relativity is almost certainly a fundamentally wrong model of physical reality.

Let’s take a look at the development of relativity: The assumption in the 19th century was that light is a wave that is traveling through a hypothetical ether, analogous to sound waves through a medium like air or water. The famous Michelson-Morey experiment tested this assumption by comparing the time needed for light to propagate a certain distance both in the direction of the movement of the earth around the sun and that perpendicular to it. The expectation was that the time in the first case would be longer, since because of the movement of the earth the light would need to travel a longer distance. In fact, however, both times were identical. The solution proposed by Lorentz and Fitzgerald was the assumption that the measurement apparatus did undergo a small compensating length contraction in the direction of the movement. Later experiments like that by Rayleigh and Brace showed that length contraction was not enough to fully explain the phenomenon, but that in addition also clocks would need to run slower.

In 1905 Einstein proposed his own alternative Theory of Special Relativity. He took the principle of relativity found by Lorentz (with some help by Poincare) and instead of deriving it as a result made it the point of departure for his own theory. Mathematically, both theories are based on the Lorentz transformations and therefore deliver the same results - which of course means that they can’t be distinguished experimentally. But the metaphysical picture is very different: The Lorentzian Ether Theory still assumes an absolute 3-dimensional space with an absolute time, which is filled with the ether.

In contrast, Special Relativity postulates that time and space (or spacetime as it is called in relativistic jargon) themselves are changing, i.e. that not objects, but space itself shrinks or expands and that time itself really runs faster or slower, not only physical processes. The principle of relativity leads to such headscratchers like the famous twin paradoxon, where the sibling that travels close to light speed is younger when returning than the one that stays at home, but no intuitive reason why this should be so – if everything is relative, why wouldn’t it be equally valid to consider the first twin as immobile? No such issues exist under Lorentzian Ether Theory, since there is an absolute frame of reference and so it is always clear which one of the two is changing his speed in relation to the ether.

A common criticism against the Lorentz Ether Theory was the assertion that it is quite a coincidence that the length shrinks by exactly the value required to make a movement through the ether undetectable. However, it is not difficult to understand why such effects as length contraction and time dilation should happen, but not be detectable locally, if one does not assume, like early ether theories, that matter is something separate from the ether but instead that it is a part of it – like defects in the lattice structure of a crystal. It is naturally difficult to detect something you and your measurement apparatus are part of. Lorentz was also able to show that at least for electromagnetism both effects could be derived from the Maxwell equations that had been found earlier.

But then Einstein came out in 1915 with the General Theory of Relativity, which sealed the triumph of relativity by providing a supposedly highly successful description of gravity. Whereas in Special Relativity spacetime had been considered as uniform, General Relativity now introduced gravity in the form of distortions in the spacetime fabric. However, this only works up to a certain scale – as soon as we go beyond galactic dimensions, General Relativity does not work anymore at all, the movement of galaxies is very different to that predicted by General Relativity. To correct for this, vast amounts of mysterious “Dark matter” have to be hypothesized. Despite much effort, any attempt to actually detect any of this hypothetical “Dark Matter” has failed so far.

Another issue is the expansion of the universe; it was discovered in 1998 that, contrary to General Relativity, the universe does not only expand, but that this expansion is accelerating. For this another Ad Hoc hypothesis, the even more mysterious “Dark Energy” had to be made up. It is of course always possible to immunize a theory with enough Ad Hoc crutches, but when this “Dark Energy” is supposed to be 68% and “Dark Matter” 27% of the universe with only 5% left for actually observable matter it gets rather implausible.

There are other highly problematic issues like the emergence of singularities as a consequence of the collapse of large stars, with all the seemingly intractable problems like information loss that this entails. Some scientists therefore see the appearance of singularities as a mathematical artifact and don’t think that it really happens in reality; interestingly this included Einstein himself, who thought that general relativity was an incomplete theory, which would be superseded by a singularity-free unified field theory. Of course, he never succeeded in delivering this theory. Furthermore, at least in principle, closed causal loops and time travel and therefore violations of causality are entirely valid solutions of General Relativity.

The possibility of time flowing backwards – and not the supposedly nondeterministic nature of Quantum Theory (“God doesn’t play dices”) – is the real reason why Einstein was so hostile to it. There is, as Einstein knew very well, no intrinsic reason that Quantum Theory needs to be nondeterministic if one accepts non locality, as demonstrated by the De Broglie/Bohm interpretation of Quantum Theory. However, non locality – i.e. influences faster than the speed of light – mean in the context of the relativistic framework nothing less than time travel into the past. That was the reason why Einstein was so scandalized by the “spooky action at a distance” of quantum entanglement and why it took so long to be accepted by the scientific community. Even if we currently cannot use quantum entanglement to actually transmit information, the simple fact that faster than light influences exist is highly problematic for relativity.

The most fundamental issue however is the fact, that it seems to be simply impossible to proceed further with the relativistic paradigm. In the late 1920s the two cutting edge theories to explain the basic fabric of our universe were General Relativity and Quantum Theory: General Relativity describes gravity, the force effective at long distances; Quantum Theory in contrast describes the forces effective at shorter ranges, e.g. electromagnetism and the weak and the strong interaction.

Now, nearly a century later, we are essentially still in the same position. All work that has been done since then has been filling out details, but there has been no fundamental progress. Despite much effort, all attempts to reconcile General Relativity with Quantum Theory to create a unified theory have come to nothing. The great hope String Theory is now more or less admitted to be a failure and other approaches like Loop Quantum Gravity don’t look any better; fundamental physics has largely stagnated for many decades.

The key reason for the failure to unify General Relativity with Quantum Theory is precisely the revolutionary new relativistic model of time and space for which Einstein is hailed. All efforts to graft it onto Quantum Theory have been an abject failure: Quantum Theory simply needs a fixed spatial background and absolute time to work. Given this – and the fact that Quantum Theory, in sharp contrast to General Relativity, has an entirely unblemished record when it comes to experimental verification – it is quite clear that it is relativity and not Quantum Theory that has to go. Einstein shunted physics on a fundamentally wrong track back in 1905.

The description of the problem above indicates quite clearly the most promising direction to proceed: return to a preferred frame (i.e. ether) paradigm with absolute time and space and create a theory of gravity that is a counterpart to General Relativity in the same way as the Lorentzian Ether Theory relates to Special Relativity. This theory would then describe the general case of an ether with a varying “density” indicating gravitational distortions, whereas the Lorentzian Ether Theory, the analogon to Special Relativity, deals with the simplified border case of a homogenous ether. There is actually a bit of work going on along these lines, even though the frowned upon word “ether” is usually avoided – “condensed matter model/interpretation” is a dog whistle that is sometimes used instead (See, for instance https://link.springer.com/article/10.10 ... 008-9262-9). However, due to the still unbroken blind faith in General Relativity such attempts have received hardly any attention.

It remains to be seen for how much longer progress will be blocked – the lack of success in the long running quest to detect the elusive “Dark Matter” seems to be causing some disquietude at long last. Perhaps there will also be some new piece of empirical evidence that finally tilts the mood against General Relativity. There are indications that certain properties of gravity waves might be used to distinguish between General Relativity and alternative theories. But in any case, the sheer length of time that ethnic hero worship of Einstein was able to inoculate an obviously highly flawed theory against any criticism is nothing short of astounding.

[Nazgul]

There is a tenet in science that everything physical has a wave function, certainly not static. There is strong information to suggest that time also has this function, measured in nanoseconds, though for the most part time goes forward as does space. As space is a physical entity, it is also likely to possess a wave function as does space-time. Energy is a function of space-time, so will also oscillate in some wave form; this will possibly account for the dark energy and dark matter. Anti-matter is just the supposition of matter in negative space time wave function. It is probable that gravitational attraction has a reverse due to the polarity of space-time; the key is tuning the energy into that space-time geometry to make it work. Note that gravity is closely associated with mass. Mass is space-time and energy concentrated in a small region within a time frame, which can superimpose anywhere in the cosmos. This distortion of space time is gravity which seems to include the expansion of the cosmos. It certainly is not an illusion as everyone who has fallen down knows.

[HansHill]

Layperson here.

Doesn't the Bohr-Einstein debate, and Bohr's "triumph" demonstrate that Physics has diverged from Einstein in the decades since? Bohr himself is half-Jewish though so your main hypothesis about Jewish-worship still holds!

[Nazgul]

Layperson here.

Doesn't the Bohr-Einstein debate, and Bohr's "triumph" demonstrate that Physics has diverged from Einstein in the decades since? Bohr himself is half-Jewish though so your main hypothesis about Jewish-worship still holds!

Not sure if you are talking to me. As there are always uncertainties in science there are always debates and a willingness to accept evidence. The two men were speaking about two different things: Einstein like Newton explained the macro-world of planets, gravity and yes relativity; Bohr followed by many others focussed on the micro- atomic world where particles behave differently, which I understand to be the actions of wave motions in space-time. These do not show in the macro world but are clearly evident in the microworld. An analogy would be the recent quake in Myanmar, from say Mars no observer would see the quake (a wave), but at a local level it is devastating.

[PangaeaProxima]

Doesn't the Bohr-Einstein debate, and Bohr's "triumph" demonstrate that Physics has diverged from Einstein in the decades since?

If you look at the conclusion of the corresponding Wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohr%E2%8 ... in_debates, the core of the argument is similar to like I have described it:

Since the early days of quantum theory the assumption of locality and Lorentz invariance guided his thoughts and led to his determination that if we demand strict locality then hidden variables are naturally implied apropos EPR. Bell, starting from this EPR logic (which is widely misunderstood or forgotten) showed that local hidden variables imply a conflict with experiment. Ultimately what was at stake for Einstein was the assumption that physical reality be universally local. Although the majority of experts in the field agree that Einstein was wrong, the current understanding is still not complete

It was argued in the 1935 Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) paper that when looking at entangled objects you could get around faster than light influences by assuming "hidden variables". Bell however showed in 1964 that if Quantum Mechanics was correct, no local "hidden variable" explanation was possible. All experiments of increased sophistication thrown at the problem have shown that Quantum Mechanics is correct. If you want to preserve Realism like Einstein wanted, you have to accept faster than light influences. Einstein however was loath to do that, because of the problems with Relativity that this entailed. Bohr did not bother much about Realism, so that was not a problem for him.

Einstein like Newton explained the macro-world of planets, gravity and yes relativity; Bohr followed by many others focussed on the micro- atomic world where particles behave differently

The problem is, as I said, that Relativity as a macro theory seems to be simply incompatible with the micro theory - Quantum Mechanics - and the formulation of a unified theory impossible. A better macro theory is needed.