Einstein: Both Maxwell and Newton are Wrong!

In recent posts I have been searching for an explanation of the current crisis of modern physics, which is deep and sadly acknowledged by all prominent physicists and philosophers of physics. 

One striking aspect of modern physics is that it is presented as "strange", "weird", "counter-intuitive", "paradoxical" with unsettled "foundational problems" since 100 years without progress. To be compared with classical physics, which is rational and understandable and not strange at all although it can exhibit very complex dynamics showing surprising emergence.

The new aspect of strangeness into physics was introduced by Einstein in 1905 in his Special Theory of Relativity SR to be the academic work opening an academic career from his position as patent clerk in Bern with little training in mathematics and physics. Einstein gambled high: Derive new physics from  very few very general principles or Postulates with this Grand Plan:

• Show "Maxwell is wrong" because he assumes a "unique aether" for propagation of electromagnetic waves/light.
• Show "Newton is wrong" because he assumes "absolute space" and "absolute time".
• In particular: Show "no-aether" and "relative space-time."

Einstein then decided to start from the following Postulates:

1. Laws of physics take the same form in all inertial systems.
2. The speed of light is the same in all inertial systems 

Here inertial systems = standard Euclidean space-time coordinate systems moving with constant velocity with respect to each other.

To facilitate showing "Maxwell is wrong" Einstein attributed "unique aether" to Maxwell, which is not correct since Maxwell works well with any inertial system, and so Maxwell is a "many-aether" theory,  as many aethers as inertial systems. Maxwell without any aether/inertial system does not make sense because without, Maxwell's equations cannot even be formulated.

To facilitate showing "Newton is wrong" Einstein attributed "absolute space" to Newton, which is not correct since already Galileo understood that Newton's equations read the same in all inertial systems connected by a Galilean transformation, and so Newton is also a "many-aether" theory.  

We observe that Maxwell satisfies Postulate 1+2 and so cannot be wrong within SR as being based on these two Postulates. Einstein's attempt to prove "Maxwell wrong" thus failed and so he ended up with "Maxwell is right" which was what everybody said then and still says. SR said nothing not already very well known about Maxwell/light.

As concerns if "Newton is wrong" follows from the Postulates, we observe that Newton satisfies Postulate 1 under Galilean transformation and Postulate 2 about speed of light does not concern Newton because Newton does not speak about light but about matter. Einstein's attempt to prove "Newton is wrong" from Postulate 1+2 thus failed.

We conclude that Einstein's Grand Plan of proving "Maxwell is wrong" and "Newton is wrong" from SR based on Postulate 1+2,  thus failed. Compare Summary below!

We may now ask if anyway SR contains some physics of interest as derived by Einstein from Postulates 1+2? 

This was addressed in this post concerning Einstein's "derivation" of the Lorentz transformation by identifying two different light signals to be the same by disrespecting physics. 

In any case, after having derived the Lorentz transformation on loose grounds, Einstein concluded that "Newton is wrong" by not being Lorentz invariant, which did not make sense since Lorentz invariance is born out of Maxwell's equations for light and so does not connect to Newton's material mechanics. 

We conclude that SR does not prove either Maxwell nor Newton to be wrong. This should be welcomed by modern physicists trained to believe the opposite and then having to accept that "physics is strange". Maxwell and Newton are not strange, only Einstein!

If you want to dig more into Maxwell as a "many-aether" theory, take a look at Many-Minds Relativity.

In particular it would be a big relief if "Newton is right" could be reinstalled into physics. This would open to a Unified Field Theory since Newton and Maxwell are fully compatible as mass-based Newtonian gravitation and light without mass leaving possible interaction open to some new additional physics. 

Unfortunately modern physics has given in to adopt Einstein's "Newton is wrong because of SR" taken to represent stunning progress beyond classical physics. But experimental evidence must then be presented and that has shown to be very difficult to collect, to be honest. This is what usually is presented by modern physicists as best evidence that "Newton is wrong":

• Perihelion Precession of Mercury (1859)
• Michelson–Morley Experiment (1887)
• Deflection of Light (1919 eclipse expedition)
• Time Dilation of Muons (1949).
• Gravitational Time Dilation of photons (1959)

We understand that only the Perihelion Precession of Mercury concerns Newton's mechanics, the other concern essentially light, and we have in this post inspected the evidence and seen that it is weak, in particular because it is not SR which is claimed to show "Newton is wrong", but General Relativity GR.

We thus see that modern physics has to struggle very hard to show that "Newton is wrong". Of course this is expected when remembering that Newton's law of gravitation follows from conservation of energy and force in a gravitating material system, as the message of many posts. 

We conclude that Einstein's research plan to show "Newton is wrong" was based on ignorance combined with great ambition, and so did not work as science, but miraculously it worked politically to make Einstein the greatest physicist all times, securely displacing Newton to a second place. It is here much of the crisis of modern physics is rooted.  

You can always find a reason to dismiss a scientific theory by finding some irrelevant aspect which "is wrong". You may e g dismiss Newton's law of gravitation because it does not say anything about gravitational bending of light, because it says nothing about light at all, only about matter. But that lacks scientific reason and so could have only political reason. What is most important with a theory is that it is correct in a certain sense under certain circumstances, not that it does not apply to everything and does not tell everything.

If it so happens that light is affected by matter-based Newtonian gravitation by some physical mechanism yet to be discovered, then that could be added to Newton. But it would not mean that "Newton is wrong" as concerns matter. Yes, there are claims of "relativistic effects" appearing when matter reaches velocities near the speed of light, but that can only be achieved experimentally in supercolliders stretching physics to the extreme.  

Although the above arguments are logical and simple, they will meet opposition from a modern physics community carefully trained to believe that "Newton is simple+wrong" and "Einstein is strange+right".  Physics becomes much more manageable under a banner of "Newton is simple+right" rather than the opposite.  

Summary of SR agreed with chatGPT:

• SR does not add anything to Maxwell as theory of light.
• SR claims "Newton is wrong" because "Newton is not Lorentz invariant". But the nature of Newton/matter/mechanics is to be Galilean invariant and so the claim lacks logic.

What apparently happened is that Einstein became so taken away by "elevating" the Lorentz invariance of Maxwell's equations to a "general principle of relativity" demanding "all physical laws to be Lorentz invariant" as if playing God. What happens if you "elevate" a special case to a General Principle?

Another thing is that the Lorentz invariance of Maxwell's equations has to be handled with care since the Lorentz transformation mixes time into space in an unphysical way. This is was what Lorentz said when inspecting his transformation carefully pointing out that the "transformed time was not physical time", which Einstein failed to understand and so went on to form SR relativistic mechanics without physics. But Einstein succeeded with his Grand Plan to become the greatest physicist all times! Now Einstein is gone since 70 years and maybe it is time to move on without him and leave "strange physics" to the history of  failed attempts from "elevating" some special case to General Principle.