Lorentz Transformation as a 'Complementary Time-Dependent Coordinate Transformation'. The Physical Foundation of Einstein' Special Relativity

A.C.V. Ceapa

REVIEW

Lorentz Transformation as a 'Complementary Time-Dependent Coordinate Transformation'. The Physical Foundation of Einstein' Special Relativity

A.C.V. Ceapa

General Physics · Submitted 2 Mar 2006 · 35 references

Pith's verdict: A careful but circular geometric derivation of the standard Lorentz transformation; the central claim that length contraction and time dilation are non-physical is unsupported because the derivation loads in absolute rest/time and an extra equation that actually produces the Lorentz form.

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CitationA.C.V. Ceapa. "Lorentz Transformation as a 'Complementary Time-Dependent Coordinate Transformation'. The Physical Foundation of Einstein' Special Relativity." arXiv:physics/0603015 (2006). https://pith.science/paper/VT6J4N5V

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Claim paper

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Editor's note

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Colleague,

If you only skim one fringe relativity paper this year, this is a good candidate—not because the physics works, but because the author is unusually explicit about his assumptions. The paper derives the Lorentz transformation from a geometric construction where light signals trace radius vectors in an inertial space. The diagrams are worked through carefully, the algebra is straightforward, and the author acknowledges from Section 2 that he is assuming absolute rest, absolute motion, and absolute time. He also engages honestly with Einstein's original 1905 derivation, which gives a useful historical perspective. The vector LT and group properties in the appendices are real derivations, even if they are not new.

That said, the central argument does not hold. The derivation is circular: the assumed absolute rest/time are chosen precisely because they produce the Lorentz transformation, and then the author says in Section 4 that the result 'validates our assumed concepts.' That is not a validation; it is a tautology.

The stress-test note you sent me is exactly right. In Section 4 the paper admits it needs an 'additional equation' to break the equivalence of the first and fourth equations in (15). That extra relation is not derived from light-signal tracing; it is imported, and it is what introduces the time-space mixing that makes the equations look Lorentzian. Without that inserted equation, the system does not define a coordinate transformation on arbitrary events—it just picks out light-catching trajectories. So the claimed operational derivation is not operational at all; a non-operational, non-derived equation is doing the load-bearing work.

The paper also overclaims badly. The conclusions that length contraction and time dilation are 'not true' ignore well-documented experiments such as Hafele–Keating and particle lifetime measurements. The author waves these away with passing references and an unsupported appeal to 'relativistic mass as internal coupling constant.' The sections on revelation, subquantum structure, and radically new technologies are outside the scope of scientific derivation and can be safely ignored, but they are also a sign that the manuscript is not self-critical enough.

Who should read this? Historians or philosophers of physics might find the operational reinterpretation worth a footnote, and the author's reading of Einstein's 1905 decision sequence is interesting. But as a physics paper the central claim fails. It does not deserve a serious referee in a mainstream journal; a desk rejection is appropriate. If a foundations-of-physics venue wants to document the circularity, a referee could do so quickly.

My recommendation: do not cite it, do not bring it to a reading group. It is a well-meaning but logically flawed argument, and the external evidence contradicts its main conclusion.

Referee report

Significance

If the central claims were established, the paper would offer a substantial reinterpretation of special relativity: absolute rest and absolute time would be reinstated, operational meaning would be assigned to the LT, and the standard interpretation of length contraction and time dilation would be rejected. The paper is transparent about its starting assumptions and it makes a genuine effort to connect Einstein's 1905 mathematical steps to a concrete light-signal tracing construction; the appendices on vector LTs and group properties also represent a nontrivial attempt at internal mathematical consistency. However, the derivation is not an independent operational deduction: the decisive Lorentz form is inserted through an additional relation, and the stated assumptions of absolute time and absolute rest are used to validate themselves. No new experimentally discriminable prediction is offered. The central physical claims therefore rest on circular reasoning and on unsubstantiated interpretational assertions rather than on evidence or on a derivation that is free of the conclusions it purports to establish.

Major objections (4)

[Section 2 and Section 4] The derivation begins by asserting absolute rest, absolute motion, absolute speed, and absolute time ('identical clocks running at the same rate, independently of their speed'). Section 4 then states that the resulting CT 'validates our assumed concepts.' This is circular in a load-bearing way: the absolute-time foliation and the CSAR construction are chosen so as to generate the Lorentz form, and the agreement of the resulting transformation with the standard LT is then offered as evidence for those same assumptions. The paper does not provide any independent test or measurement that could validate the assumed absolute rest frame or absolute simultaneity.
[Section 4, Eqs. (15) and the 'additional equation'] The step from the light-signal tracing equations to the standard LT is not produced by the tracing geometry. The paper explicitly says that 'with the additional equation ..., Eqs. (15) ... represent the standard LT like a CT.' This additional equation is introduced to break the equivalence between the first and fourth of Eqs. (15), and Section 5 identifies it with Einstein's velocity-addition relation. That relation is imported from outside the operational tracing construction; it is the source of the time-space mixing characteristic of the LT. Consequently, the claim that the CT obtained for light signals is identical to the standard LT is not an operational derivation of the LT but rather a construction that assumes the velocity-addition law it needs to derive.
[Section 2.2.1, Eqs. (4)-(9)] The proposed determination of absolute speeds treats the one-way travel times t1 and t2 as directly measurable quantities. One-way light travel times are not measurable without a clock-synchronization convention; the convention used here is supplied by the Section 2 assumption that identical clocks run at the same rate independently of their speed. Therefore the 'experiment' does not provide an operationally independent measurement of absolute speed; it measures a quantity defined relative to an assumed absolute-time foliation. The claim that this result contradicts Einstein's statement on the non-existence of absolute motion thus relies on the very assumption that the experiment is supposed to establish.
[Section 4 and Conclusion 3] The assertion that the LT 'predicts neither physical length contraction nor physical time dilation' is not derived from a comparison with experiment; it is a consequence of the decision to interpret x' and tau as Cartesian coordinate and Newtonian time relative to a CSAR. No independent observable is proposed that would distinguish this interpretation from the standard relativistic one. The further claim that increased particle lifetimes originate in 'relativistic mass as internal coupling constant' is referenced to the author's prior work [8] but is not substantiated in this manuscript. These statements are therefore interpretational and unsupported, not predictions of the derivation.

Minor objections (4)

[Throughout] The manuscript contains numerous typographical errors and garbled phrases, such as 'sapace', 'couldnot', 'keept', 'paswords', and 'choise', which substantially impede readability and should be corrected in any revision.
[Figures and equations] The diagrams (Figs. 1-11) are hand-drawn and many labels are barely legible or undefined; in several places the extracted equations contain missing symbols or unclear notation (e.g., around Eqs. (15) and in Appendix 2). The reader cannot easily verify the geometric arguments without a careful reconstruction of the figure conventions.
[Appendix 3 and Appendix 4] The extensive discussion of 'revelation' in the act of science, including the claim that Einstein's derivation was 'revealed' and the characterization of other physicists as 'magicians', is not supported by the technical derivation and is not appropriate for a physics research paper. If this material is retained, it would need to be moved to a clearly identified philosophical or historical forum.
[References] Several load-bearing sources are self-published, inaccessible, or not peer-reviewed (e.g., [8], [10], [13], and parts of [16]-[17]); claims about subquantum structure, the reliability of airborne clock tests, and the absence of Thomas precession are asserted with little detail in the present text.

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The paper

The paper claims

The paper claims that the Lorentz transformation is a light-tracing coordinate transformation that entails no physical length contraction or time dilation and that validates the original 1905 derivation.

The reading

The paper tries to establish that the Lorentz transformation, the equation that carries special relativity, is a member of a class of 'complementary time-dependent coordinate transformations' obtained by tracing the position of a moving point with light signals. Carrying out that tracing under the paper's assumptions yields the standard Lorentz transformation, and the paper argues that this is the same construction underlying the original 1905 derivation, whose seemingly arbitrary equation manipulations are thereby shown to be correct. On this reading the transformation is an operational bookkeeping device: the moving-frame quantities remain ordinary coordinates and ordinary time, so the theory predicts neither physical length contraction nor physical time dilation. The reader should care because the claim relocates the meaning of special relativity while leaving its equations intact: space-time becomes a notation rather than a physical entity, and the empirical content shifts to signal measurement.

What carries the argument

The load-bearing mechanism is the 'complementary time-dependent coordinate transformation', a coordinate transformation built by projecting onto coordinate axes the radius vectors of points traced by physical signals, together with the 'graphical addition of travel times as scalar quantities'. To construct it, the paper introduces an abstract coordinate system at absolute rest, whose axes are not tied to any physical body, and lets a light signal trace the radius vector of a moving point. The relevant path segments are then placed on a time-axis, and the Pythagorean theorem expresses them all through the travel time of a single light signal, so that the moving-frame coordinate emerges as an ordinary coordinate and $\tau$ as ordinary time. An added equation breaks the equivalence between the coordinate equation and the time equation, turning the set into the standard Lorentz transformation; replacing the light speed $c$ by any signal speed $\upsilon$ gives the general form of the class.

Extended reading notes

Core claim

The central claim is that the Lorentz transformation can be derived, not postulated, by tracing radius vectors with light signals. The paper sets up an abstract coordinate system at absolute rest, lets a light signal trace the radius vector of a fixed point in a moving inertial frame, and then projects that vector onto the coordinate axes. Adding travel times as scalar quantities through a Pythagorean construction turns the geometric relations into a time equation in which the moving-frame coordinate is an ordinary coordinate and $\tau$ is ordinary time; the resulting transformation is identical to the standard Lorentz transformation. Because of that identification, the paper concludes that the Lorentz transformation is a complementary time-dependent coordinate transformation, that it validates the principle of the physical determination of equations, and that it predicts neither physical length contraction nor physical time dilation.

Load-bearing premise

The derivation's foundation is the assumption of a frame of absolute rest and a single absolute time, with identical clocks running at the same rate regardless of speed; if no such frame and time exist, the operational derivation does not get off the ground.

Editorial extensions

If this is right

The same Lorentz transformation used throughout special relativity is obtained from operational light-signal tracing, so the equations do not by themselves require reading relativity as evidence of physical rod contraction or clock slowing.
If physical time dilation is rejected, the longer lifetimes of fast-moving particles must be traced to internal coupling rather than to a clock effect, as the paper states in Section 4.
The four-dimensional space-time of relativistic theory is operational notation, ordinary space plus ordinary time, and therefore is not itself a causal physical entity.
The reconstruction supplies the missing physical rationale for the three equation manipulations in the original 1905 derivation, thereby validating the principle that every term in a physical theory's equations should carry explicit physical meaning.
Because the class of transformations is fixed by the tracing signal's speed, replacing the light speed by a different signal speed yields a general family of coordinate transformations applicable to other operational settings.

Reading between the lines

Editorial extensions of the paper, not claims the author makes directly.

(Ours) The paper's absolute-speed measurement protocol is directly testable: two-way light travel times measured over a range of orientations should show a direction-dependent maximum marking the observer's absolute speed, and a null result at the predicted $v^2/c^2$ level would remove the derivation's foundation.
(Ours) If time dilation is not physical, modern atomic-clock and particle-lifetime experiments, usually read as direct evidence for time dilation, require a different explanation; the paper cites an early challenge to airborne-clock tests but does not engage the full modern data set, so that confrontation is a natural next test.
(Ours) The group-theoretic claim for non-collinear transformations can be checked independently: writing the composition law from the paper's vector transformations and verifying closure and associativity without rotations would separate the operational geometry from the interpretive claims surrounding it.

Original abstract

We here deduce Lorentz transformation (LT) as a member of a class of time-dependent coordinate transformations, complementary to those already known as spatial translations and rotations. This exercise validates the principle of physical determination of equations within special relativity theory (SRT), in accordance with the derivation of the LT in Einstein's original paper on relativity. This validation is possible because our LT deduction also discloses the real physics warranting Einstein's manipulations of several equations in that paper, thus proving the correctness of his derivation of the LT. The essential role of the revelation in the act of science then results. Far from being an arbitrary dogmatic construction, SRT appears to be a revealed dogmatic theory that can be turned into a truly physical one like operational theory. Radically new technological applications of relativistic quantum theory then results.

The compiled record

The paper's own sentences, arranged, kept beside the review and separate from it. Each label is drawn from a closed vocabulary; the number beside it is the probability the classifier gave that label. Numbers in the tables are the authors', checked by code. No sentence in this record was written by a model.

Compiled by classifier-1.13.0 via TypeSafe API, question bank abstract-p1-20260923, 2026-09-23: 1 request, 4,920 input tokens.

What the abstract itself states, as probabilities: claims first 0.08 · states limitation 0.06 · human participants 0.03 · controlled comparison 0.02 · randomized assignment 0.01 · states quantitative result 0.02 · compares with prior results 0.59 · mentions code or data availability 0.02.

The abstract, sentence by sentence

arXiv listing abstract v2. Results and the main claim are underlined; show every role.

We here deduce Lorentz transformation (LT) as a member of a class of time-dependent coordinate transformations, complementary to those already known as spatial translations and rotations. This exercise validates the principle of physical determination of equations within special relativity theory (SRT), in accordance with the derivation of the LT in Einstein's original paper on relativity. This validation is possible because our LT deduction also discloses the real physics warranting Einstein's manipulations of several equations in that paper, thus proving the correctness of his derivation of the LT. The essential role of the revelation in the act of science then results. Far from being an arbitrary dogmatic construction, SRT appears to be a revealed dogmatic theory that can be turned into a truly physical one like operational theory. Radically new technological applications of relativistic quantum theory then results.

background contribution method result interpretation main claim

What the classifier reports for each sentence. The number is the probability it gave the label.
#	sentence	role	the authors' own work	states the main conclusion	strength
s0	We here deduce Lorentz transformation (LT) as a member of a class of time-dependent coordinate transformations, complementary to those already known as spatial translations and rotations.	contribution 0.92	0.94	0.57	asserted 1.00
s1	This exercise validates the principle of physical determination of equations within special relativity theory (SRT), in accordance with the derivation of the LT in Einstein's original paper on relativity.	interpretation 0.66	0.73	0.18	asserted 0.99
s2	This validation is possible because our LT deduction also discloses the real physics warranting Einstein's manipulations of several equations in that paper, thus proving the correctness of his derivation of the LT.	interpretation 0.78	0.85	0.39	asserted 0.99
s3	The essential role of the revelation in the act of science then results.	interpretation 1.00	0.17	0.09	asserted 0.77
s4	Far from being an arbitrary dogmatic construction, SRT appears to be a revealed dogmatic theory that can be turned into a truly physical one like operational theory.	interpretation 0.99	0.22	0.37	asserted 0.94
s5	Radically new technological applications of relativistic quantum theory then results.	interpretation 0.64	0.19	0.14	asserted 0.95

What kind of paper the classifier reports this is: theoretical result 0.95 · evidence from proof or derivation 0.99.

What was examined, and what was not

sources read

arXiv listing abstract v2

not examined

full text
figures and tables
references and citing sentences
relations to other papers

levels run

P abstract

not run

S sections
T body sentences
C citations
R cross-paper relations

Every quoted sentence on this record is the authors'. Every label is from Pith's closed vocabulary, with the probability shown beside it. Every number in the measurements table is the authors', checked by code. Record as JSON

References

Works cited (35)

[8]

The operational derivation of the vector LT in Appendix 1 and the operational proof in Appendix 2A that the collinear LT’s form a group validate our operational method, while the operational proof in Appendix 2B that the non-collinear LT’s form a group, without requiring rotations of inertial CS’s [9] in this aim, validates the LT itself. The operational ...

View on Pith
[1]

The LT belongs to the class of CT’s for the first time defined in [16]. Unlike the ordinary time-dependent coordinate transformations, the LT can be written only when the radius vector of a geometrical point in an inertial space is physically traced by a light signal. The mixture of spatial coordinates and times in the LT, and the Minkowski space-time ori...

View on Pith
[2]

Abstract CSAR’s In the following subsections we give evidence for abstract CSAR’s associated to inertial CS’s ‘at rest’ and abstract CSAR’s that ‘professional’ inertial observers (professionals) associate to their own inertial CS’s. A ‘professional’ is an observer who is a priori trained to represent graphically both real and fictitious relative motions. ...

View on Pith
[3]

‘Graphical’ Addition of Travel Times Consider a sequence of collinear line segments OA1, A1A2,…, An-1An in empty space, and denote OAn =OA1+A1A2+…+An-1An. (10) Because the time in which a light signal travels any line segment is the difference between the times indicated by synchronous clocks located at its endpoints at the arrival of that signal [in our ...

View on Pith
[4]

The Standard LT as a CT: The General Form of the CT’s For Eqs. (15) to express a coordinate transformation, we must brake the equivalence of the first and the last of them. To this end, consider the Q’s (implicitly their projections P) in Fig. 6 to move relative to the CS k, which is also in uniform translatory motion relative to K. Identifying P with the...

View on Pith
[5]

Einstein’s Derivation of LT in [2]: The CSAR in Einstein’s SRT Einstein defined clocks working in synchrony at points O’, P ‘of space’ (see Sect. I.1 of [2]), i.e, at absolute rest, by the equation (16) where , and are, respectively, times associated to the emission/arrival of a light signal at O’, and its reflection at P. He deduced the LT in [2] in view...

View on Pith
[6]

The Physics Warranting Einstein’s Mathematical Decisions to Deduce the LT in [2] Since the diagrams in Fig. 7 are those in Fig. 4 shifted right by a distance , they predict, respectively, equations identical with Eqs. (4) to (7), with changed to , t1=τP-τ0, t2=τ’0-τP, and τ0, τP, τ’0 in Sect. 5. Therefore, by his first decision Einstein tacitly associated...

View on Pith
[7]

Operational Theories Physical theories embodying CT’s are operational theories. Physical quantities defined in CS’s moving uniformly and rectilinearly with respect to inertial observers depend on both time and spatial coordinates. So they are expressed relative to their CSAR’s by CT’s [16], [17]. The CT (19) K x ct O O'P(-x',x) kx' Figure 8. is obtained f...

View on Pith
[9]

Since by the graphical addition of travel times like scalar quantities and are Cartesian coordinates, and a Newtonian time, the LT predicts no true Fitzgerald-Lorentz contraction, as well as no true time dilation, thus the meaning of the Newtonian concepts of space and time is keept unaltered in SRT, in deep agreement with everyday experience and common s...

View on Pith
[10]

No operational theory embodying CT’s can challenge SRT. This because in SRT is also the speed of real and virtual photons implied in quantum and subquantum processes

View on Pith
[11]

The operational identification of the abstract CSAR in the SRT and of the terms in the LT as Cartesian coordinates and Newtonian time validates the classical principle of the physical determination of equations in SRT. Involving that and are energies of particles at absolute rest and moving with constant speed in relation to a CSAR (with only coinciding w...

View on Pith
[12]

All inertial observers are equal to one another in SRT, but, by enabling them to refer physical quantities measured in their RF’s to quantities defined in CSAR’s by LT, the SRT is a theory of the absolute, having nothing in common with the almighty misleading relativism governing the 20th and now 21st century. This conclusion is supported by limits that o...

View on Pith
[13]

(Sect. I.5) and iv) the CSAR plays an essential role in his theory but he consecrated a version of the light- speed principle in [2] (Sect. I.2) that saved his theory from the inconsistencies raised by the arbitrary removal of the CSAR. It is as if Einstein reconstituted by flashes in [2] a paper on the derivation of the LT as a CT that pre- existed in hi...

View on Pith 1940
[14]

A. Einstein, Out of my Later Years, pp. 53, 41, 40 (Wings Books, New York, Avenel, New Jersey, 1993)

View on Pith 1993
[15]

A. Einstein, “Zur Elektrodynamik bewegter korper”, Annalen der Physik 17, 891 (1905)

View on Pith 1905
[16]

A. Einstein, “Uber das Relativitatsprinzip und die aus demselben gezogene Folgerungen”, Jahrbuch der Radioaktivitat und Electronik 4, 411 (1907)

View on Pith 1907
[17]

J.A. Wheeler, Geometrodynamics (NY, Acad. Press, 1962)

View on Pith 1962
[18]

E. Taylor and J.A. Wheeler, Spacetime Physics (W.H. Freeman and Co, San Francisco, London, 1966)

View on Pith 1966
[19]

C.W. Misner, K.S. Thorne and J.A. Wheeler, Gravitation (W.H. Freeman and Co, San Francisco, London, 1973)

View on Pith 1973
[20]

S. Weinberg, “A Unified Physics by 2050?”, Sci. Am. 281, 68 (1999)

View on Pith 1999
[21]

A.C.V. Ceapa, Physical Grounds of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity; Roots of the Falsification of 20th Century Physics, 3rd ed., part III (Bucharest, l998, LC call No QC173.55.C43 1998 )

View on Pith 1998
[22]

L.H. Thomas, “The Kinematics of an Electron with an Axis”, Phil. Mag. (7), 3, 1 (1927)

View on Pith 1927
[23]

A.C.V. Ceapa, “Full Physical Derivation and Meaning of Lorentz transformation”, http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/9911067

View on Pith Pith review arXiv
[24]

A. Einstein, Out of my Later Years, p. 39 (Wings Books, New York, Avenel, New Jersey, 1993)

View on Pith 1993
[25]

J.C. Hafele and R.E. Keating, “About the World Atomic Clocks: Predicted Relativistic Time Gains”, Science 177, 166 (1972)

View on Pith 1972
[26]

A.G. Kelly, “Reliability of Relativistic Effect Tests on Airborne Clocks”, Monograph 3 (Institute Engineering Ireland, 1996 )

View on Pith 1996
[27]

D. Saa, “Frequent Errors in Special Relativity”, http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0506207

View on Pith Pith review arXiv
[28]

S.J. Prokhovnik, The Logic of Special Relativity, p. 89 (Cambridge University Press, l967)

View on Pith
[29]

A.C.V.Ceapa,“Coordinate Transformations Between Coordinate Systems in Relative Motion”, Phys. Essays 4, 60 (1991)

View on Pith 1991
[30]

A.C.V. Ceapa, “Relativistic Theories like Operational Theories”, in Abstracts of Contributed Papers. 12th Internatl. Conf. On General Relativity and Gravitation, p. 158 (Boulder, 1986)

View on Pith 1986
[31]

L.D. Landau and E.M. Lifshitz, The Classical Theory of Fields, Ch. 101 (Pergamon, N.Y., 1980)

View on Pith 1980
[32]

A.A. Ungar, “The Relativistic Velocity Composition Paradox and the Thomas Rotation”, Found. Phys. 19, 1385 (1989)

View on Pith 1989
[33]

T.E. Phipps, Jr., “Kinematics of a Rigid Rotor”, Lett. Nuovo Cim. 9, 467 (1974)

View on Pith 1974
[34]

S. Weinberg, Dreams of a Final Theory (Vintage Books, Random House, Inc., New York, 1994) p. 68

View on Pith 1994
[35]

Ibid., p. 67. 4 A. Ceapa and A.C.V. Ceapa stand in these references for one and the same author. 18

View on Pith

Discussion

Disagree with the review, or know something it missed? Leave a comment, highlight any passage above to comment on it, or challenge this review formally.

[1] [8]

The operational derivation of the vector LT in Appendix 1 and the operational proof in Appendix 2A that the collinear LT’s form a group validate our operational method, while the operational proof in Appendix 2B that the non-collinear LT’s form a group, without requiring rotations of inertial CS’s [9] in this aim, validates the LT itself. The operational ...

View on Pith

[2] [1]

The LT belongs to the class of CT’s for the first time defined in [16]. Unlike the ordinary time-dependent coordinate transformations, the LT can be written only when the radius vector of a geometrical point in an inertial space is physically traced by a light signal. The mixture of spatial coordinates and times in the LT, and the Minkowski space-time ori...

View on Pith

[3] [2]

Abstract CSAR’s In the following subsections we give evidence for abstract CSAR’s associated to inertial CS’s ‘at rest’ and abstract CSAR’s that ‘professional’ inertial observers (professionals) associate to their own inertial CS’s. A ‘professional’ is an observer who is a priori trained to represent graphically both real and fictitious relative motions. ...

View on Pith

[4] [3]

‘Graphical’ Addition of Travel Times Consider a sequence of collinear line segments OA1, A1A2,…, An-1An in empty space, and denote OAn =OA1+A1A2+…+An-1An. (10) Because the time in which a light signal travels any line segment is the difference between the times indicated by synchronous clocks located at its endpoints at the arrival of that signal [in our ...

View on Pith

[5] [4]

The Standard LT as a CT: The General Form of the CT’s For Eqs. (15) to express a coordinate transformation, we must brake the equivalence of the first and the last of them. To this end, consider the Q’s (implicitly their projections P) in Fig. 6 to move relative to the CS k, which is also in uniform translatory motion relative to K. Identifying P with the...

View on Pith

[6] [5]

Einstein’s Derivation of LT in [2]: The CSAR in Einstein’s SRT Einstein defined clocks working in synchrony at points O’, P ‘of space’ (see Sect. I.1 of [2]), i.e, at absolute rest, by the equation (16) where , and are, respectively, times associated to the emission/arrival of a light signal at O’, and its reflection at P. He deduced the LT in [2] in view...

View on Pith

[7] [6]

The Physics Warranting Einstein’s Mathematical Decisions to Deduce the LT in [2] Since the diagrams in Fig. 7 are those in Fig. 4 shifted right by a distance , they predict, respectively, equations identical with Eqs. (4) to (7), with changed to , t1=τP-τ0, t2=τ’0-τP, and τ0, τP, τ’0 in Sect. 5. Therefore, by his first decision Einstein tacitly associated...

View on Pith

[8] [7]

Operational Theories Physical theories embodying CT’s are operational theories. Physical quantities defined in CS’s moving uniformly and rectilinearly with respect to inertial observers depend on both time and spatial coordinates. So they are expressed relative to their CSAR’s by CT’s [16], [17]. The CT (19) K x ct O O'P(-x',x) kx' Figure 8. is obtained f...

View on Pith

[9] [9]

Since by the graphical addition of travel times like scalar quantities and are Cartesian coordinates, and a Newtonian time, the LT predicts no true Fitzgerald-Lorentz contraction, as well as no true time dilation, thus the meaning of the Newtonian concepts of space and time is keept unaltered in SRT, in deep agreement with everyday experience and common s...

View on Pith

[10] [10]

No operational theory embodying CT’s can challenge SRT. This because in SRT is also the speed of real and virtual photons implied in quantum and subquantum processes

View on Pith

[11] [11]

The operational identification of the abstract CSAR in the SRT and of the terms in the LT as Cartesian coordinates and Newtonian time validates the classical principle of the physical determination of equations in SRT. Involving that and are energies of particles at absolute rest and moving with constant speed in relation to a CSAR (with only coinciding w...

View on Pith

[12] [12]

All inertial observers are equal to one another in SRT, but, by enabling them to refer physical quantities measured in their RF’s to quantities defined in CSAR’s by LT, the SRT is a theory of the absolute, having nothing in common with the almighty misleading relativism governing the 20th and now 21st century. This conclusion is supported by limits that o...

View on Pith

[13] [13]

(Sect. I.5) and iv) the CSAR plays an essential role in his theory but he consecrated a version of the light- speed principle in [2] (Sect. I.2) that saved his theory from the inconsistencies raised by the arbitrary removal of the CSAR. It is as if Einstein reconstituted by flashes in [2] a paper on the derivation of the LT as a CT that pre- existed in hi...

View on Pith 1940

[14] [14]

A. Einstein, Out of my Later Years, pp. 53, 41, 40 (Wings Books, New York, Avenel, New Jersey, 1993)

View on Pith 1993

[15] [15]

A. Einstein, “Zur Elektrodynamik bewegter korper”, Annalen der Physik 17, 891 (1905)

View on Pith 1905

[16] [16]

A. Einstein, “Uber das Relativitatsprinzip und die aus demselben gezogene Folgerungen”, Jahrbuch der Radioaktivitat und Electronik 4, 411 (1907)

View on Pith 1907

[17] [17]

J.A. Wheeler, Geometrodynamics (NY, Acad. Press, 1962)

View on Pith 1962

[18] [18]

E. Taylor and J.A. Wheeler, Spacetime Physics (W.H. Freeman and Co, San Francisco, London, 1966)

View on Pith 1966

[19] [19]

C.W. Misner, K.S. Thorne and J.A. Wheeler, Gravitation (W.H. Freeman and Co, San Francisco, London, 1973)

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