[WikiEN-l] Re: Re: [roy_q_royce at hotmail.com: --A Request RE aWIKIArticle--]

[Tim Starling]

Firstly I'd like to apologise for the tone of my initial message. I'll
endevour to treat Roy's views with a bit more respect this time around.



"Roy Royce" <roy_q_royce at hotmail.com> wrote in
message news:BAY9-F548BalNhW1vg600005270 at hotmail.com...
> First, let me thank Mr. Wales for his reasonable reply.
>
> But I find it sad that some people are willing to dismiss a simple
> fact without even trying to check the cited source.
>
> Here are the relevant quotes from Wheeler's book, _Spacetime Physics,
> page 148 (1963 edition):
>
> "Commentary: The equivalence of energy and mass is such an important
> consequence that Einstein very early, after his relativistic derivation
> of this result, sought and found an alternative line of reasoning that
> leads to the same conclusion."
> "[A. Einstein, Annalen der Physik, 20, 627 (1906)]"
>
> "However, to secure a derivation free of all direct reference to
> relative principles, he [Einstein] based the conclusion p = E on
> the following elementary argument." [etc., etc.]
>
> The fact that E=mc^2 does not support SR is not merely "my fact."

I never said anything about that one, remember? I snipped it. I didn't want
to get into a technical discussion on this mailing list, where most readers
are not familiar with relativity. Save it for the talk page of the article.


> Also, posting to the Newsgroups per se does not make one a crank.

Indeed.

> I challenge anyone here to find where I lost any argument to anyone
> in the Newsgroups.

Who said anything about losing arguments? I've never known a crackpot to
lose an argument, by their own concession.

> I hate to say this, but Mr. Tim Starling is either a liar or an
> easily-fooled person because I have never - by any stretch of anyone's
> imagination - except Starling's - suggested "a direct test of some
> aspect of relativity which is hugely expensive or perhaps even
> technically impossible."

Two very important questions:

1. What would be my motivation to lie?
2. Who am I being fooled by?


> And I have never ignored "the huge body of
> slightly less direct tests of the same theory," and I have not then
> "obliquely suggested some sort of conspiracy theory to explain why
> no-one is spending millions of dollars on his simple test." And it
> is complete balderdash to say of me that "Everywhere he goes, he
> feels persecuted by co-conspiring mainstream physicists, who are
> out to suppress the 'truth' he has discovered."
>
> Mr. Starling, I demand either an apology or some proof of the above
> serious accusations.

I apologise. I was making generalisations. As a matter of curiosity, what is
your estimate for the cost of this experiment?


> Now that I have proved the validity of the E=mc^2 fact, I should be
> taken seriously when I note the one-way light speed facts that not only
> has no one ever made such a measurement using two clocks, but such a
> measurement (sans man's interference by definition or convention) is
> physically impossible.
>
> The fact that no one has ever used two clocks to measure the one-way
> speed of light is a part of scientific history.
>
> The fact that this has long been technically feasible is also a part
> of scientific history.
>
> The only fact that is personally mine is the obvious conclusion that
> such an experiment cannot be performed.
>
> If any of you still insist that it is possible, then the burden of
> proof is on you to show how it can be done without first forcing your
> pre-chosen (and baseless) result (by using some definition of clock
> synchronization).
>
> In other words, can anyone out there in WIKI-land tell us the step-by-
> step process for using two clocks to measure light's one-way speed sans
> any interference from man?
>
> If not, then my final fact has been validated by you all.
>
> (And that fact tells us that there can be no light postulate because
> where there is no experiment, there can be no prediction (or postulate)).
>
> (Bear in mind that Einstein's light postulate pertained only to the
> one-way speed of light. He did not have to postulate re the round-trip
> case because it had already been essentially closed by the round-trip
> Michelson-Morley experiment.)

I think you misunderstand the function of this mailing list. This kind of
discussion should be continued on the article talk page. Most readers of
this list are not interested in a technical discussion, debating an idea on
its merits.

-- Tim Starling.