REALITY AND RELATIVITY
Before we begin, let's put one thing on the record. Albert was not wrong; it's just that we have a much more detailed, precise understanding of what he was saying. Over the past century relativity has been used to investigate ‘space-time’. Space-time has been assumed to be a mathematical relation between actual space and time. With the SFT formulation the observed ‘space’ and 'time' can be seen to include the internal motions of the photon where its motion can be written as a bispinor.
where and are orbital and cyclotron angular velocities, and ro and rc are orbital and cyclotron radii. The orbital rotation is an external motion while the cyclotron rotation is internal as shown in Figure 1 below.
Figure 1: The photon moving along a giant cosmic circle where the internal motion adds to the total distance, proportional to the observed phase.
In external space and time, outside of the eye, space and time are unchanged by the observer's speed relative to that of light. What is changed is the picture that reaches the eyes, or our measuring devices such as a plane's clock and distance metres. We must transform between observed space-time and reality. Be aware what we are saying here: Einstein was not wrong, but we do have a more intuitive way to understand space-time and how our own motion is relative to actual time.
Note if the photon moves along large cosmic circles it will be lossless which is why quantum theory and general relativity insist on a photon without mass. In quantum field theory the photon has no mass only energy, which gives it no structure except for the Dirac delta function, the singularity at a point.
The concept of space and time then has to be understood from the perspective of the internal and external motions associated with the photon. Similarly dilations of length and time are associated with how fast a particle moves relative to the orbital motion of the photon. In other words the reality of photons as they hit our eyes changes with the speed we are moving at. What we see is the total changes of phase of the light due to both its internal and external motion just like Mercury and its relativistic motion.
In summary space-time is what appears to exist to our eyes, but in reality space is space and time is time, even if our senses tell us otherwise. Nevertheless Einstein’s discovery in 1916 was a magnificent outcome allowing us to explore the Universe before our eyes. But we must learn to be careful with the results of relativity and to interpret its true meaning in reality.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines the scientific method as: "a method or procedure that has characterized natural science since the 17th century, consisting in systematic observation, measurement, and experiment, and the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses.", in brief observation is validated by theory. In this case we must realize how our eyes are being used at speeds approaching the speed of light. In this case the phase distance seen by the eye includes a significant proportion of the internal motion of the photon and hence we need to be aware this phase distance forms an illusion on the retina of the eye.
The devil is in the detail, and the title. What you must appreciate are a couple of things. Let me try to explain what is being said.
First Look at the sentence. "Albert was not wrong". So when you THINK I'm saying something against relativity either special or general realize there's a very real sense in which Albert was NOT wrong; he was 'right', because his eyes told him so. That bit of knowledge that there's a difference between relativity and reality only comes from SFT where the photon has internal structure and is not treated as a singularity as in quantum field theory (called the Dirac-Delta function in honour of Paul Dirac).
Now this also effects measurements of time and distance, after all as we know everything is relative. For instance meters inside planes measure relativistically hence we have to translate between space-time and actual local time. This may seem doubious at first but if you think about it, what is being said is what Albert said.
So as I alluded to in the reference to the scientific method in the final paragraph we have to be aware that our eyes, and meters, are acting relativistically. So we must appreciate this before we can understand what our eyes are seeing, especially at the cosmological level of observation.
So there are two different points of view, metrics, or coordinate systems, in this mathematics. One relates to the total phase of the photon seen by the retina of the observer or a meter, another is the actual space and time external to both the retina and the photon.
Let's look at the advance in the perihelion of Mercury and how this relates to the total phase of the photon. Doug you gave a detailed run-through of this relativistic maths some time ago and I thank you for that, very thorough. Yes the advance IS exact and I'm not being cavalier, it follows from the fact that there's an advance in the phase of the photon due to its internal motion as distinct from its external motion. As shown in Figure 1, the photon moves in two unequal rotations, one an external motion in actual space and time and one an internal motion which we call the self-field energy of the photon.
I think what you refer to as 'cavalier' is in fact a recognition of the difference between the convoluted transformation of working in space-time of the photon's (and the retina's) total phase and same transformation seen via SFT where the maths is much simpler. In SFT the fields are unconventionally measured relative to two centres of motion rather than directly between charge points as in the Liénard-Wiechert potentials. The relativistic components are much simpler to compute as two rotations rather than a single relativistic distance as per your calculations for Mercury. So, I'm adding to relativistic theory rather than detracting from it. Nothing changes in SR or GR except the concept of absolute space and time gets a guernsey. You should recognize SFT as a validation of relativity, the next iteration of knowledge about relativity.
Let's turn to zero-mass bosons. In quantum theory in the early 1930's there was an immediate understanding that bosons should have zero rest-mass because 'otherwise the theory would be in trouble'. Also it was following GR in this regard so there was a precedent. In quantum theory and classical electromagnetics all boson motions were and are allowed e.g. Coulomb's law. In SFT only bi-spinor motions are allowed (or more generally 'bi-geodesics' due to the 'laziness' inherent in physics). It is well known that a mass can rotate along a circular path without loss of energy. This motion is unstable whereas a bi-spinor having two rotations is a stable motion. What we find inside the atom for instance is that the photon's motion is a 'curvy helix' as it transits between the proton and the electron. In this case there are two photons involved in the overall system (proton, electron and two photons) so there is no change in the overall energy of the system when we sum the various energies. The recent finding of non-zero mass of the neutrino is an example of the changing story of bosons.
One of the features of SFT is that it does not use Lagrangians but rather uses what are called Maxwellians. In other words, this is a maths that is one degree of differentiation below the Lagrangian; essentially it is about fields and forces rather than potentials and energies. I've italicized 'field' because it has been traditional to use the term field when we are actually talking about potentials; further, field has a special, reserved meaning in electromagnetics. Moreover, potentials should only be used in connection to wave equations and not where actually fields such as electric, magnetic, and acoustic fields are involved.
Note the similarity between the double helix of the DNA and the bi-spinorial motion of particles (and fields). Perhaps the original double helix was a simple organic molecule falling in the strong gravity of the early Solar System.
Actually, there is one thing that SFT finds against relativity: speed of light is not invariant according to SFT which is determined via the Maxwellian (where the energy density may vary). My studies in biology helped me realize that speed of light is NOT constant inside tissues of the body for instance. SFT sees the Universe as an inhomogeneous object that may be connected to other universes via Bose-Einstein condensates (frozen light, don't think of this as 'tired' light but a sort of boundary condition where the energy density is very low - better still think of a blackbody where there is a radiation condition at the boundaries). I think we must understand speed of light invariance as an cosmological observation made in the early 20th century, one of Albert's postulates after all, rather than an inviolable 'law'.
In the SFT formulation of hydrogen atom, two charged particles (electron and proton) and their fields (two photons) form a closed atomic system; the particles and their mutual fields form a balanced atomic self-system. Thus SFT is about MUTUAL interactions rather than a single object and a single field, e.g. Einstein's GR is a single type of matter and a field rather than a connection between two gravitating objects as in SFT. Same generalization of the maths can be said about SFT and quantum theory where e.g. a single electron and its field can be specified. This was also how Abraham and Lorentz looked at the self-field of an electron. In SFT it is ALWAYS about a mutual effect.
In summary the mathematical physics of SFT can be seen as a UNION of relativity and quantum theory. A feature of SFT is that it provides another level of detail below either GR or quantum theory and that is its 'photon chemistry', a logical and physical basis for the internal structure of bosons.
OK, I'll leave it there.