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Vincent W. Carpenter
local time: 2024-03-29 03:57 (-06:00 DST)
Vincent W. Carpenter (Abstracts)
Titles Abstracts Details
  • A Final Look At Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity (2015) [Updated 6 years ago]
    by Vincent W. Carpenter   read the paper:

    This paper is based on an analysis of chapters XI and XII in the 15th edition of Einstein's book, "Rela-tivity, The Special And The General Theory", published in 1952 a few years before his death. The first part of it deals with an account of his derivation of the Lorentz space and time equations from a railroad thought experiment of his. He then uses them to derive two more equations that give the magnitudes of space shrinkage in a metre rod and time expansion in a ticking clock when they are put into motion. A rig-orous analysis of his line of argument in this part of the book reveals a number of problems and flaws in it. In several places he seems to be just plain wrong. For example, he wrote that he was going to use both Lo-rentz equations to get his own final time slowing equation, but I could not find any way he could make this happen mathematically.

    The second part of the paper deals with the question of why Einstein was so insistent that relativistic time slowing could happen in wind-up clocks when he was never able to give a physical cause for it. I then close with a suggestion for a cause that is based on Richard Feynman's relativistic mass increase equation he derived in Volume I of his "Lectures On Physics".


  • An Outline And Analysis Of Einstein's Presentation Of His General Theory In His Book, (2015) [Updated 8 years ago]
    by Vincent W. Carpenter   read the paper:

    This revision is much better than the original paper I wrote in 2012, especially from Section XXV on. In it I tell of Einstein’s struggles to put his theories into words. I also tell how he used some of his thought experiments to try to help him do this. They turned out to be of little use however. In one of them the participant believed he was feeling the force of gravity when it was really the force of acceleration. In another one the gravity he believed he was feeling turned out to be centrifugal force. And in still another, instead of being based on real-world things like gravity, it worked through abstractions like curved lines that were infinitely close to each other, thus being of no practical use for anything.

    The format of this paper is twofold. When quoting or paraphrasing what I believe to be are Einstein’s key points in each chapter (Section) of his book, I use a Regular Cambria font. My comments, analysis, criticism and questions are made in a Bold Face Italic Cambria font. When in the latter mode, I occasionally take the liberty of expanding his own wording when I believe that he is being too terse or compressed in his narrative.


  • The Inflated Universe (2014) [Updated 1 decade ago]
    by Vincent W. Carpenter   read the paper:

    This paper presents a critical review of an article appearing in "The New Physics" edited by Paul Davies in 1989. It is entitled "The Inflationary Universe" and was written by Alan Guth who originated inflation theory. On the third of its 23 pages he has a diagram that tracks the spacial development through time of the standard Big Bang and inflationary models of the universe. The time lines start when the universe was 1045 seconds old and extend out to the present time some 1017 seconds later. This paper focuses mainly on the first four pages of the article where I point out several scientifically unsound statements and erroneous conclusions still being used by Guth even after his theory had been around 26 years! For instance he says that because of inflation all matter and energy in the universe could have been created out of nothing and that the huge burst of energy it took to inflate the universe came from a phase change. Then he traps himself into an argument which leads to the erroneous conclusion that all the energy in the universe except that coming from gravity is repulsive. In this paper I spell out why these as well as some other statements made by Guth are wrong.


  • Part III of Einstein's Book "Relativity, The Special and The General Theory" (2014) [Updated 6 years ago]
    by Vincent W. Carpenter   read the paper:

    In Part III of Einstein's book he first deals with questions about the structure of the universe from the standpoint of Newton's theory of gravitation and then from the standpoint of his own conclusion that the universe must be finite and yet unbounded at the same time. He then spends most of the rest of the book rationalizing this self-contradiction with arguments involving pure logic alone.


  • Does The Microwave Background Radiation Support The Big Bang Theory? (2014) [Updated 6 years ago]
    by Vincent W. Carpenter   read the paper:

    Most cosmologists claim that the MBR supports the BB theory. But, does it really? All we know for sure about the MBR is that its temperature is 2.7 degrees Kelvin and its wavelength is about 2 millimeters. However, at the same time we know nothing for sure about the BB. The universe is theorized to have started out as a singularity about 13.7 billion years ago and then to have briefly expanded at different speeds before settling down to just one of them for the long haul of growing out to today's size.
    There doesn't appear to be any connection between what we know about the MBR and what we theorize about the BB. But cosmologists have also done some theorizing about the former. I bring that up in this paper and in closing show how it turns out to be very flawed theorizing when you apply what Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg writes about the early universe in his book, "The First Three Minutes".