My purpose in this site is to provide convenient access to some of the older literature dealing with this subject.
For a comprehensive review and links to modern papers, I
recommend the following link:
What
is the experimental basis of Special Relativity?
Wikisource:Relativity is a large online resource of links to older literature, including many papers that Einstein was familiar with and heavily influenced him as he was groping towards the concepts expressed in his seminal 1905 papers.
One-Way Light Speed
Wolf et al. (2005) (external link)
Roberts (2006) (external link)
One of the earliest and most devastating critiques of Miller's
results. Thirring pointed out that Miller's results failed the simplest and most
basic criteria required for one to believe in a celestial origin for the
measured velocities, namely that the azimuth of supposed drift should show daily
variations consistent with the motion of of the source about the celestial pole.
Instead, 95 percent of Miller's observations showed an apparent drift pointing
towards the northwest quadrant of the compass.
Thirring (1926)
Guided by faulty theory, Miller drew theoretical best fits through his data points in bold lines that were much more prominent than the actual data. The effect was to draw the eye of the reader away from the fact that the theoretically computed lines tended to miss the data entirely. In the following link, I examine Miller's claim that the signals he detected showed constant phase when plotted against sidereal time, thus proving a celestial origin for the signals. The plots at first look rather convincing, until you realize that Miller's bold lines force your eye to look at his fanciful interpretation of the data, rather than the data itself. Erase Miller's fanciful fits, and the apparent constant phase vanishes.
Miller's data was so dirty, that he presented running averages of his data in his plots, rather than the data itself. The manner in which Miller computed his running averages introduced artifact, such as forcing the appearance of 24 hour periodicities in his running average curves when they in fact may have had none.
The pioneering demonstration that
SR/GR effects could (just barely) be measured on a commercial jet using vintage 1970's atomic clock technology, and then
only with
the aid of sophisticated statistical analysis (correlated rate change analysis)
Hafele and Keating (1972) (4 MB download.
Sorry for the size, I'll rescan later.)
Current atomic clocks are vastly
more stable than those available to Hafele and Keating,
and the observation of low speed relativistic effects is now completely routine.
Francis et al. (2002) (external link)
Project GRE2AT:
Photo Tour (external link)
Prior to 1914, the bulk of opinion was that Cepheid variables were a
form of eclipsing binary. By 1914, however, accumulating evidence indicated that there was
something drastically wrong with this interpretation. Shapley summarized the mounting evidence against the binary star hypothesis
in this seminal review.
Shapley (1914) (external link)
Crackpots who want to interpret Cepheid variables as binary
stars ignore a century of observations totally incompatible with the hypothesis,
including secular and random period changes
Szabados (1983)
(external link),
Doppler radial velocity measurements,
Johnson (2003) (external
link),
Newsam
(Physics 134 class handout, external link),
Doppler line broadening indicative of turbulence,
Yecko et al.
(1998) (external link),
Buchler and Kollach
(2000) (external link),
direct interferometric measurements of the stars' variable size
Vijh
(2003) (informal presentation, external link)
and so on and so forth.
The following paper, although quite legitimate, has been the
topic of an enormous amount
of crackpot debate. Basically, Wang et al. showed that under anomalous
dispersion
conditions, phase and group velocity of light is observed to be faster than c.
No violation of causality takes place, however, because "front
velocity" of the
light pulses is always less than c. Special relativity remains completely
intact.
Wang et al. (2000)
Quoted from Wikipedia: Although Einstein is credited with
finding the field equations, the
German mathematician David Hilbert published them before Einstein did. This has
resulted in not
a few accusations of plagiarism against Einstein, and assertions that the
field equations should be called the "Einstein-Hilbert field equations". However, Hilbert never
pressed a claim for priority, and recent research has shown that Einstein submitted the correct equations before
Hilbert amended his own work to include them. This suggests that Einstein developed the correct field
equations first, and that Hilbert
may have learned of it afterwards through his correspondence with Einstein.
Renn and Stachel (1999)
I might mention that during the years preceding 1916, Einstein published
extensively on his developing ideas towards an "allgemeinen Relativitätstheorie." From 1913 to 1915
alone, I count at least nine major
publications, as well as many letters and personal discussions with other
researchers, including Hilbert!
Gravitation was Einstein's obsession, and nobody working in the field could have
been unaware of
Einstein's thoughts on the subject. Given Hilbert's superior mathematical
skills, it is not surprising that,
inspired by Einstein's writings and personal communications, he should have been
able to rapidly
develop a theory that was almost, but not quite equivalent to general
relativity.
Hilbert's paper was published several days before
Einstein's paper,
but the evidence shows that Hilbert modified his paper in
proof after learning
of Einstein's correct field equations.
Radar ranging measurements of Venus in 1975 showed that the
published orbital parameters
for the planet were slightly off, and insufficiently accurate for interplanetary
navigation of space probes.
Somehow or other, crackpots have latched upon this paper as somehow or other
disproving relativity.
Kotelnikov et al., 1976
The Usenet newsgroups are home to many anti-relativity crackpots, who regularly try to disprove relativity with stale arguments that have been known to be wrong for many decades, even centuries. There are aetherists, emission theory enthusiasts, and advocates of views so bizarre as to defy classification. Ignoring all experimental evidence contrary to their beliefs, these worthies may see sinusoidal modulations between the error bars of the MMX experiment, deny the validity of Le Verrier's 1859 discovery of anomalous precession in the orbit of Mercury, or accuse experimenters and astronomers of conspiracy and of regularly falsifying their data.
Following the lead of Sekerin, emission theorists have argued that the luminosity curves of stars such as Cepheids and Algol-type
binaries may be explained as originating from the variable speed of light rather
than from stellar pulsations in the case of Cepheids, or eclipses in the case of
Algol-type binaries. Never
mind that we have far more data about these stars than merely luminosity data,
all corroborating the generally accepted explanations for their variability. On January 3, 2007,
one of the better known of these emission theorists for the first time published
his predicted radial velocity curves for the Cepheid RT Aurigae... and shows
himself capable of resorting to lying...
Here
are his results.
Go to Henri Wilson's demo and my commentary on his demo, including an applet
Go to my latest commentary on Henri's "Rayphases" model.