Dr. Bryan G. Wallace
FARCE OF PHYSICS
Chapter 6
Relativity Revolution
There is an interesting article[80] titled SOVIET SCIENTISTS
TELL IT LIKE IT IS, URGING REFORMS OF RESEARCH INSTITUTES, that
starts as follows:
A specter is haunting the Soviet UnionÄÄthe modernization of
virtually every part of Soviet society. The Russian
catchword for this is perestroika, which translates as
"restructuring" or "reform." The concept has been described
in recent books and statements by General Secretary Mikhail
S. Gorbachev and by his favorite economist, Abel G.
Aganbegyan, who is director of the economics section of the
Soviet Academy of Sciences. Its implications for science and
technology in the Soviet Union, observes Loren Graham, a
longtime MIT history of science professor, "are as sweeping
as anything undertaken by Peter the Great or Lenin. Like
those historic figures, Gorbachev hungers to improve the
country's science and technology. All of them realized that
if significant advances weren't made, the country would be
left permanently behind."
Gorbachev's program, which combines perestroika with
glasnost, or "openness," already has gone further than the
revisions another Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, tried to
introduce 30 years ago.
on page 98 we find the statement:
Accordingly, say US observers of Soviet science such as MIT's
Graham, the obvious aim of perestroika is to remove the heavy
hand of the bureaucratic old guard, to "democratize" the
scientific establishment and to restructure basic research by
strengthening a diversity of disciplines and making these
more relevant to industry. This is also the message
delivered in Sagdeev's essay in the current Issues in Science
and Technology, a quarterly journal published by the US
National Academies of Sciences and of Engineering. In it,
Sagdeev calls for breaking up many of the research institutes
that he labels "bureaucratic dinosaurs" into smaller, more
flexible and more responsive operations, declassifying much
of the research that the Kremlin still considers militarily
significant and relaxing restrictions on international
scientific cooperation.
and on page 99 the article closes with the following paragraph:
Indeed, says another Carnegie Endowment senior analyst,
Andrew Nagorski, Soviet science is compartmentalized, "so
that military applications get first call and the civilian
economy is left to rot. The Soviet Union is a military
superpower, but not an economic superpower." It is somewhat
ironic, he observes, that in order to save his science
establishment, Gorbachev must first buck it.
In October of 1987, I received a registered letter from a Dr.
Vladimir Ilich Sekerin of the Russian science city of
Novosibirsk. The translation of the letter by Drs. William &
Vivian Parsons of Eckerd College states that he knew several of
my works, including the work on the radar location of Venus.
Just as I did, he also computed that the speed of light in a
vacuum from a moving source is equal to c+v, and he included a
copy of his article "Gnosiological Peculiarities in the
Interpretation of Observations (For example the Observation of
Double Stars)", in which is cited still one more demonstration of
this proposition.
In July of 1988, I received a letter, written in English, from
a Dr. Svetlana Tolchelnikova-Murri of Pulkovo Observatory. In
the letter she said that she got a copy of my paper "Radar
Testing of Relative Velocity of Light in Space" from Dr. Vladimir
Sekerin in Novosibirsk. It was very interesting to her. She was
working with Pulkovo Observatory, and her field was astrometry.
She felt that the intrusion of relativistic theories into
fundamental astrometry was quite a failure, that was not yet
comprehended by the majority. Thanks to PERESTROIKA she was
writing me openly, but their (Pulkovo) Observatory is one of the
outposts of orthodox relativity. Two scientists were dismissed
because they discovered some facts which contradicted Einstein.
It is not only dangerous to speak against Einstein, but which is
worse it is impossible to publish anything which might be
considered as contradiction to his theory. It seems the same
situation is true for their Academy. In February 1989 in
Leningrad, they planned to organize a conference (during two
days) "The Problem of Space and Time in Modern Science." Its
real goal was hidden under the philosophical covering. Their
only desire was to publish the results. There were only 6
reports in a schedule, but the lectors were of a middle (or low)
scientific grade (rank) and now two official participants
philosophers were added by the directors of their institutes.
It was out of her power to invite me, but she could send me
afterwards the copies of the reports in Russian if I was
interested. She asked if I had ever been to Leningrad? If not
she thought I should come. Her friends and her were very
interested in my work after 1969. Under a separate cover she was
sending me a book with several papers which might be interesting
to me. In my reply to Svetlana, I sent her reprints of all the
material I had published over the years. Since her original
letter, I've had an extensive correspondence with Svetlana, and
in a November 1988 letter she wrote that on the 13th of March
1989 during three days there would be a conference in Leningrad
"The Problem of Space and Time in Natural Science" with
participants from other cities of the USSR, and it would be
alright for me or any of my friends from the USA to come to this
conference. They hoped to invite TV and a journalist in order to
raise the question of scientific ethics in their scientific
community. The best guarantee that their scientific papers will
be published not in ten or thirty years, but now, will be the
presence of some objective observers or participants from my
country at the conference, and it would be easier for them not to
use Aesopian language.
In an effort to comply with Svetlana's request to bring
western scientists and journalists to the conference, I used my
personal copy machine, computer, and daisy wheel printer to send
a 4 page personal letter to 23 journalists and 43 scientists,
along with a copy of her letter that contained the conference
invitation and information. The following is a sampling of some
of the replies: Paul C. Tash, the Metropolitan Editor of the
local newspaper, the St. Petersburg Times wrote that
unfortunately, circumstances did not permit them to accept our
offer. However, if there should be developments at the
conference that I considered newsworthy, please contact their
reporter David Ballingrud, who covers science and aerospace;
Walter Sullivan of The New York Times, whom I mentioned earlier
in Chapter 4, wrote that he had not been to Pulkovo for many
years and would love to return, but is retired now and could not
justify the trip; Dr. David Lazarus, the Editor-in-Chief of The
American Physical Society wrote he was sorry not to be able to
accept our invitation to attend your upcoming meeting in the
USSR. It might be enjoyable as well as enlightening. In his
role as Editor-in-Chief, however, he must constrain himself to a
totally hands-off or arm's-length posture regarding any field of
research; Dr. Jean Pierre Vigier of the Institut Henri Poincar‚
in France, wrote that in his present situation it is absolutely
impossible for him to attend the Pulkovo Conference unless he
received an official invitation, which is also necessary to
obtain a Soviet visa and raise the travel expenses. He has
always had his doubts on Prof. Shapiro's observations and would
appreciate a discussion on the radar experiments. The Sekerin
results were unknown to the experts in Paris and he hoped I can
inform them after my trip to Leningrad. If I or some soviet
observer has new significant results on our problem he would be
happy to consider them for publication in Physics Letters A of
which he was an Editor; Dr. Louis Essen of England, whom I
mentioned in Chapter 2, wrote that it would have been interesting
to attend the meeting at Pulkova Observatory - which he visited a
long time ago, but health problems prevent him from travelling -
quite apart from the expense. He hoped that Svetlana and I did
not expect too much from the meeting. Many criticisms of
relativity theory have been published without having any effect
on the Establishment, showing that publication is not enough.
Indeed the more the theory is criticized the more strident the
support is maintained - a common feature of all irrational
beliefs. He had heard a former Director from there give a paper
in which he showed that a careful analyses of the 1915 eclipse
results did not support Eddington's claim, on the Relativity
Theory.
In her letter of 2/12/89 Svetlana wrote that if 1/5 of the
people I had invited will come it would cost her head. During my
visit I learned that the Observatory had received a large number
of letters from western scientists, that expressed dismay over
the fact that such a conference was being held. I now know that
the ease of which I obtained my Visa was the exception and not
the rule. It seems that my visit was sponsored by the Academy of
Sciences of the USSR, and since it was an unusual Visa, no one at
the Observatory knew how to handle it, in particular, Svetlana
could not determine where or if I needed to register my arrival
at my destination. The only one I found to accompany me to the
conference was Robert Fritzius of the Magnolia Scientific
Research Group at Starkville Mississippi. Even though Svetlana
sent him a personal invitation to the conference, and told him he
could stay at the guest quarters at the Observatory, he was
forced to get his Visa thru Intourist which cost him an extra
$200, and he had to stay at the Moscow Hotel in Leningrad which
cost an additional $1000.
Robert kept an extensive log that contained intimate details
of the trip, and he sent me a copy of it. He intended to use the
log to help him translate the papers and other information that
came from the conference. He translated the original c+v double
star paper Vladimir Sekerin sent me in 1987, and has now also
finished the translation of Vladimir's book. I found from his
log, that with regard to his Visa, he was registered
automatically when he arrived at the hotel, and that the
Intourist person kept his passport and Visa for the first night.
He had to obtain his room key from a lady in charge of his floor
to enter his room, and he had to return the key to her when he
left his room. In contrast to Robert, I stayed in Svetlana's
daughter's room in her flat at the Observatory. Her daughter was
14 years old and her name was Katja, and she had pictures of
Western and Eastern rock music stars on the walls.
I brought my 35mm SLR Pentax camera with me along with 3 rolls
of 36 exposure Kodak Ektachrome 400 slide film, so I now have 108
very nice slides of the tours thru the Hermitage museum,
St.Isaac's Cathedral, a famous cemetery, all the speakers at the
conference, radio and optical telescopes and related equipment at
the Observatory, meals and meetings at different homes, etc.
During my visit I had many intimate conversations with regard to
just about any subject of interest from politics to science, and
in several conversations with people who seemed to have intimate
knowledge of what was happening behind the scenes, I learned that
my correspondence with Svetlana was being monitored and that
Gorbachev had read Vladimir's book STUDIES INTO THE THEORY OF
RELATIVITY, and it was his references to my published papers that
had lead to my unusual Visa. I told Svetlana that I believed
that we were pawns in a larger game that concerned Gorbachev's
interest in stopping "Star Wars" and the nuclear arms race, and
that revealing intimate knowledge of the c+v relative velocity of
light in space and military secrecy with this regard, were all
elements of this game. Svetlana was unhappy at the prospect of
being a pawn, and would have preferred to have the illusion of
freedom, but I on the other hand, am happy to be a pawn, just as
long as the game moves in the direction I wish it to go.
The fact that our correspondence had been monitored was
obvious. I have observed the wrinkled appearance of the sealed
parts of the envelopes, the gloss of the resealing glue, as well
as the erratic arrival times of our air mail letters. The
surveillance of our mail had caused a major communication
problem, for instance Robert called the Director Dr. Victor
Abalakin, and was told there was no March conference at the
Observatory. Since I had not heard from Svetlana for some time,
I called Abalakin and he said the same thing, but added the
suggestion that perhaps it was being sponsored by some other
scientific society in Leningrad. Abalakin said he would have
someone meet me at the airport, and asked if I would contact Dr.
J. Lieske at the Jet Propulsion Lab for him. I managed to
contact Lieske at a different number than the one Abalakin had
given me, and he was surprised to find it was a simple matter to
call the USSR, he thought that you had to obtain permission from
the KGB. The main problem with calling the USSR is the fact that
the lines tend to be very busy, the best time I had found to
place a call turned out to be around 5:30 AM, and I suggested to
Lieske, that because of the larger time difference in California,
the best time for him would probably be around 1:00 AM.
On 2/1/89 I received 3 letters from Svetlana dated from
11/17/88 to 1/15/89, which tends to illustrate the erratic nature
of our airmail correspondence. One letter contained a New Years
card that had about 20 signatures of people from around 5
different scientific organizations in Leningrad, another letter
contained 3 postcards, with one card showing the building where
the conference was to take place, the Leningrad Academy of
Sciences which was built in 1873, on the card Svetlana said that
they hoped to organize two lectures for me to deliver, one at the
Academy of Civil Aviation, and the other at the Institute of the
History of Science. On 2/14/89 I wrote Svetlana of my change in
travel plans, I was to arrive on an Air France flight from Paris
at 3:45 PM instead of the Aeroflot flight from Moscow at 4:20 PM.
She did not received that letter by the time I arrived on March
10, and she was waiting at the wrong building. Prof. Pavel F.
Parshin, the Chief of the Department of Physics at the Aeroflot
Academy of Civil Aviation, showed up looking for Robert, and
found me instead. Both Robert and I had arrived on the same
plane, and Intourist had already taken him to his hotel.
Svetlana turned out to be a pleasant looking 52 year old woman
with light red hair, and she greeted me as her soulmate from the
USA. We drove to her flat at the Observatory, and had a very
elaborate dinner, that was prepared by two of Svetlana's male
associates, and included champagne to celebrate my arrival. One
of the men fixing the dinner was Dr. Konstantin Manuilov, and he
gave a talk at the conference that was based on his solution to
the n-body problem based on Newtonian mechanics. We were quickly
on a first name basis, and because of my poor memory, many of the
names, conversations, and events that took place during the visit
were a blur.
The next day, which was a Saturday, Robert and myself along
with Vladimir Sekerin and his wife Lydia went to visit Pavel and
his wife and son in their apartment in Leningrad. Robert had a
number of questions concerning his effort to translate Vladimir's
book, then we had in depth discussions about Pavel's work
concerning a modern variation of the Ive's experiment, it seems
that while he was able to publish the details of the experiment
and the resultant data in a prominent USSR scientific journal, he
was not able to publish his theoretical analysis because it was
not consistent with Einstein's special relativity theory. We had
a very elaborate dinner followed by cognac and more discussions.
The following day, which was a Sunday, Svetlana and Katja,
took Robert, Vladimir, Lydia, and myself on a tour of Leningrad.
We visited a cemetery across the street from the hotel where many
prominent people were buried, than a Russian Orthodox church
service where Svetlana, Katja, and I lit candles, then we went to
the Hermitage Museum. The Hermitage was a fabulous place with
over a thousand rooms, it would have taken days to visit all of
them, one of the pictures taken was of me standing next to a
portrait of my ancestor Oliver Cromwell. After that we had
coffee and filled pastry at a Russian version of a fast food
restaurant, and then paid a visit to the Victory Square War
Memorial and Museum dedicated to the World War II 900 day siege
of Leningrad. That night Svetlana, Katja, Robert, and myself had
dinner at an apartment built during the Khrushchev era which was
the home of one of Svetlana's younger friends, a woman whose
husband was a geophysicist working with marine gravity
measurements, and who had a daughter the same age as Katja.
The next day was a Monday, and Svetlana took me to pay an
official visit to the Observatory's front office. The only
problem was that all the top officials had flown to Moscow, and
there was no one in charge of the Observatory??? Svetlana
arranged to have an Observatory van and driver for us to use, and
then we made a trip to Leningrad to pickup a young woman
physicist named Olga who was to serve as an interpreter for my
lecture that afternoon. She was given a copy of my famous 1969
"RADAR TESTING OF THE RELATIVE VELOCITY OF LIGHT IN SPACE" paper
to familiarize her with the terms I would use in the lecture, and
as we drove along, she was reading the paper and said "this is
madness I can't be reading this, I must be going mad." That
morning we visited St.Isaac's Cathedral, an unbelievable place,
then we paid a visit to a respected elder scientist, Dr. S. A.
Bazilevsky, who had been unable to publish anti-relativity papers
during his career. He knew of my 1969 paper and wanted to meet
me, and during our meeting he handed me a carbon copy of one of
his unpublished papers. One of Svetlana's friends read a paper
of his during the conference, and my 1969 paper was referenced
and it caused quite a stir. After the visit, we went to the
House of Scientists, a large palace that was still in the process
of restoration, and I delivered my lecture which dealt for the
most part, with the philosophy and history behind Einstein's
relativity theories. The lecture was well received, with many
comments and questions, and afterwards we went into another room
and attended a banquet in which Robert and I were the guests of
honor. The banquet ended with two bottles of cognac, and many
toasts, it was a wonderful experience.
The next day was Tuesday March 14, the 110th. anniversary of
Einstein's birth, and the new starting date of the conference,
which was now being held in a lecture hall at Pulkovo
Observatory. At the entrance to the hall, Svetlana had set up a
poster display containing a drawing of a dragon and the earth,
and a number of humorous satirical poems and arguments, and
beneath the poster she put a copy of the article "RELATIVITY -
joke or swindle?" which was published by the prominent English
physicist Dr. Louis Essen.[70] The Director of the Observatory
flew in from Moscow to deliver the opening address, and then flew
back to Moscow. Svetlana introduced me to the Director before
the conference started, and he laughed when I told him what
Lieske had said about the KGB. Abalakin said that shortly after
my call to Lieske, Lieske had called him. Svetlana was surprised
by the objective tone of Abalakin's speech. Before he had become
the Director, he had been an anti-relativist, then after he
obtained the position, he switched camps and became a relativist,
and even won a state prize for introducing relativity into
celestial mechanics. Also under his administration, two of the
other woman anti-relativists had been forced into early
retirement, and now it seems that position has been reversed, and
they are back at work.
A humorous twist to the conference was the fact that some of
the relativists at the conference complained that they were being
persecuted. A number of relativists withdrew their papers, and
that changed the length of the conference from 3 to 2 days.
Because of the many changes that had taken place, the printed
program was no longer valid, and due to the lack of a copy
machine at the Observatory, I was unable to match speakers and
papers with my slides, but Svetlana later sent me an updated
program so I could do so. During the afternoon session, Svetlana
delivered her talk concerning her anti-relativistic views with
regard to positional astronomy. Svetlana's talk was followed by
Vladimir's talk presenting the binary star evidence showing the
speed of light in space was c+v. That night there was a meeting
of the conference committee. It was decided that Robert and
myself would become members of the committee and that there would
be another conference to be held in Leningrad two years later. I
suggested, and it was accepted that Dr. H. Aspden of England, Dr.
J. P. Vigier of France, and Dr. J. P. Wesley of West Germany be
invited to become members of the committee. I told the committee
that Vigier was a member of the Institute Henri Poincar‚ in Paris
and an editor of Physics Letters A. I also said that in his
reply to my letter in regard to the conference, he had expressed
an interest in the results from the conference, and suggested
that participants submit papers to him for possible publication
in his journal. Svetlana announced that V. N. Bezwerchy had
contacted her and offered to publish the proceedings of the
conference. I had talked with Bezwerchy a number of times during
my visit, he was an interesting fellow and he seemed to have a
great deal of inside information with regard to political and
scientific matters in the USSR. I suggested that we consider
publishing the proceedings in English as well as Russian, and it
was agreed to investigate that possibility.
The following day was Wednesday, and my talk was the last one
of the morning session and Svetlana served as the translator. I
used overhead projector slides for illustration and to help
prompt me, since I did not have a prepared text, and the title of
the talk was "The Problem of Space and Time in Modern Physics."
Robert's log with his notes on the lecture allowed me to create a
written version which was to be published in the conference
proceedings. The talk was based on the arguments and information
in my paper[71] "THE GREAT SPEED OF LIGHT IN SPACE COVERUP" and
the followup paper[32] "SCIENTIFIC FREEDOM" which was in part a
reply to I.Shapiro's reply[72] to the first paper. One of the
many interesting comments and questions that followed the talk,
was where a participant asked me to summarize my opinions with
regard to relativity theory. I stated that the special
relativity first postulate with regard to detection of
translatory motion, was obviously false, and referenced
Einstein's former research associate's argument in this
regard.[73] I went on to state that any reasonably objective
physicist should realize that the ultimate test of the second
postulate that the speed of light in space is constant, is to
analyze the modern data on the transit times of light signals in
the solar system, and this evidence shows beyond a shadow of a
reasonable doubt that the postulate is also obviously false, and
I cited my above arguments in this regard. I also mentioned that
the prominent British astronomer Dr. G. C. McVittie in both
publication and correspondence has indicated that he has had the
same sort of problem in trying to obtain meaningful information
from Shapiro, and in a 1970 letter writes that the secrecy with
which Shapiro surrounds his methods and his observational results
makes him wonder whether there is something to be concealed. In
McVittie's paper, he points out the fact that:
in the Einsteinian theory of gravitation, an exact solution for
the gravitational field of a set of discrete bodies is possible
only when one of the bodies is of finite mass whereas the rest
are of infinitesimally small mass. This is in contrast to the
Newtonian theory of gravitation in which an exact solution for
the field of two massive bodies is possible, complications
arising only when three or more bodies are in question...[81]
The fact that Moyer's equation (3) is the "Newtonian"
approximation to the n-body metric, should be considered as
evidence against Einstein's general relativity equivalence
principle.[36] On the other hand, Dr. J. C. Hafele and Dr. R. E.
Keating have used commercial jet flights and atomic clocks to
present convincing empirical evidence that tends to resolve the
relativistic clock "paradox", and they found that the
relativistic dilation of time was a function of the clock's speed
relative to an absolute coordinate system at rest relative to the
distant galaxies.[74] I certainly have no problem with E=mc2
since the atomic bomb is ample evidence that it is true. So in
general, much of relativity theory is true, but many of the
original arguments are not. The real problem with modern science
is the lack of scientific objectivity and integrity on the part
of many prominent scientists, they are little more than
politicians, and are far more concerned with the advancement of
their careers and status, then the advancement of science. What
is needed are true scientific journals that publish all arguments
and evidence in a reasonable period of time and at a modest cost.
The peer review should take place after publication, and should
involve all scientists, and not just a privileged few. The key
to the more rapid advancement of scientific knowledge, is a more
efficient and democratic forum for communication.
On Thursday, the last day of my visit, I had a tape recorded
interview by a newspaper correspondent from the Soviet science
city of Tomsk. He was surprised to find that I considered the
most important man alive today to be Gorbachev. I explained that
his efforts to end the arms race would result in a much safer
world, and would bring vast economic benefits to both the US and
the USSR. Science would also benefit from the end of the arms
race, since military secrets invariably involve scientific
knowledge. A major element in the c+v speed of light in space
coverup may have been the military interest in using the laser as
a "Star Wars" weapon.
After the interview I asked Svetlana if I could take a picture
of the large 26" refractor telescope. She explained that this
was hard to do since the administration did not like to show off
their equipment to visitors. She asked her friend Dr. Alexandra
Schpitalnaya, one of the reinstated anti-relativitists, to try
and show me the telescope while she fixed our final lunch.
Alexandra took me to the building where the keys are kept, and
the woman in charge of the keys refused to give them to her, then
Alexandra made a phone call, and a short while latter a man ran
down a large hallway, signed out the keys, and gave them to
Alexandra. After a fast tour of the radio and optical
telescopes, museum, and library, we returned to Svetlana's, and
found that Katja and her friend Anna had baked me a cake with
"For Your" written on top. At the airport Svetlana said we would
say goodbye in the Russian way, so we hugged and kissed each
other's cheeks. As the plane flew into the low lying clouds, my
last view was of the large dome of the 26" telescope at the
Pulkova Observatory, a fitting end to my wonderful visit to the
USSR.
On my return to the US, the first thing I did was to use the
copy of Roberts notes which he sent me, to generate a paper
concerning my invited talk at the conference. Then I sent the
paper to Svetlana, so that it could be published in the
conference proceedings. The next thing I did was to use a slide
copier to make prints from 36 of the slides, which I then sent to
Svetlana and Robert. Then I wrote a long letter to Walter
Sullivan concerning my visit to the USSR, and also sent copies of
the letter to other people that I thought would find the trip to
be of interest. One of the more interesting replies was from Dr.
J. P. Wesley of West Germany, who wrote thanking me for the copy
of my exciting saga to Leningrad letter that I wrote for
Sullivan, he also enclosed a list of individuals who would be
interested in space-time physics. With regard to Wesley's list,
I received a 4 December 1989 letter from Prof. Jorge C. Cure' of
Miami Florida inviting me to an informal gathering in St.
Petersburg Florida on the 27th of December 1989, to put in
practice the old Greek art of exchanging ideas in friendly
dialogues. He wrote that due to a strange circumstance the state
of Florida had attracted seven free thinkers, that dared to walk
the lonely path of fundamental inquiries. It seems that Jorge
had gotten the seven names from Paul's list! The Florida anti-
relativist conference was held at Lewis House on the Eckerd
College campus, and was sponsored by the Academy of Senior
Professionals, of which one of the participants, Earl C. Sherry,
was a member. The one day conference was video taped by one of
the participants, Francisco Muller. My talk was the first one,
and was illustrated with 80 35mm color slides. The first 40
slides were related to my work concerning radar testing of the
relative velocity of light in space,[18] and research done at
Eckerd College in collaboration with Prof. Wilbur F. Block and
Prof. Richard A. Rhodes II on H- ions,[82] crossed beam electron-
electron scattering at low energy,[83] and computer simulation of
mass dynamics in electrons.[66] And the last 40 slides were from
my USSR visit and the Pulkovo conference. The talk was well
received, with many interesting questions and comments from the
participants.
In a letter dated 6/4/89 Prof. Pavel Parshin informed me that
a Dr. Fedor A. Morochov intended to publish a paper about my talk
at the Pulkovo conference, and in a letter dated 12/14/89, he
informed me of the increasingly large number of anti-relativistic
works being published in the USSR, including a booklet titled
"Miracles of the Relativistic theory" written by a Supreme Soviet
deputy, Dr. A. A. Denisov from the Leningrad Politechnical
Institute. Pavel also informed me of the special program
"Mirror" of the Leningrad TV that had a show devoted to an "Is
Einstein right?" discussion, and he suggested that I submit an
entry to the program. I submitted a six page single spaced
letter on this subject, and included copies of my Scientific
Ethics articles on this question.[32,71] In a letter dated
3/25/90 Svetlana said that Parshin went to Minsk in early
February 1990, where about 40-50 physicists had a five day anti-
relativistic conference. In my reply to her of 4/9/90, I wrote:
I have not heard from Parshin about the February conference,
but you know how unreliable the mail is, he may have written
but I have yet to receive it. The anti-relativistic conference
sounded exciting, 40-50 physicists, and lasting 5 days! Very
good. It confirms my suspicion that the anti-relativity
Renaissance will come from the USSR. I expect that the next 20
years will see a varietal explosion of science and technology
coming from Russia. It would be wonderful if it would lead to
PERESTROIKA and GLASNOST in science in the US and the rest of
the world as well. As you say about the results from the
conference, there are many different variations of anti-
relativity theory in the US and other Western countries as
well. The important thing, is not that there be a consensus of
opinions, but that there be a free and democratic right to
voice and publish opinions, the consensus will come in time.
And it will be a realistic consensus, and not the unrealistic
authoritarian consensus we now have with regard to Einstein's
relativity theories. Since you now have N.2 of GALILEAN
ELECTRODYNAMICS you have that conference report. As I was
writing this letter, the current copy of Physics Essays
arrived, and the back of this letter contains a copy of that
report, and I also enclose a spare copy for you to share.
The reports I referred to in the letter were ones that I had
published on the 1989 Pulkovo conference.[83,84] I have received
a large correspondence that includes many reprint request from
the GALILEAN ELECTRODYNAMICS article.[84] One of the letters
came from the Editor of the journal APEIRON, who asked if I
thought any of my contacts in Leningrad would like to see his
journal and that contributions were welcome. In my letter to him
I wrote that Svetlana is the ring leader of the Leningrad anti-
relativists, and writes and speaks English fairly well, and that
he should write her directly to find out if any of them would
like to subscribe or publish in his journal. One of the more
interesting replies came from Prof. Howard Hayden of the
Department of Physics of the University of Connecticut. He
started out by requesting a reprint of my 1969 Venus radar paper,
and then wrote that he did not wish to count himself among the
defenders of relativity theory, but he doubted whether the
discovery that the speed of light isn't constant will
revolutionize much physics. It may "devastate" a few people, but
not the knowledgeable ones, on the other hand, getting a
physicist to say that the speed of light isn't constant is like
trying to exsanguinate a turnip. It is somewhat futile to argue
with special relativity theory, primarily because it is
inherently irrefutable. That is, it is supposed to work only in
inertial frames, which are non-existent. With regard to General
Relativity he closed with the hope that it will die a slow death
at the hand of Ockham's razor. I received a 3/15/90 letter from
the editor Prof. Petr Beckmann, who wrote that a Palo Alto
physicist, Dr. Eugene Salamin, had sent a long letter arguing
with the papers published so far in Galilean Electrodynamics.
Concerning my report, Salamin's letter contains the following
paragraph:
"The report on the Soviet Conference claims there is
evidence from binary stars that the speed of light in space is
c+v. This is totally absurd: after thousands of years
travelling to earth, the light from the different members of
the binary systems would get out of phase. If the c+v theory
were true, some binary systems would exhibit simultaneous red
shifts from both members, instead of one member red shifted and
the other blue shifted."
I sent Beckmann the following 3/19/90 reply:
Eugene Salamin is correct in arguing "If the c+v theory were
true, some binary systems would exhibit simultaneous red shift
from both members, instead of one member red shifted and the
other blue shifted." In a classic astronomy textbook136 we find
following ad hoc c argument to explain this observed phenomena:
Struve concludes that the gas whirlpools cause the seeming
discrepancy in the behavior of a few eclipsing binaries which
long puzzled the investigators. Where the velocity curve of
the binary implies an orbit of considerable eccentricity, the
light curve may require a circular orbit.
Fox has done an extensive investigation of the supposed
evidence against the Ritz c+v emission theory68 and with regard
to binary stars argues:
There are also some difficulties for Struve's hypothesis.
The model would seem to have consequences similar to those of
the Ritz theory.
The analysis of the transit times of light signals in the solar
system does not suffer from the same ambiguity as that of the
binary star data. With this regard I have recently published67
the following argument:
Theodore D. Moyer of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory has
published a paper that reports the methods used to obtain
accurate values of range observables for radio and radar
signals in the solar system. Moyer's (A6) equation and the
accompanying information that calls for evaluating the
position vectors at the signal reception time is nearly
equivalent to the Galilean c+v equation (2) in my paper
'Radar testing of the relative velocity of light in space.'
With regard to his equation, Moyer states "The first term on
the right-hand side is the Newtonian light time" but he does
not go on to explain the enormous implications of this
statement. I sent Moyer a reprint of this paper, and to
date, he has not seen fit to comment on my argument.
I received a 3/27/90 telephone call from Beckmann, and he asked
many questions with regard to my views on this matter, then he
stated that he may not have sufficient room in his journal for my
reply. In his publication of Salamin's comments in the May/June
1990 issue, he dropped the above paragraph and did not publish my
reply. I am not surprised that Beckmann did not accept my answer
for publication since he now realizes that the modern solar
system data presents evidence against his theory that light is a
wave in the gravitational field.
I found my participation in the 1991 II International
Conference on Space and Time Problems in Natural Sciences to be
an exhilarating experience. The Conference was convened and
organized by the Leningradian Branch of The Academy of Sciences
of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic which was
created in April of 1991 by the Russian parliament. The
Conference was held at the 15 story 746 room Leningrad Hotel on
the bank of the Neva river, and the participants stayed and had
meals there as well. From my hotel room window I could see the
cruiser Aurora that fired the shot to signal workers and sailors
to begin their February 1917 victorious assault on the Winter
Palace. The Palace has become the Hermitage Museum with more
than 3 million works of art, and it was also visible from my
window, and was only a short walk from the hotel. The food,
lodging, and Cultural programs were all covered by the $270
registration fee, with the only additional expense being the
optional $50 cost of the Friday Conference Banquet. The
Conference had a total of 114 participants, with 14 of them from
countries outside the USSR. The Local Organizing Committee
limited the number of Soviet participants to 100 in order to
maintain a more desirable size for the Conference. The foreign
participants received an English version of the program that
contained abstracts of the papers to be presented, and the
Soviets received a Russian version. The program underwent
extensive revision, mainly due to the fact that around 26 of the
expected foreigners did not show up, probably because of fear of
what to expect from the recent Soviet coup attempt and the normal
USSR communications problems. The participants received a radio
receiver and ear phone that allowed them to receive both Russian
and English simultaneous translations, and a staff of translators
were available for translation of conversations between
individuals and small groups and meetings. Most of the more
important talks were held in the large Grand Hall, and the talks
that the Local Organizing Committee decided were of lesser
importance were held in the afternoon sessions in two smaller
Halls. Much of the proceedings were televised, and some of the
participants, including myself, received televised interviews.
The Conference opened at 9:00 AM on Monday September 16th,
with a welcoming address by Prof. Leonid Maiboroda, the chairman
of the Leningradian Branch of the Academy. There was a Reception
at 6:00 PM that night, with plenty of fancy food and drink.
Lee Coe of California, delivered an excellent presentation of
his paper GALILEAN-NEWTONIAN RELATIVITY VERSUS EINSTEINIAN
RELATIVITY at 10:40 AM on the Tuesday Plenary Session in the
Grand Hall. I was one of the chairmen for the session, and I
could see from the podium that his talk had been televised. I
told Lee, and he was able to obtain a VHS cassette copy for $50.
I received a September 24th phone call from Lee, and he said that
the tape did not play back at the proper speed on his daughter's
VCR but that he would be able to have it transcribed to the
proper US speed for a reasonable cost. The Tuesday Cultural
program was an afternoon tour of the Hermitage Museum, but I did
not go since I had been there on my last trip, and I had to spend
most of my spare time meeting with groups and individuals. I
kept the staff of translators busy, and gave most of them small
print copies of a preprint of this book, to express my gratitude
for their difficult task. I received a large collection of
booklets, reprints, etc. from various individuals, and also gave
them copies of my book in return, for a grand total of 52 book
copies that I gave out during the trip.
Prof. Petr Beckmann, who I mentioned earlier, was the US co-
chairman of the Conference Scientific Organizing Committee and
one of the chairmen for the Wednesday Plenary Session, and he
announced that unlike the previous sessions, he intended to
rigidly follow the schedule. He said that each speaker would
have 20 minutes to talk, even though the program listed 30 minute
sections, and the previous talks had been 25 minutes to talk, and
5 minutes for questions and comments? Svetlana Tolchelnikova's
paper titled VERIFICATION OF EINSTEIN'S SECOND POSTULATE BY MEANS
OF ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATIONS was the second one for the session,
and she had been left a full blackboard from the previous
speaker. As she was cleaning the board Beckmann announced that
the time would be deducted from her talk. I mounted the platform
and told Beckmann that I was donating the time for my talk to
Svetlana. He announced this, and Svetlana and many other
participants protested my decision, since they wished to hear
what I had to say. I went to the floor microphone and stated
that my talk was merely an abstract of my book THE FARCE OF
PHYSICS, that I had plenty of condensed preprints for anyone that
wanted them, and that Svetlana had shown me the material she
would present and that in my opinion her talk would eventually be
considered to be the most important event in science in the 20th
century. Svetlana then had plenty of time to give her
presentation that was essentially an indepth confirmation by a
professional astronomer and mathematician of my 1969 paper on
this question. Her evaluation of the published mathematics used
by the professionals who had analyzed the modern solar system
signal data, was that the classical theory was confirmed since
the equations with the second order terms empirically found by
investigators coincide with the classical formulae, and not the
relativistic ones! Prof. Beckmann later made a translation of
her talk from Russian to English, and published it in his journal
GALILEAN ELECTRODYNAMICS.[151] The Cultural program that night
was in the Grand Hall and consisted of singing, music, and
Russian folk dancing.
I delivered Prof. John E. Chappell, Jr.'s paper THE PROBLEM OF
INTOLERANCE IN AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES, AND THE PATH TO A NEW
NATURAL PHILOSOPHY as the first paper to be delivered during the
Thursday afternoon session in the Grand Hall. After the talk
there was an extended applause, and when it stopped I said that
since it was not my paper, I would not answer any questions, but
that he had given me copies of the talk and other material to
hand out to anyone who was interested. As soon as I reached my
seat, I was surrounded by people that wanted his material, and I
did not have enough for all of them. During the session there
was a very impressive well illustrated talk by a high tech
research type individual Dr. V. O. Beklyamishev, and the title of
his paper was ON GNOSIOLOGICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF WALLES'S
INVESTIGATION OF THE DATA OF VENUS RADIOLOCATION. This version
of the spelling of my name appeared a number of times during the
Conference, and seems to be how it is translated from Russian
back into English. From the way Beklyamishev spoke, I got the
impression he was a member of a research group, and that he was
talking about a continuing research project. In a photograph
taken at the Conference, he was sitting with a group of people
that included a man wearing a military uniform. Svetlana had
told me that the space data was controlled by the military in the
USSR. I have a sneaking suspicion that Beklyamishev's paper is
the opening round in a dramatic Russian research project that
will bring an end to the Einstein Relativity era of modern
physics. That evening the Cultural program was a tour of
churches and palaces and so forth, but I did not go because of a
business meeting. The meeting was with a man from Moscow, Dr.
Sergei Goncharov who was the General Director of
"Intertechnopark" a Economic Scientific Research Institute. The
meeting included a number of the foreign participants and
involved tentative plans on the foundation of an international
school of advanced physics, the organization of groups to run
seminars of Soviet and foreign scholars, work on modern
textbooks, and international commercialization of advanced
technologies.
The Friday afternoon session in the Grand Hall was titled
Problems of Scientific Ethics, and Dr. A. A. Denisov (President
Gorbachev's advisor, and the head of Commission on Ethics
problems of the Supreme Soviet) was the principle chairman. I
was the first speaker and the essence of my talk was that the
main problem was the lack of scientific ethics in modern
scientific journalism. I proposed that the Russian Academy would
start a new archival international scientific journal that would
be devoted to democratic journalism free from arbitrary
prejudicial and political censorship. The talk was well received
and I was handed a number of notes from participants that wanted
to help establish such a journal. At the Conference Banquet that
night, I was introduced to a woman who was the producer of the TV
show called "Is Albert Einstein Right?" and she said that most of
the large volume of mail that had been received had concerned me
and my radar evidence against Einstein's theories. At the
Banquet I met a very interesting business man who had spent 4
years in prison because he had made too much profit! He was a
fascinating person to talk to, his name was Mikchail Ivanov, he
spoke perfect English, and I learned much about current Russian
economic problems, and how he was working to help solve them. At
a business meeting the next day, he was the advisor for the
Russian Academy, and we made plans for the new journal which will
be published in simultaneous Russian and English versions. At
present we have plans to hold the III Conference in March 1994 in
St. Petersburg (Leningrad) Russia, and I am a member of the
organizing and editorial committee.