Questioning Einstein: Is Relativity Necessary? - Softcover

Tom Bethell

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0971484597 ISBN 13: 9780971484597

Publisher: Vales Lake Publishing, LLC, 2009

Synopsis

Questioning Einstein: Is Relativity Necessary? by Tom Bethell is a serious scholarly work that is very well written, absorbing the reader in a tale of long-neglected experimental results that plays out to a deep satisfaction in finally answering the question, "Why can't I understand relativity?" This is a fresh, unique review of both special and general relativity. It takes for granted that Einstein s mathematics is properly done. It does not quarrel with the numerous experimental results that support Einstein's general relativity theory.

Then what is the quarrel with Einstein? Bethell argues that special relativity theory is wrong and general relativity theory is not necessary. For example, Einstein himself derived E = mc2 without relativity theory, and he also argued in a lecture in 1920 at Leiden that space without ether is unthinkable, only 15 years after having said that the ether was superfluous.

Bethell's book is not mathematical; after all, he does not quarrel with Einstein s mathematics. Importantly, it is strongly based on experimental foundations. Time dilation, for example, is supported by but not proved by moving muons and clocks carried around the globe.

In particular, Bethell promotes Petr Beckmann s case that the medium of propagation of light is the dominant gravitational field. That idea is actually part and parcel of Einstein s general theory of relativity, save that the latter hides the simplicity behind tensors in curved space-time.

About this title

About the Author

Mr. Bethell is a journalist in Washington D.C. He is a senior editor of The American Spectator. Earlier he was Washington editor of Harper's and an editor of the Washington Monthly. He has written for many other magazines, including Fortune, the New York Times Magazine, and The Atlantic Monthly. He has been a columnist for the Los Angeles Herald Examiner and the Washington Star. Today he is also a media fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford.

He has written several books, including The Noblest Triumph: Property and Prosperity through the Ages (St. Martin's Press) and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science (Eagle Publishing). The writer and hi-tech analyst George Gilder has said that Bethell commands the most eloquent prose in American journalism. In 1988, a collection of his journalism was published under the title The Electric Windmill. Tom Wolfe said that the book establishes Tom Bethell as one of our most brilliant essayists.

His new book on Einstein's theory of relativity is written for the benefit of laymen, includes no math and argues that the facts of physics can be more simply explained without relativity theory. In plain language, it advances the views of Petr Beckmann, who wrote Einstein Plus Two and for years taught at the University of Colorado.

A graduate of Oxford University where he studied philosophy, physiology and psychology, Mr. Bethell came to the United States in 1962. He is married to Donna Fitzpatrick Bethell. They live in Washington, D.C.

Edition details

• Publisher: Vales Lake Publishing, LLC
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0971484597
• ISBN 13: 9780971484597
• Binding: Perfect Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 205