Re: Anyone want copies of the "fake moonshot" story and pictures?

Straydog wrote:
On Fri, 4 Aug 2006, Smith Rhoade wrote:


"Thomas Bartkus" <thomasbartkus@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:- or
psychopathology!

What "experimental fact" could ever have been attached to Einstein's
relativity theories when he proposed them? None! It took a long time
before any of his relativity could be subject to that test.

\
Theories flow from observation and analysis of what has been observed. They
are then tested by experiment, or the acculation of supporting information.

I am not as certain as you are that there were no experimental facts
attached to Einstein's relativity theory. It is about 45 years since my
last physics course, but I distinctly recall that our "crazy" physics
professor painstakingly developed the energy-matter equation from the
Maxwell Boltzman? equation which he derived for us from analysis of
observable phenomena.

Maybe there is a physicist out there who can better answer your comment, but
I don't thnk the theory of relativity came de novo out of thin blue air and
imagination. There were observable "facts" that could only be explained in
a certain way. Remarkably, quite a lot was known about electricity,
magnetism, field-theory, atomic structure, radioactivity, etc., at about the
turn of the 19th-20th century.


There exist some anti-Einstein historians who have written materials (I
have seen one book, but did not read it) claiming that much of what
Einstein presented was actually presented previously and in parts by other
scientists. The one book that I saw had such a long list of references,
and references to the scientific literature at that, that I decided that
this was another controversy that I did not want to spend time on to
decide for myself whether to vote for Einstein or vote for the authors who
genearlly feel that Einstein "plagiarized" a lot of ideas and then
presented his package under his name as if he was responsible for all of
it without any help from anyone else.

I have not heard that, except for the part about him
maybe not giving credit that was due to his first wife.
Some of the results of the Special Theory were derived
what I think today we would call "phenomenologically"
but Einstien made sense of it from fundamental
arguments. He had some help with the math on the
General Theory, but I have not heard any claims that
anyone else had helped that much conceptually.

Now I'll admit recent scholarship has suggested he
was a poor husband and father, but AFAIK his stature
as a theoretical physicist is undiminished.


I have not looked at any of Einstein's original papers, but I hardly think
he could have written a paper with out having some items in a reference
list or bibliography and that items in that bibliography would have to
provide _some_ foundation for his papers.

I've read a couple, and they didn't have many references
but did have a few. Of course, back then the literature to
quote was not as extensive as today.


I seem to recall that there is a anti-Einstein FAQ that shows up on
news.ansers from time to time, if one of you guys more interested than me,
wants to take 4-5-6 minutes and Google on some choice key words.

In several areas of biology, my area of expertise, I know of examples in
the literature where the common knowledge may give credit to person X for
discovery Y, but a detailed search of the literature will actually show
person Z may have published an earlier work on discovery Y but not get the
credit because he published in a more obscure journal or person X knew how
to gang-bang the journals and make so much noise about discovery Y that
nobody bothers to check the earlier literature.

disclaimer: none of the above should be taken, in any way, as any kind of
diminution by me of Einstein or any of his works.


Cheers,
Russell

.

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