It is interesting that this thread: entitled "debunking obviously false information" should have morphed into a series of unevidenced alternate theories for gravitation and electrons.
I guess they are posted here in the expectation of debunking.
The point about these is that none are fleshed out in the way that real theories, such as Yang-Mills electroweak unification, or quantum electrodynamics) have been. there are two questions asked of any physics theory:
(1) does it accurately predict all relevant existing observations
(2) does it accurately predict new observations
In the case of GR it does both. The various alternate ideas here seem more philosophy than physics - because they do not claim to better the predictions from GR. GR is a mathematical theory in which all the observations predicted by special and general relativity derive from the non-Euclidean geometry of spacetime. Talk of "the speed of light" is very unhelpful until it has been defined, carefully, what "speed" means when we have no global time.
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It's no alternative theory Huxley. If you spent a little time following my references you'd appreciate that. See what EInstein said here:
See the second paragraph?
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- It is helpful to say that light follows geodesics, where a geodesic follows the locally shortest path between two points. Because the spacetime metric is Minkowskian all geodesics have zero length. Compare this with the surface of an N-sphere in euclidean N-D space where all finite geodesics have non-zero length. Therefore the geodesics of spacetime these lie on a light cone - the boundary between temporal separations (positive metric) and spatial separations (negative metric) in space-time.
- It is helpful to say that because space-time is curved geodesics (as defined by the spacetime metric) are also curved.
- It is possible to say that space is curved, because otherwise it would be Euclidean and there would be no gravitation, but I don't think separating spatial curvature from spacetime curvature is particularly insightful.
No it isn't. It's wrong. Light doesn't follow a geodesic. It doesn't "follow the curvature of spacetime". That's a myth. Space isn't curved where a gravitational field is. That's another myth. It's "neither homogeneous nor isotropic". Here the link: https://einsteinpapers.press.princeton.edu/vol7-trans/192
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Anyway GR, as developed by Einstein and subsequently simplified, e.g. by coordinate-free tensor calculus approaches, is an incredibly compact way of exactly predicting gravitation and the host of Minkowski-space effects and things more complex like spinning black holes. All observations thus far have been compatible with it. Everyone keeps on hoping there will be something different, e.g. that would explain dark matter / dark energy, but none of those ideas (to my knowledge) have worked out yet.
General relativity is right, but your understanding of it is wrong.
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There is no reason in principle why photons should not have some (very small) mass (in which case light would not exactly follow geodesics), but equally no evidence for it.
Photons have no rest mass. They travel at c. A photon is energy, and the mass of a body is a measure of its energy content. You need to try to understand Einstein's famous E=mc² paper does the inertia of a body depend upon its energy-content? An electron is a body, but a photon isn't. The photon has momentum because a wave in an open path has a resistance to change-in-motion. The electron has mass because a wave in a closed path has a resistance to change-in-motion.
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Now, with the caveat that I am just an amateur, having learnt some theoretical physics a long time ago, who is willing to read new stuff including maths and geometry:
I don't think you are willing to read any stuff at all. You have total belief in what you think you know, so much so that you won't believe me, and you won't read what Einstein actually said. You haven't read any of those 1920s papers in post 314 either. You remind me of a Young Earth Creationist, Huxley. I show them the strata, the fossils, the carbon dating, and they dismiss it all.
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So it is a pretty good call to debunk all non-GR theories as things stand. Debunking does not relate to philosophy or interpretation, neither of which affects the predictions. Personally, I find GR as interpreted as a curved Minkowskian spacetime and no gravitational force, compelling. I also hope to find a future GUT in which this curved Minkowski spacetime emerges from more fundamental quantum interactions within field theories, as has been shown can happen for anti-de Sitter spacetime.
I'm writing an article about GUTs right now. The important papers date from 1974: Lepton number as the fourth color by Pati and Salam, Unity Of All Elementary Particle Forces by Georgi and Glashow, and Hierarchy of interactions in unified gauge theories by Georgi, Quinn, and Weinberg. It's all garbage I'm afraid, as is anti-de Sitter space.
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Otherwise, the various non-standard theories of electromagnetism promoted here do not seem to be testable, and therefore not PAWKI (Physics As We Know It). There are an awful lot of ideas out there, and any that have distinct different predictions from what is currently accepted are always welcomed with one arms, as long as they correspond to all current observations, and offer some hope of explaining new stuff. For example non-standard gravitation theories, which pop up whenever astronomical observations on very large scales seem inconsistent, as has happened many times, and remains in play due to dark energy/matter.
The electromagnetism I'm talking about is Maxwell's. Just as some physicists don't understand gravity, they don't understand electromagnetism either.
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High energy physics theories that claim as merit only the potential to unify, or simplify, have a tough job if evaluated just on their unification, because the competition is so outstandingly strong. The Yang-Mills field theory electroweak unification predicts so much structure from a small basis. Everyone would like an even simpler basis, rather than broken symmetries and a kludged on Higgs field, but the fact that so much of physics is predicted (and observations correspond, even to the finding many years later of the Higgs) is difficult to beat.
You really need to read The Higgs Fake by Alexander Unzicker. Also read the January 2003 physicsworld article Carlo Rubbia and the discovery of the W and Z by Gary Taubes. The Higgs mechanism flatly contradicts E=mc². Electroweak unification is based on Weinberg's 1967 paper a model of leptons, which is nothing of the sort. Neutron decay is nothing to do with the fabulous W boson. It's merely the opposite of electron capture.
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QCD similarly has merit because it unifies hadrons with electro-weak (particles as defined by particle properties predicted from a very simple set of symmetries). That does not deal with rest mass, which is largely arbitrary but has a quite satisfactory "leave it till later" Higgs field explanation.
It isn't satisfactory at all. Not when you understand E=mc²
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Given that we have as yet no unification between QFT and gravity, and find it really difficult to do experiments with gravity (it is so weak) it is perhaps not surprising that the masses of particles (and strengths of forces) have these arbitrary components. Given what we know about broken symmetry in the real universe it is an open equation whether we should expect a fair amount of arbitrariness in fundamental constants, coming from the random crystallisation at low energies of uniform and non-arbitrary high energy physics. I incline towards thinking we should expect it, and that this arbitrariness together with the anthropic principle is actually required for the incredibly coincidental development of complex causal structure and therefore intelligent life.
When you understand gravity you understand that there will never be any unification between QFT and gravity because QFT is wrong on multiple counts. Messenger particles do not actually exist. Virtual particles are virtual. QED says there's no photon-photon interaction, and so on. Symmetry was rolled out as some great principle, but when it didn't work, the next great principle was a "broken" symmetry. It's just another kludge, Huxley. It's moonshine. The anthropic principle is moonshine too. But sadly people like you cling to their pseudoscience misunderstanding even when I show you what Einstein said. Or what Shapiro said:
You're on the wrong side of the debunking fence, Huxley. And it's time you realised it.