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EINSTEIN'S RELATIVITY WARPED MINDS, BENT TRUTHS EINSTEIN'S RELATIVITY WARPED MINDs, TRUTHS BENT Einstein has been hailed for his relativity theories and has always had his detractors, but the consensus view is changing as more problems with his explanations of physical reality are exposed. Part 1 of 2 PART I: ANAESTHETISED BY THE AETHER: How a Few Failed Experiments Put Science in a Stupor na statement issued following the death of Professor Albert Einstein on 18 April 1955, US President Dwight Eisenhower said: "No other man contributed so much to the vast expansion of the 20th century knowledge." And this, 45 years before the close of the century. "Yet no other man was more modest in the possession of the power that is knowledge, more sure that power without wisdom is deadly. To all who live in the nuclear age, Albert Einstein exemplified the mighty creative ability of the individual in a free society," said Eisenhower.' TIME magazine lauded the scientist as "Person of the Century" on the cover of its 31 December 1999 edition.’ In his lifetime, Albert Einstein (1879-1955) gained scientific fame for theories such as On Brownian Movements, the Photoelectric Effect, the Bose—Einstein Statistics of Thermodynamics and, above all, the Special Theory of Relativity (STR) (1905) and the General Theory of Relativity (GTR) (1915-16). The Photoelectric Effect explanations won him a Nobel Prize in 1921.° Due to his inaccessible and often remote theories, Einstein became the symbol of the mystical scientist in the ivory tower. He was a gentle man, whose enigmatic looks and veiled utterances made him an ideal for scientists as well as for science-fiction writers and the person in the street. Yet in his lifetime there were those who doubted his greatness, and more than 50 years after his death, when glory seemed secure, there are those who once more feel free to doubt whether everything is alright with relativity.* Here are some reasons why. The Aether Controversy The path to Einstein's mythical fame, and his eventual fall from grace, was via a devious substance known as the "aether". The aether was described in various works by Greek, Egyptian and Indian philosophers as early as the fifth century BC.* According to their ideas, the aether is the most subtle substance in creation—the mother of all other phenomena. Fifth-century-BC philosopher Anaxagoras also speculated that atoms are vortexes in the aether, a theory picked up 2,500 years later by the genius Scottish physicist William Thomson, alias Lord Kelvin (1824-1907).° The very reason for reviving old concepts was because of certain advancements in science. By the early 19th century Michael Faraday and Hans Oersted had discovered electromagnetism, and by the middle of the century Dr Hermann Helmholtz (1821-94) had proved that such forces could spread through "empty space" as waves. Great men of science such as Michael Meyerson, Lord Kelvin and Robert Young competed to give the best explanations for these phenomena, but the man to win the prize for the best theory was James Clerk Maxwell (1821-79). In 1864 he proposed the theory of the "mechanical aether"—an invisible, ethereal substance endowed with elasticity and filled with small "idle wheels". Magnetism was pictured as vortexes in the aether, while electricity was imagined to be deformation of the vortexes and the wheels. By a continuous process of deformation and rotation, electromagnetism could be explained and expressed by four fundamental equations, known today as the Maxwell electromagnetic wave equations.’ These equations and the picture based on the theory of the "mechanical aether" became a veritable goldmine for 19th-century science: a host of phenomena found their true explanation, and light was finally explained as electromagnetic waves of ultra-short wavelengths. Using such thinking, scientists now started to discuss the aether and three schools of by Dr Bjorn J. Overbye © 2007 Arendal Helsesenter Box 348-N4803 Arendal Norway Fax: +47 370 27155 Email: bjorn@dr-overbye.no by Dr Bjorn J. Overbye © 2007 Arendal Helsesenter Box 348-N4803 Arendal Norway Fax: +47 370 27155 Email: bjorn@dr-overbye.no NEXUS = 43 AUGUST - SEPTEMBER 2007 www.nexusmagazine.com