[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
the time lightspeed is reached, and no further acceleration beyond that limit
is possible.
But if that "barrier" could be overcome, the GI field would still be available
to continue absorbing excess energy, meaning that acceleration could be pushed
further. In other words, only charged particles
the magnetic-propeller-driven kinds used in all our relativistic
experiments are limited to lightspeed.
Uncharged matter providing you had a means of accelerating it would have a
limiting velocity set by the currently unknown properties of GI propagation.
What might that be? Anybody's guess, really. But
Stine cites an estimate made in 1961 by William Davis, S. A. Korff, and E. L.
Victory, based on the apparent stability and relative sizes of structures from
binary stars, up through galaxies, to the entire universe, that gave a range
of from 10,000 to 15,000 times lightspeed. He gives them the unit "Mikes,"
after A. A. Michelson.
In considering possibilities of this kind, mention should also be made of the
intriguing "field distortion theory" (FDT) developed by Steve Dinowitz. As
with other alternatives that we've looked at, 84
the classical Galilean transforms hold, and the same experimental results are
expected that support SRT.
FDT begins with a model of propagation in which the field lines around a
charged body such as an electron behave like radial compressible springs
(recalling the charge redistribution treated by
Beckmann) and exhibit an aerodynamic-like distortion when the source moves
through a gravitational field. The body's inertial mass is then related to
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this distortion of its field, resulting in an expression for mass in which the
determining factor is the motion through the locally dominant gravitational
field and the field's energy density. As a consequence, mass-increase and
time-slowing are not pure velocity effects but also depend on the comparative
field energy densities of the body being accelerated and other bodies in the
vicinity. These effects would not occur to anywhere near the degree expressed
by the relativistic limits when the gravitational field due to the accelerated
body predominates. This condition is never realized on the Earth's surface,
where the gravitation of accelerated particles like electrons or protons is
vanishingly small compared to the Earth's, and the equations of FDT reduce to
those of SRT.
But it would occur naturally in the case of, say, a spacecraft leaving the
Solar System.
Little of this impresses the custodians of the sacred dogma, however.
Heretical findings have been reported in connection with things like
experiments performed on rotating platforms where light beams seem clearly to
be traveling around in opposite directions at different speeds the basic
operating principle of the laser-ring gyro, which works just fine and the
synchronization of GPS satellites. True
85
enough, a relativistic explanation can usually be produced
eventually typically in the form of wheeling in
GRT to account for a contradiction of something that SRT said in the first
place but always after the event, uncomfortably suggestive of the way in which
with enough ingenuity a new epicycle could always be added to Ptolemy's
hopelessly over-elaborate system to explain the latest data. Otherwise the
problem is declared "meaningless." But if the underlying premises of
relativity are inconsistent as some have argued it's really immaterial, since
it can be proved that logic based on inconsistent premises can be made to
agree with any conclusion.
86
As with the Church of old, it seems to be "political" scientists of an
authoritarian bent who end up directing and bureaucratizing the system. This
becomes particularly true of "Big" science, where so much of what will be
rewarded by recognition, funding, and appointments depends on political
approval. But
good science works best when left to muddle through in its own sloppy and
democratic ways. Maybe what we need is a Constitutional amendment separating
Science and State. Government should no more be deciding what good science
shall be than dictating or suppressing religion.
FOUR
Catastrophe of Ethics
The Case for Taking Velikovsky Seriously
Once one has experienced the desperation with which clever and conciliatory
men of science react to the demand for a change in the thought pattern, one
can only be amazed that such revolutions in science have actually been
possible at all.
Werner Heisenberg
I believe we must look for salvation from the non-specialists, amateurs and
interdisciplinary thinkers those who form judgments on the general thrust of
the evidence, those who are skeptical about any explanation, particularly
official ones, and above all are tolerant of other people's theories.
Halton Arp
In the earlier section dealing with evolution, we saw that by the late
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nineteenth century the doctrine of uniformitarianism had been established as
the officially recognized mechanism of geological and biological change. Ideas
of catastrophism, previously unquestioned, were quickly relegated to
obscurity.
They carried too much suggestion of divine intervention and biblical
retribution, which didn't fit with the new world view. Evidence that had long
been accepted as pointing clearly to the occurrence of immense cataclysms in
the course of Earth's history disappeared from the classrooms and the
textbooks to be replaced by lyrical accounts of Nature rendering its works
insensibly but tirelessly over huge spans of time. And the same spirit
extended to the realm of astronomy, where the regularities of celestial
motions were no longer seen as a choreography of God, but as the working of a
vast, endlessly repeating, cosmic machine obeying the mechanical lawfulness
revealed by Copernicus, Kepler, Newton, and their followers. Although rigorous
observation had been limited to just a couple of centuries, the reigning
philosophy of gradualism put no restraint on extrapolating the current
conditions backward, creating a picture of the past that remained essentially
unchanged. The possibility was never seriously entertained that even back in
epochs long before humans existed, the skies might have been different in any
significant way from the ones we see today.
As a teenager I was enthralled by the writings of Immanuel Velikovsky. But
when the scientific authorities which at that time I didn't question did such
a superb job of misrepresenting his work and dismissed him as a crank, I
largely forgot about the subject. It was not until forty or so years later, in
the
1990s, that I came across a remarkable book by Charles Ginenthal entitled
Carl Sagan and Immanuel
Velikovsky
, collecting together findings from the space missions and later developments
in astronomy, 87
geology, archeology, ancient history, and other areas, that were consistent
with Velikovsky's ideas and basic theory, while refuting just about everything
that had been said by the experts who vilified him. This was enough to revive
my interest in the subject of catastrophism generally. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]