Subject: Re: Call for papers...

Date: Thu, 30 Mar 2000 07:28:50 +0300

From: "Henry H. Lindner" <hlindner1@compuserve.com>

To: "umberto bartocci" <bartocci@dipmat.unipg.it>

References: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5

Umberto,

I read through much of your website. I greatly appreciate your healthy and true conviction that something is wrong with Relativity. But permit me to say bluntly: You do not understand Relativity. In fact, I believe that no one, save myself, understands Relativity. This is why you and other dissidents are getting nowhere and why your anti-Relativity conference became another Tower of Babel.

How can I presume to say that no one understands Relativity? Because Relativity is the product of an esoteric philosophical doctrine called subjectivism. It was invented, in its purest final form, by Bishop Berkeley. From him it was passed down to David Hume, then to Ernst Mach, and finally to Albert Einstein. This lineage is well-known. Who has ever fully exposed Relativity's subjectivistic philosophical foundations? Who can do it since academic philosophy has abandoned physics to the Relativists and Quantum theorists? There simply has not been anyone else able and willing to dig into Relativity's ideas and history and expose it for what it is--a pernicious ideology designed to save Christianity from the threat of natural philosophy.

I tried to publish a paper similar to the one sent to you in Physics Essays. The reviewers found no fatal mathematical or conceptual errors. They did, however, state that their own ideology was working just fine so they had no need for a theory about flowing space. So, in my second draft here attached, I decided to present a brief but adequate philosophical analysis and rejection of Relativity. I had been saving it for a book, but it's clear that the philosophical problem is the true problem with Relativity. I doubt that any experiment will every be considered to "disprove" Relativity since it is subjectivistic and has in fact already been disproved many times over.

I am a philosopher, not the academic type, but a true free-thinking theorist who has studied all Cosmic phenomena from ether to human psychology, society, and religion. I came to understand the problem with Relativity only slowly, over 9 years that I worked on an alternative theory and read all the "philosophers" whose work led to Relativity.

I have attached the paper just recently submitted to Physics Essays. Please give it a very careful reading or two and please let me know if I have made any errors, or failed to explain any aspect of Relativity. I urge you to read Bishop Berkeley's Principles of Human Knowledge. It's not long and in it you'll find the true rationale for and origin of Relativity.

I've also attached another paper which places the problem with Relativity in the broader context of Philosophy, Science, and society. I'm planning to post both these papers at the website below after receiving your comments.

Henry H. Lindner

hlindner1@compuserve.com

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Atrium/8041

Subject: Critique of your paper on SR

Date: Mon, 17 Apr 2000 14:10:32 +0300

From: "Henry H. Lindner" <hlindner1@compuserve.com>

To: "umberto bartocci" <bartocci@dipmat.unipg.it>

Umberto,

I don't know if you received by last e-mail with the attached paper, Physess2000.doc, discussing Relativity vs. flowing

space.

Since you have a sincere desire to replace SR with a realist working theory of the Cosmos, I want to communicate my philosophical findings to you. To this end, I've also written a critique of those sections of your online paper with which I disagreed.

I hope that you will read it in the collegial spirit in which it was written. I'm most eager to hear your comments on my paper and on the attached critique.

Henry H. Lindner

hlindner1@compuserve.com

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Atrium/8041/

Umberto,

You wrote,

> This "conservative heart" of SR is even noticeable in the metaphysical interpretation of the theory, that matches very well with the deanthropocentrization process which, started with the birth of modern science, found his climax with Darwin’s revolution (1859)2.

I believe you are completely wrong. The Copernican and Newtonian metaphysics did deanthropocentrize natural philosophy. But the strain of modern philosophy involving Berkeley, Hume, Kant, Mach, Einstein, Heisenberg, and Bohr produced just the opposite effect. I have argued this in the paper I sent to you recently and I have written a much larger draft article on this subject. Metaphysically, SR is completely anthropocentric! It relates all phenomena to the observer. All laws of physics are supposed to depend upon the observer's frame and his measurements in his frame. Light is presumed to travel at c relative to every human observer! Einstein illustrates this subjectivism profusely in his own writings. Quantum theory is also utterly anthropocentric! Bishop Berkeley's subjectivism is the metaphysical foundation of Relativity and of Quantum Theory. Please read the opening section of Physess2000.doc.

> It would have indeed been rather disturbing "modern philosophy", if man’s ordinary categories of space and time, built only under evolution’s pressure on the Earth’s surface, would have shown themselves useful even for a deeper understanding of the largest universe’s structure.

Are you saying that we should adapt the idea that time is merely the clock readings made by the observer and reified as an imaginary fourth spatial axis? I say that time is not an imaginary measurement axis in a four-dimensional space-time model. Time is the evolution of the physical Cosmos.

> Of course, there is no place for questioning the logical validity of the theory, since it presents itself in the guise of a mathematical theory (naturally, a mathematical theory with physical significance, namely, endowed with a set of codification and decodification rules, which allows to transform a physical situation into a mathematical one, and conversely, but a mathematical theory anyhow), and as that one has to confront it.

There is place, and indeed necessity to question the philosophical validity of the theory, as I have done in Physess2000. Philosophically, Relativity subjectivistic. It is flawed in its foundations and contradicts Cosmic reality. You tell me, does light really move at c relative to every observer? Is it the observer's presence that causes matter to be unable to move at c? Doesn't the assertion that the same light signal moves at c relative to every observer contradict Cosmic reality? Why should we relate the "laws" of nature to the observer at all?

> Thus this paper is born, with the purpose to collect the most common errors of anti-relativistic physicists - in matters which are sometimes misunderstood even by relativity supporters!, as we shall see - and with the hope to contribute in such a way to make criticism against SR grow stronger, and respected, with the purpose to finally restore the dominion of (ordinary) rationality in science, but not only in it...

Your aim is laudable, but do you have the tools to complete the task? Relativity, as I have asserted, is contradictory subjectivistic nonsense. No one understands it, not its adherents, not its critics. It's errors are philosophical and must be exposed as such.

> GR can be defined as the theory of a general space-time, where by this term one simply means a Lorentz 4-dimensional connected time-oriented manifold4.

What is your definition of space-time? What is it? How does it correspond to anything in this actual Cosmos? What is the physical correlate of the interval? How is space-time constructed? What is its relationship to observers? See my analysis in Physess2000.htm.

> The experimental situation is well known. Suppose to think, in an inertial frame in M (or from the point of view of an inertial observer w , or, better, of a field of them, as we shall see in the next section), of an "observer" a placed on the border of a circular platform P (let us call it C, and R its radius - of course with respect to - from now on: "wrt" - w ), and suppose that a sends two light’s rays along C, in the two opposite directions.

The issue in the Sagnac effect is that it exposes the existence of a real inertial and optical frame in this Cosmos! You are, however, playing the Relativists' "frame game". They posit whatever imaginary "frame" they need to make their nonsensical system work. Why play this game with them.? Expose it for what it is and insist instead on talking about actual motion in the physical space of this Cosmos! Your thought experiment relies upon an actually existing ether in which rotation has the known physical effects. If real space in this real Cosmos were NOthing, as Relativity presumes, then no rotation should have any physical or optical effect for the observer in the rotating frame--and yet it does. This is a clear contradiction of Relativity by the evidence--a "paradox" as modern anti-philosophical man prefers to say. Do you realize that the older Einstein admitted that this ether existed? What does that say of all his work with SR in which he declared the ether superfluous? Relativity is contradiction and confusion piled upon one another until no one has the slightest idea what they're doing.

> Then, it must be clear that we cannot introduce any conception of "light’s speed" with respect just to a single observer. First of all, we need an observer field, namely a future-pointing unit (which really means -1) vector field X, whose integral curves would become "observers" (coordinatized by a proper time), according to the previous definition6.

Why must we do physics with all this ridiculously complex observer-centered mental gymnastics? See my explanation.

> For this same reason, it appears even hopeless try to persuade relativistic physicists to give up the theory, just pointing out at small "anti-relativistic" effects which can be found (or have already been found) in experiments performed in a terrestrial laboratory: these could always be ascribed to the Earth’s diurnal rotation, or to some other non-inertial feature of the aforesaid system10!

They can get away with philosophical murder because no one has stopped them so far. Their "theory" is philosophically flawed from its foundations. It contradicts Cosmic reality. They can therefore apply any fixes or rules-of-thumb that they need to "fit" almost any experimental result. Again notice Relativity's similarity to the observer-based Ptolemaic Cosmology. The Relativists just keep adding an epicycle here, a deferent there, etc.

> Remark 6 Both principles never assert that all observers are in all sense "equivalent": there will always be, either in SR or in GR, "privileged" observers and coordinate systems, in which "physical laws" have a "simpler" mathematical expression, and physical phenomenology can be much more easily describable

And what did it mean when mankind found that the Copernican description of our solar system is much simpler than the Ptolemaic? Should we not accept now, as we did then, that the simpler description actually resembles reality more closely than the ridiculously complex? Do the Copernican and Ptolemaic systems have the same truth status as long as one can mathematically transform one into the other? NO. Do Relativity and the aether theory I've presented have the same truth status as long as one can mathematically transform one into the other. NO.

> 5 - The "Principle of (Special) Relativity" and the "twins paradox"

The simple solution of this "riddle" is that the "postulate of relativity", either special or general, does not state that presumed complete symmetry between the two clocks14. The misunderstanding is rooted in the belief that, if a moves away from w and then re-unites, then, from a ’s point of view, it is w instead the one which movea, and then re-unites, exactly in the same symmetric way. This is not true, because of the very different paths which the two observers are travelling in space-time: one is geodesic, the other definitively not15.

You are making a simple philosophical error. I ask again you, what is the usefulness or meaning-status of Relativity if all motion is NOT merely relative? If every trajectory is a unique path through physical space, then Relativity is superfluous. Indeed, Einstein asserted, in his presentation of Relativity, that there was no such thing as an independent trajectory, but only a trajectory relative to any chosen observer or arbitrary frame of reference. Yet you say that every trajectory is a unique path in "space-time". And I ask again, What is space-time? How is it constructed? I find that space-time is composed of intervals that observers measure among "events" using the premise that light travels at c relative to themselves (nonsense), and that their own clocks are in no way affected by any motion in any real Cosmos (nonsense). Are you ready to assert that space-time is a realistic and appropriate description of physical space in this Cosmos?

> In conclusion, if the time dilation is a real natural phenomenon, then "classical physicists" must find a way to explain it (perhaps an effect of an absolute velocity wrt to the aether?!), but they should stop to believe that the twins paradox have an antinomic value inside SR.

See my simple physical explanation of "time-dilation"at my website (listed in the e-mail).

> But is it really true, as he affirmed in the first lines of his 1905 paper, that electromagnetic phenomenology is not affected by uniform motions?

Of course not. Atomic frequencies are EM phenomena, and they are affected by uniform motion in physical space, as countless experiments with moving atoms do show.

> 1 As it is well known, the conviction that an uniform motion does not affect any "physical phenomenology" was already perfectly exposed by Galileo in his celebrated "ship’s argument", but we can find the same conviction (using moreover the same argument!) in Giordano Bruno, Johannes Rheticus, Nicholas Krebs,... and even in ancient science (Lucretius, Seneca,...). But does this principle really express some essential "natural truth", or is it just a theoretical expedient, which was brushed up during the great debate about the Copernican system, in order to give some reason for the unperceived Earth’s motion? This historical utilization has still today psychological influence ("Eppur si muove"), for instance in the interpretation of the famous Michelson-Morley or Trouton-Noble experiments, which tried to look at the elusive "absolute velocity" of a terrestrial laboratory. Could one say instead: "Eppur non si muove"?! On the contrary, this principle very likely holds just approximately in Mechanics, and its extension to optical and electromagnetic phenomena appears the more arbitrary the less it is supported by suitable direct experimental evidence.

You are correct. It is only a ballistic principle that applies only to low-velocity uniform motion. The existence of a unique velocity for light, and of a limiting velocity for particles makes the principle of relativity inapplicable to EM phenomena or near-luminal ballistic phenomena. Subjectivism works only in a very limited sphere.

> 10 As for that matter, according to SR, even the fact that the Earth is not inertial in its motion around the Sun, should indeed be experimentally detected! (and in fact it is so, see the next section 7, concerning aberration).

The motion of the Earth about the Sun IS inertial. Orbital motion is free-fall motion. All free-fall or natural motion is inertial. Every object in natural motion in this Cosmos is in free-fall toward some matter. Therefore, all matter is accelerating relative to all other matter which doesn't share its exact free-fall trajectory. How does Relativity deal with that?

> 27 "Esperimenti di ottica classica ed etere - Experiments of classical optics and aether", Scientia, Vol. 111, 1976, pp. 667-673. By kind courtesy of Prof. G. Cavalleri, we hereafter quote this remark: "However, Stokes aether is unable of explaining the transversal property of electromagnetic waves. On the contrary, Stokes-Planck compressible aether would imply the existence of longitudinal electromagnetic waves. That is why we can exclude the theory of an irrotational, compressible aether, as said at the end of the previous reference".

Do not believe anyone's proclamations about what space may or may not be. The phenomena must dictate to us what space is; not our own speculations based on the ponderable materials with which we are familiar. The phenomena lead me to postulate that the aether is compressible and can support longitudinal waves--these correspond to neutrinos (high freq.) and gravity waves (low freq.). At the same time, this same aether can transmit transverse EM waves like an extremely rigid elastic solid. That's the way it appears. There is no contradiction since EM is a different phenomenon altogether--it may be that space can support both hydrodynamic motion and compression and at the same time react to EM motions like an elastic solid.

* * * * *

Dear Lindner,

here I am at last with my comments to your mail of 17th Apr. I am sorry for my great delay, but, besides many others things to do, I was slower than I wished in settling the question raised by Percival about the twin paradox (you could see this discussion in my web site, at the point 4 of the page on Foundations of Physics).

From now on I shall concentrate myself on the project of book "Putting SR to test", and I shall let you know as soon as possible how this matter will go on (the problem is that I did not receive many contributions, I shall see what will be the editor's opinion).

Now I shall examine your objections, but first of all let me say that I appreciated very much your comments, and that in the whole I agree with most of them, we share the same approach to the problem of space's physical nature.

> The Copernican and Newtonian metaphysics did deanthropocentrize natural philosophy. But the strain of modern philosophy involving Berkeley, Hume, Kant, Mach, Einstein, Heisenberg, and Bohr produced just the opposite effect ... Metaphysically, SR is completely anthropocentric!

In some sense I agree with you, but let me try to show how there is perhaps a terminological "ambiguity", since one could have rightly introduced IN THE SAME TIME both the two opposite terms: "deanthropocentrization" and "anthropocentrization", or "subjectivism". Of course the following analysis is not in agreement with the point I shall discuss immediately after, which shows that you probably think that these two lines are instead irrimediably conflicting.

Well, in my philosophical conception, any Weltanschauung can be split in TWO parts, one referring to the image of the physical world, or Weltbild (investigated by the "philosophia naturalis"), the other one referring to the "metaphysics" (which does include "ethics"). The connections between the two are not so straightforward - exactly as the connections between metaphysics in general and ethics, which nevertheless DO exist (David Hume's prohibition to derive implications on the "duty" from the ontology, from the "being", notwithstanding) - but of course there are connections. The old "sacred conception" of the Cosmos (including man) had at its foundation a "sacred image" of Nature, a "geographia sacra", an "astronomia sacra", and so on. All this was upset, first after Colombus's explorations, and then by Copernican revolution (two historical events which were in my opinion strictly connected - unfortunately, I did write about this subject mostly in Italian, but in my web site you could find even a French paper about this question). This "natural philosophy revolution" HAD indeed effects - it could have not been otherwise - on the metaphysical system which was founded on the old conceptions of universe; one cannot speak of a simple "falsification" in a naive popperian sense, but one can speak of a "discredited metaphysics" (but, the scientific revolution notwithstanding, this metaphysics is still alive today). This is what I call the "deanthropocentrization process", which found its climax with Darwin's revolution (man was not anymore at the centre even of the biological domain). It seems to me that further developments of natural philosophy were all on THIS SAME DIRECTION, since relativity pretends that man's ordinary mind categories are not adequated for describing space-time's nature, and quantum mechanics goes even further in this direction, and so on, till the modern "conjecture" that modern search for artificial intelligence could reproduce human thought (Turing paradox), and the belief that biologists could CREATE life in laboratory from inanimate matter. This is what I call in the whole the deanthropocentrization trend in physical sciences, and this seems to me correct, I do not see any substantial difference between pre-Darwin world image, and modern world image. But one could even introduce the term anthropocentrization in order to describe this same philosophycal itinerary, since it is quite obvious that the more man is removed from Cosmos (and God), the more his ethics is FREE from any subordination to any external, objective, "moral law". That's why, in my opinion, in parallel with the deanthropocentrization of natural philosophy (of the Weltbild), it grew up an anthropocentrization of ethics; one could even say that the two "terms" are connected by an inverse proportion law. That's why one could as well use one term, or the opposite, in order to describe "modernity". What you correctly point out, is that the "interpretation" of contemporary Physics has chosen "subjectivity" (in the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics this is rather evident), which is in my opinion a "consequence" of the success of the modern subjective ethics; but from a rigorous "metaphysical" point of view, I still believe that it is better to describe relativity as belonging to the deanthropocentrizing side, exactly as copernican revolution. That is to say, I still believe that it would have been disturbing "modern philosophy" if man’s ordinary categories of space and time, which could have been "produced" only by evolution, would have shown themselves useful for a deep understanding of the universe's structure. How this could have been indeed possible, if man as just a product of "chance", emerging from casual spontaneous evolution of matter, from the indifferent darkness of the Universe (Jacques Monod)?

> a pernicious ideology designed to save Christianity from the threat of natural philosophy.

Here I cannot understand: an understandable universe, like for instance yours!, is much more on the side of Christianity, and, as for that matter, of any "sacred conception of man", than any ununderstandable universe, like Einstein's one. In what sense relativity and quantum mechanics (in its common interpretation) could "save" Christianity? After all, most of the physicists we are talking about were Jewish, and it would have been very funny if most of their work was aimed to save Christianity! You are right when you point out the influence of Berkeley's thought, but one must not forget that: first, relativity, as quantum mechanics, is not entirely subjective (see next part of my answer); second, it is well possible to put in a philosophical systems "fragments" which come from other different systems, yet the differences between the old system and the new one (both in content than in purpose) remain well alive.

Let me conclude this point adding that, even if Spinoza could be said in some sense a philosopher riding in the "wrong path", yet he made an interesting claim, when he asserted that "Ordo et connectio idearum idem est ac ordo et connectio rerum" ("Ethica...", Part II, Prop. 7). This is an "image of a man" well "adapted" to the Cosmos, like Descartes's man...

One could perhaps add one more thing, pointing out how perhaps your objection could be convenient if referred to a "change of strategy" in the "desacralization process" (perhaps this word is more convenient) which built the modern scientific Weltanschauung. In order to achieve his aim, the reductionistic natural philosophy tried first to make man subject to deterministic LAWS as the whole Nature seemed to be (the concept of physical "law" is extraneous to many cultures, like for instance the Chinese one). When this attempt failed, then this SAME philosophy tried to show how all Nature's laws are, on the contrary, indeterministic (this explains in my opinion the actual emphasis on chaotic systems, fractals, and so on), since in this physical "indeterminism" there is enough space in order to give an answer to the (well experienced by each human being!) phenomenon of the human conscience freedom (free will). Descartes's dualism between two real sides of the "being", res extensa and res cogitans, offered a solution of this same problem quite more convincing...

> If real space in this real Cosmos were Nothing, as Relativity presumes, then no rotation should have any physical or optical effect for the observer in the rotating frame--and yet it does. This is a clear contradiction of Relativity...

You are completely right, this is one of the worst features of the Minkowski space-time. It has not a good "physical definition", yet it does work as a mathematical MODEL (unfortunately, the "contradiction" you correctly remark is neither mathematical, nor physical; it just shows how the relativistic "solution" is unsatisfactory from a "philosophical" point of view). Since the very beginning Einstein assumed that the "old" mechanical discrimination between inertial observers and accelerated observers was meaningful even in "empty" space. This was Newton's heritage, and that's why I think that if one whishes to recover rationality in Physics, then he must go back to Descartes, and settle in a different way the old Descartes-Newton dispute about the nature of the space.

> What is your definition of space-time? What is it? How does it correspond to anything in this actual Cosmos?...

I agree completely once again with you. It is very irritating for me that it is so difficult to defeat such an "irrationalistic" (abstract) approach to Physics (which lasts since one century), mostly inspired by formalistic (nichilistic) approach to Mathematics choosen by Goettingen mathematicians (Hilbert & C.).

I suppose that my previous comments answer to these questions too. I just used the relativistic mathematical model of space-time in order to show how a relativistic physicist would face some problems, and confute come objections; but this does not mean that I am able to "give sense" to a construction which cannot have any "ordinary" sense, but for a mathematical abstract one. Since I am a mathematician, I understand well what one does mean as a manifold, or a path in this manifold, just a 1-dimensional submanifold of the larger manifold, and it is NOT necessary to have a (local) coordinate system in the manifold. So I would say that you are wrong asserting that: "there was no such thing as an independent trajectory [in relativity], but only a trajectory relative to any chosen observer or arbitrary frame of reference": I believe that this statement is not true (we are talking of relativity, NOT of quantum mechanics). A given trajectory has different mathematical representations in different coordinate systems, yet it is something absolute, independent on those representations, and then, at the end, on the observers. This is in some sense connected to the philosophical issue discussed before: it is not true that in relativity there are not absolute physical entities, it is not true that the theory is ENTIRELY subjective.

> Do you realize that the older Einstein admitted that this ether existed? What does that say of all his work with SR in which he declared the ether superfluous?

I know that very well, there is even a book of my good friend Ludwik Kostro (a Polish phyisicist) dedicated to this argument: "Einstein and the Ether". If you wish, you can contact the author at: fizlk@univ.gda.pl . The fact that the ether exists, but it does not "show" itself in optics and in electromagnetism, is another one of those unpleasant "irrationalities" of contemporary physics we were complaining above.

> They can therefore apply any fixes or rules-of-thumb that they need to "fit" almost any experimental result ... The Relativists just keep adding an epicycle here, a deferent there...

You are quite right, a theory can be "defended" for a long time in the way you point out, but at last it does collapse, as it did the Ptolemaic theory, when people become tired to do too many such "ad hoc" corrections. I hope that somebody will be able to find some experiment whose outcome would really put in trouble the Relativists, which would give up, instead of adding another epicycle.

> Do the Copernican and Ptolemaic systems have the same truth status as long as one can mathematically transform one into the other? NO. Do Relativity and the aether theory I've presented have the same truth status as long as one can mathematically transform one into the other. NO.

I do agree, it is just the pernicious "Goettingen philosophy" which does not allow to "distinguish" between isomorphic models. But let me add that I do not believe that in Physics one can have completely isomorphic models; there will be always some significative difference somewhere, the only one problem is to understand where to look for them.

> Are you ready to assert that space-time is a realistic and appropriate description of physical space in this Cosmos?

Of course NOT.

> Atomic frequencies are EM phenomena, and they are affected by uniform motion in physical space, as countless experiments with moving atoms do show.

I agree, the problem is that physicists believe today that these are "symmetric" effects, namely, that their outcome would have been identical, if the clock, the particle, was standing, and the observer was moving. Of course, these "inverse" experiments have never been performed (one for all, I remember the inverse Rowland experiment); so it is still possible to show that these effects are not symmetric, but it seems difficult to do it in practice.

> See my simple physical explanation of "time-dilation" at my website (listed in the e-mail).

Where is it exactly? Anyway I printed all your text, and I shall read it (with my usual slowness). I proposed another possible one (just concerning the mean life of speedy particles) with a "moving cup" model, see point 4/ter in the quoted web page on the Foundations of Physics. I know of another one, put forward by G. Cavalleri, which is even written somewhere in one of my papers, I do not remember anymore which! The phenomenon is ascribed to a "frequency shift" when a particle, which is thought of as an "aether monad" turning around a centre (radius R, speed c, omega = angular speed = c/R, period T = 2pi/omega = 2pi*R/c), moves through the aether with some (absolute) speed v (this is the speed of the centre!). Now the frequency nu' of the moving particle, which must still rotate with speed c, becomes, from nu = 1/T = c/(2pi*R), equal to nu' = nu*sqr(1-beta^2), which corresponds exactly to the relativistic time dilation formula. As a matter of fact, from the identity omega'^2*R^2 + v^2 = c^2, one gets:

omega'^2 = (c^2 - v^2)/R^2 = omega^2 - omega^2*beta^2 .

> The motion of the Earth about the Sun IS inertial. Orbital motion is free-fall motion. All free-fall or natural motion is inertial. Every object in natural motion in this Cosmos is in free-fall toward some matter.

I am afraid that you are quite right, and that I was terribly wrong. I shall correct this point, but the fact is that until now I was not able to really understand the full meaning of the equivalence principle. For instance, the light's speed is not isotropic for an accelerated observer in flat Minkowski space-time, yet this observer can be thought of as a freely falling observer in a curved space-time, where light's speed IS isotropic, there are for me troubles of understanding and applications.

> Do not believe anyone's proclamations about what space may or may not be. The phenomena must dictate to us what space is; not our own speculations based on the ponderable materials with which we are familiar.

Of course you are right, yet the conception of the space should at last (or at least I hope so!) be a rational conception, with no contradictory features...

> The phenomena lead me to postulate that the aether is compressible and can support longitudinal waves--these correspond to neutrinos (high freq.) and gravity waves (low freq.).

Of course to prove that would be of the greatest importance...

Best regards, from yours most sincerely

Umberto Bartocci