Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 10:54, 15 August 2007

This article relies excessively on references to primary sources. Please improve this article by adding secondary or tertiary sources. Find sources: "Autodynamics" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (August 2007) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Autodynamics was proposed by Ricardo Carezani in the early 1940s as a replacement for Einstein's theories of special relativity and general relativity.

Main tenets of autodynamics

The primary claim of Autodynamics is that the equations of the Lorentz transformation are incorrectly formulated to describe relativistic effects, which would invalidate special relativity, general relativity, and Maxwell's equations. The effect of the revised equations proposed in Autodynamics is to cause particle mass to decrease with particle velocity, being exchanged with kinetic energy (with mass being zero and kinetic energy being equal to the rest mass at c). This exchange between mass and energy is the proposed mechanism underlying most of the derived conclusions of Autodynamics.

Ancillary claims of Autodynamics include:

• the nonexistence of the neutrino,
• the existence of additional particles that have not been observed by mainstream physicists (including the "picograviton" and the "electromuon"),
• the existence of additional decay modes for muons and interaction modes for energetic atomic nuclei.

Status of autodynamics

Autodynamics is wholly rejected by the mainstream scientific community. Since Carezani's original publication, no papers on autodynamics have appeared in the scientific literature, though some have been published in "alternative" journals such as Physics Essays. A 1999 article in the popular magazine Wired quotes Pierre Noyes, a professor at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center as stating "most scientists consider Autodynamics little more than a 'crackpot theory'". Despite this, Noyes et al. performed an experiment in an attempt to compare the predictions of SR and AD, but concluded that the values calculated by SR were significantly closer to what was observed. Carezani later argued that the experiment was not relevant for comparing the two theories by pointing out that AD applies specifically to decay cases, yet the electrons in the Noyes experiment received energy from the external medium (klystron EM field). According to Lee Smolin, there has been "no serious attempt to make an argument or to discuss experimental data that refute their basic claims".

Special relativity, in its pure form, is proven to be mathematically consistent (see the Special relativity article). Alleged errors have been documented in the on-line literature that attempts to support autodynamics, including:

• a Lorentz contraction is incorrectly applied to the distance between a stationary observer and a moving object.
• the claim that reference frames are "unnecessary" and "cannot be measured" is incorrect.
• a Lorentz length contraction is incorrectly described as an "extra velocity" and energy is incorrectly attributed to it leading circularly to the claim that special relativity does not conserve energy and momentum.
• the above claim is further bolstered by autodynamics assumption that the neutrino does not exist, even though relativistic energy-momentum conservation has been tested extensively in neutrinoless phenomena.

Problem of velocity addition in autodynamics

The autodynamics velocity addition equation is:

${\displaystyle \beta _{n}={\sqrt {1-(1-\beta _{1}^{2})(1-\beta _{2}^{2})\cdots (1-\beta _{n-1}^{2})}}}$

where ${\displaystyle \beta ={\frac {v}{c}}}$

For common experiences where ${\displaystyle v<<c}$, this reduces to

${\displaystyle v_{n}={\sqrt {v_{1}^{2}+v_{2}^{2}+\cdots +v_{n-1}^{2}}}}$

This fact marks a significant advantage Special Relativity has over autodynamics; at speeds much less than the speed of light, the Lorentz transformations reduce to the Galilean transformations, and Special Relativity predicts for ${\displaystyle v<<c}$ the expected result:

${\displaystyle v_{n}=v_{1}+v_{2}+\cdots +v_{n-1}}$

From this it is clear that autodynamics contradicts common experience. For example, if an object that was traveling at a velocity of 3 meters per second with respect to a stationary observer were to measure a third object moving in the same direction to have a velocity of an additional 4 meters per second, autodynamics would predict that the stationary observer would measure a velocity of approximately ${\displaystyle {\sqrt {3^{2}+4^{2}}}=5}$ meters per second while special relativity would predict a velocity of approximately ${\displaystyle 3+4=7}$ meters per second. Thus, this prediction of autodynamics is contradicted by simple velocity addition experiments (including such basic ones as those that occur when moving in common modes of transport such as automobiles, trains, and airplanes).

Footnotes

1. ^ Aforementioned Wired article about Autodynamics
2. D.R. Walz, H.P. Noyes, and R.L. Carezani, Phys. Rev. A 29:2110-2113 (1984), Calorimetric Test of Special Relativity
3. See endnote 2 of: Ricardo Carezani, The Muon Decay muon+ -> e+ e+ e+ and Autodynamics, Physics Essays: Volume 5, no. 1, March 1992
4. Article on Frames Derivation
5. ^ Article on Galilean Simplification
6. Article on Superfluous System
7. Article on the Sum Velocity

References

• A Calorimetric Test of Special Relativity, by Dieter R. Walz, H. Pierre Noyes, and Ricardo L. Carezani

• Carezani, Ricardo L. (1997). "Nucleus-Nucleus Collision And Autodynamics". Physics Essays. 10: 193–197. eprint version from autodynamicsuk.org website.

External links

• The Society for the Advancement of Autodynamics (SAA)
• Quantum Mechanics Autodynamics United Kingdom

• Pseudophysics