RELATIVE CRITICS 
	Copyright 1995 by John Farrell, 71613,2330
	Suite 201, 166 Forbes Rd., Braintree, MA 02184

	"Yes, they contradict Einstein. But not the experimental evidence."

	This is the legend of a bi-monthly newsletter, Galilean Electrodynamics, 
put out by followers of the late Petr Beckmann, an electrical engineer and 
Professor Emeritus at University of Colorado who died in August 1993. 
Beckmann took early retirement in 1981, and spent years working on a way to 
discredit relativity by modifying Newtonian physics.
	Dr. Beckmann was the much-respected author of  "A History of Pi,"  still 
in print, readable, and very amusing thanks to its author's good-humored 
crankiness about history. Much mirth is made at the expense of thug-like 
Romans and dense monks of the Middle Ages, and the book has a certain 
charm, even if some of its historical generalizations are dated. Written in 1970, 
it reveals none of the mild self-righteousness that would characterize the 
Galilean newsletter or Beckmann's self-published book, "Einstein Plus Two" 
(1987).

  	The book and newsletter claim that the invariance of the speed of light, 
the cornerstone of Special Relativity, is unnecessary and that all of relativity's 
experimental triumphs, including the mass-energy relation, can just as easily 
be explained by a modified application of 19th century physics.
	The reason for Beckmann's opposition to relativity is partly 
philosophical, and perhaps partly political. But the degree to which he has 
thought through a counter-theory is truly fascinating.  
	On perusing the selection of articles that have been issued in the 
desktop-published Galilean Electrodynamics, one cannot help but admire the 
industry of the late professor and his followers, physicists and scholars at 
various universities--all apparently nostalgic for the salad days of Newtonian  
physics. This would not be a flaw in itself if the theory pointed to something 
new, or demonstrated how relativity fails. 
	For the fact is, it doesn't. The Beckmann theory rewrites Einstein, 
finding identical results from a supposedly simpler 19th century assumption. 
On this basis, the Galileans insist that space and time need not lose their 
absolute status. 
	Beckmann's book asserts that the Michelson-Morley experiment (and 
others) shouldn't be taken as proof of the Special Theory. He claimed that the 
speed of light is not universally invariant, as Einstein postulated; it only 
appears that way because it is actually invariant with respect to the earth's 
local gravitational field. Beckmann doesn't question the result of the 
Michelson-Morley experiment (nor indeed of subsequent experiments that 
have confirmed Einstein's theory), but he questions the conclusions that 
Einstein drew from it: that space and time were not absolutes.
	As a counter theory, Beckmann's postulate that light is invariant with 
respect to the local gravitatinal field has the virtue of symbolically restoring 
the 19th century ether. The purpose: to serve as a medium for light.  
	Like the ether concept, Beckmann's local gravitational-field-as-medium 
apparently moves with the earth in its orbit around the sun. It is important to 
note that the field represents a physical reality. In Newtonian and relativistic 
terms, the gravitational field is a mathematical means of determining the 
influence of gravity. This is a crucial distinction, and it is the reason why 
Beckmann's theory ultimately seems unsatisfactory. It reintroduces a ghost 
mechanism for preserving what are, in the end, purely abstract philosophical 
prejudices. 
	After all, the gravitational field is a term used to explain how objects 
travel under the influence of gravity, a force that either works as action at a 
distance if one speaks in Newtonian terms, or comes about naturally as a result 
of the curvature of spacetime if one speaks in Einsteinian terms.
	In neither theory does the field have a physical reality that can be said 
to act as a medium.
	According to Beckmann, however, Michelson-Morley received an 
apparently null result because the speed of light had been neutralized by the 
local field. 
	This raises an immediate question: If light is not universally invariant, 
but invariant only with respect to the local gravitational field medium, how 
does that truly differ from Einstein's postulate--since he and Newton claimed 
that gravity is universal? 

	Indeed, by Beckmann's claim,  once outside the Earth's gravitational 
field, one must assume that the speed of light is made invariant by the sun's 
gravitational field; and once outside the sun's, one must assume it is similarly 
neutralized by the galaxy's, and so on.
	Of course, all of these fields are cumulatively pervasive, so it seems 
there is no difference between Beckmann's ad-hoc explanation and Einstein's 
Special Theory. Light's invariance, for all practical intents and purposes, 
remains universal. An attempt to perform Michelson-Morley outside the 
Earth's field will therefore lead to the same invariance. 
	One also needs to ask how the new-fangled local gravitational field 
medium makes the speed of light invariant. It has been confirmed that light 
bends under the influence of gravity. But Beckmann's theory doesn't explain 
how light's speed is affected. Gravity's power to bend the path of light has 
nothing to do with its speed. So the Galileans have offered no practical answer 
as to how light's velocity is supposedly made invariant by the gravitational 
field. 
	In any case, Beckmann rooted his alternate theory in the creation of an 
invisible new medium, and built upon it, with the help of numerous 
supporters, an impressive edifice. The Galileans have doggedly applied it to 
virtually every experiment related to relativity, as a perusal of back issues 
proves.
	For example, one of the most interesting claims of the Galileans is that 
Einstein's application of Special Relativity to explain stellar aberration is 
wrong.

	Professor Howard C. Hayden of the University of Connecticut at Storrs, 
who has taken over editorship of Galilean  since Beckmann's death, completed 
a Sept./Oct. 1993 issue claiming that subsection seven of Einstein's 1905 paper 
was false in its prediction about aberration. 
	Specifically, Hayden uses the case of a binary star, Mizar (in the handle 
of the Big Dipper), to derive an angle of stellar aberration inconsistent with 
Einstein's own predictions.
	As an aside: His was not the first paper to point out a supposed 
inconsistency, by the way. In 1989, Thomas E. Phipps published an article in 
the American Journal of Physics,  also claiming the failure of Special 
Relativity to accurately predict aberration.
	Briefly, Hayden's paper asserts that Mizar reveals that the aberration 
angle is related to the orbital velocity of the earth, and not to the velocity of 
the earth relative to the rotating binary star, as Special Relativity holds.
	Does this necessarily mean that Special Relativity is wrong, however? 
	Einstein's 1905 paper made two predictions in subsection seven, for 
Doppler shift and aberration angle. The observed doppler shift does agree with 
the theoretical value, and it does depend on relative velocity. In fact, this is 
how astronomers identify rotating binary stars. Furthermore, the equations 
predict a transverse Doppler shift which also agrees with observations but 
doesn't appear in pre-relativistic physics.
	If the aberration angle does not agree with the calculated angle for the 
case of binary stars, and since both the Doppler shift and aberration angle are 
calculated from the same equations in Einstein's paper, it is hard to see how 
one can be right and the other wrong.

	According to Professor Milton Rothman of Trenton State College, the 
anomaly is resolved when it is realized that measuring the frequency change 
of the light and measuring the aberration angle involve different initial 
conditions.  Once this is taken into account, the aberration angle does agree 
with Einstein's theory.
	Rothman, who is retired, hopes to submit a paper on the subject to the 
American Journal of Physics.
	Hayden's paper is to be commended, however, because it unquestionably 
points out the error that many textbooks on relativity have perpetuated 
through the years by misunderstanding Einstein's own example of stellar 
aberration.

	What about other aspects of relativity? For example, the most famous: 
the mass-energy relation.  According to one Beckmann supporter, who writes 
for the American Spectator,  e=mc2 was derived independently of relativity, 
sometime in 1908. 
	This is false. Einstein published his paper on the mass-energy relation 
in the same issue of Annalen der Physik in 1905. He explicitly derived the 
formula from subsection seven, when he pondered the energy being given off 
by a moving object, like a star.
	But in theory at least, it seems Beckmann's field-as-medium alternative 
can apparently account for this as well. 
	The question to be asked is: does that in itself make his theory 
compelling, and can his field-as-medium be demonstrated to be physically 
real? 
	In the preface to his book, Beckmann himself admitted that the 
technology does not exist to show that light's invariance is really due to such a 
medium.
	In the absence of such proof, therefore, there seems no compelling 
reason to prefer his theory to Einstein's--unless and until some crisis occurs 
which cannot be explained by Special Relativity.

	What is left to recommend Beckmann's theory then? Precisely its 
supposed preservation of the concepts of space and time. These are concepts 
that Beckmann claimed were understood "through the ages."
	This is historically falsifiable. In the first Scholium to his monumental 
Principia, Isaac Newton adopted the concepts of absolute space and time as a 
convenience to facilitate the explanation of his laws of mechanics. 
	To quote from the Principia:  "I do not define time, space, place, and 
motion, as being well known to all. Only I must observe, that the common 
people conceive those quantities under no other notions but from the relation 
they bear to sensible objects. And thence arise certain prejudices, for the 
removing of which it will be convenient to distinguish them into absolute and 
relative, true and apparent, mathematical and common."
	It will be convenient to distinguish them.  This is important to reiterate, 
because historically there has never been any consensus before Newton on 
the absolute character of space or time. Indeed, if there was, as Newton himself 
suggests, the consensus was that they were both relative. Newton knew he 
could not prove that space was absolute.
	So it is puzzling to wonder why the Galileans put so much effort into 
reinforcing what was established as a convenience.
	A brief look at space and time "through the ages"  (over the past 2,500 
years of  history) is instructional. 
	Plato (not surprisingly) believed that space was absolute. He believed 
that all ideas were absolute. In this he followed his predecessors. Aristotle 
characteristically rejected this idea, however, and refused to give space any 
definitive meaning apart from the objects of experience which helped to 
define it. But Aristotle also believed there was a universal time, connected to 
the diurnal motion of the sun.
	Ironically, this view was disputed by Saint Augustine, who argued that 
time had no meaning outside of the mind; to him it was purely psychological. 
Indeed, his definition in Chapter Eleven of the "Confessions" presents a 
haunting premonition of  relativity. 
	As for the Church Fathers and medieval theologians, and even the 
Islamic philosophers, they all disagreed as to the nature of space and time. 
There was nothing like the consensus "through the ages" that Beckmann 
claimed there was.
	So it seems the motivation for his work, and that of the Galileans, is not 
really scientific at its core. It is philosophical.
	Beckmann himself was not shy about the motivation for his work. "I felt 
I owed a debt to Newton," he once said.  In the preface to "Einstein Plus Two", 
he writes:  "I am not so naive to think that the first attempt to move the entire 
Einstein theory en bloc onto classical ground will turn out to be perfectly 
correct. What I do hope is that the approach will provide a stimulus for the 
return of physics from description to comprehension."
	Two points:   One, as many historians of science have pointed out, 
Einstein's theory of relativity was the last great classical theory. Quantum 
mechanics came immediately afterward, with all of its revolutionary 
implications, and Einstein was not among its vigorous supporters. 
	Beckmann seems to have lumped relativity and quantum physics 
together in his reaction to the kind of science which, he complained, consists 
of "unreal acrobatics where the observer becomes more important than the 
nature he is supposed to observe. . ."  This is a typical and understandable first 
reaction to the uncertainty principle and the principle of complementarity--
not to relativity.
	Two, his claim that science is about comprehension rather than 
description would meet with a great deal of disagreement, not only in 
scientific circles, but in philosphical circles as well. 
	There is more to Beckmann's theory than philosophy, however. He was 
a vociferous proponent of nuclear energy, and published a highly-regarded 
newsletter called Access to Energy  which promoted its use. Beckmann 
distrusted the centralized government in Washington, and was a superb and 
humorous critic of the proliferating movements of what he liked to call 
"mumbo jumbo"--meaning the New Age. 
	But he was also critical of left-wing politics, and it's no secret that 
Einstein and many other of this century's greatest physicists were leftish in 
their political views. Is it possible that Beckmann let a reasonable disdain for 
Einstein's political positions bleed into a suspicion about his science? 
	In a eulogy, given by Dr. Edward Teller and printed in the October 1993 
issue of Access to Energy,  the suggestion is apparent.
	"I am about as certain as I can be that Petr Beckmann has been in error 
when he opposed the theory of special relativity of Einstein . . . While Einstein 
was right in his physics, he was systematically and thoroughly wrong in his 
politics. Except in the one important special point:  he did not like Hitler. And 
that, of couse, was mutual, and in that, we agree with him."
	It's true that  a  certain naivete did permeate the political views of many 
physicists, although I think Abraham Pais has argued quite convincingly that 
Einstein, in spite of the stereotype of his being absent-minded, was not naive 
at all in his political views.  In the case of those like J. Robert Oppenheimer, it 
would not be unreasonable to label such naivete as tragic. This is a dangerous 
reason, however, to be suspicious of his science.
	As the above quote shows, Dr. Teller, the maker of the hydrogen bomb, 
politely refrained from endorsing Beckmann's theory against relativity. And 
he wisely noted that it carried a danger of subjecting the rest of the late 
engineer's work on nuclear energy to ridicule. 
	Indeed, it seems the Beckmann theory has been subject to some 
criticism. Unfortunately, the Galilean newsletter hints that this is due to a 
conspiracy in academia to keep the truth secret. The newsletter adopts a tone 
of dissidence and  "rebellion."  This is unfortunate, because it seems to invite 
all the more a dismissive attitude, where more straightforward discussion of 
the issue would benefit physicists and historians all around.
	Relativity is not sacrosanct, by any means. There are serious alternative 
theories of gravitation under consideration to address the incompatibilities 
between the General Theory and quantum mechanics. But as the history of 
science has shown time and time again, such changes are motivated by the 
practical limits of theory itself, not the philosophical and ideological reactions 
of scientists, however well-meaning.