What has happened to physics?

[Steven French]

For those who are interested in physics rather than hair-care, here's the abstract of the paper referred to (its a piece by Reg Cahill):

The Einstein postulates assert an invariance of the propagation speed of light in vacuum for any observer, and which amounts to a presumed absence of any preferred frame. The postulates appear to be directly linked to relativistic effects which emerge from Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity, which is based upon the concept of a flat spacetime ontology, and which then lead to the General Theory of Relativity with its curved spacetime model for gravity. While the relativistic effects are well established experimentally it is now known that numerous experiments, beginning with the Michelson-Morley experiment of 1887, have always shown that the postulates themselves are false, namely that there is a detectable local preferred frame of reference. This critique briefly reviews the experimental evidence regarding the failure of the postulates, and the implications for our understanding of fundamental physics, and in particular for our understanding of gravity. A new theory of gravity is seen to be necessary, and this results in an explanation of the `dark matter' effect entailing the discovery that the fine structure constant is a 2nd gravitational constant.



As for the claim that 'nobody cares', Cahill's work has been quite extensively discussed. 

(If this bulletin board is going to become another forum for conspiracy theories, I can suggest some much juicier topics than this!!)

cheers,
Steven

-----Original Message-----
From:	owner-philphys at philosophy.elte.hu on behalf of valevp
Sent:	Fri 2/11/2005 07:15
To:	philphys at philosophy.elte.hu
Cc:	
Subject:	What has happened to physics?
Something must have happened to physics. For the moment the most 
popular paper on the internet is

http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0412039

where it is clearly stated that Einstein's "postulates themselves are 
false". Whether they are false or not should be extremely important 
by definition but some unknown development has produced established a 
situation in which nobody cares. Rather, there is an ongoing debate 
trying to resolve the problem concerning Einstein's hair. Some 
theoreticians have discovered that the mad hair of Einstein on his 
most popular portrait frightens children and the crisis in physics 
education is due to this deplorable effect. They think that younger 
and sexier portraits should immediately be introduced. Others don't 
find this very important but don't see what else could have caused 
the death of physics education. In any case, the debate is not 
disturbing the fierce celebrations - the intensity of worshipping at 
the traditional protrait seems to be unaffected by Einstein's 
hair.    

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_______________________________________________________
Mail group "philphys"
ESF Network for Philosophical and
Foundational Problems of Modern Physics
Help & Archive: http://philosophy.elte.hu/philphys.html
_______________________________________________________