|
The Ritz-Einstein Agreement to Disagree
Robert S. Fritzius
Abstract
During 1908 and 1909 Ritz and Einstein battled over what we now call the
time arrows of electrodynamics and entropy. Ritz argued that electrodynamic
irreversibility was one of the roots of the second law of thermodynamics,
while Einstein defended Maxwell-Lorentz electromagnetic time symmetry.
Microscopic reversibility remains a cornerstone of our current paradigm,
yet we are finding more and more evidence that experimentally discerned
time arrows are asymmetrical and that they all point from past to future.
This paper furnishes some comments about events leading up to the
Ritz-Einstein confrontation, some subsequent developments, and an English
translation of their agreement to disagree. A side by side comparison of
two recent summaries of their battle communiques is included to provide an
overview of what they had to say about this current issue.
Key words: arrow of time, reversibility, electrodynamics, entropy,
emission theory, elementary actions, ultraviolet catastrophe
1. INTRODUCTION
Maxwell built his electromagnetic field theory on ideas derived from
classical mechanics, which was considered to be time reversible, but
Poincaré, mentor to Swiss physicist Walther Ritz, observed that "...treatises
on mechanics do not clearly distinguish between what is experiment, what is
mathematical reasoning, what is convention, and what is hypothesis."(1)
This paper is written from the viewpoint that microscopic time symmetry
is an unproven convention that is still accepted as established fact
and that we might find it beneficial to look under some old stones, one of
which seems to have been buried.
In 1908 Ritz, who is well known for his work in spectral physics (the
Rayleigh-Ritz perturbation theory and the Ritz combination principle) and
his still widely referenced works on the mechanical vibrations of plates,
produced a monumental, but not nearly as well known, criticism of
electromagnetic field theory.(2a) Even though
Ritz acknowledged that the Maxwell-Lorentz equations are elegant and are
here to stay, his blockbuster conclusion (which was based, largely, one the
inseparable ties of electromagnetic field theory to the discredited
solid ether continuum), was this: "The partial differential equations
and the notion of ether are fundamentally inappropriate to express the
comprehensive laws for the propagation of electrodynamic interactions."
(2b)
Ritz then enunciated his own preliminary time-asymmetric emission
theory of electrodynamics (Part II of his work). He hypothesized that
charged bodies continuously emit fluxes of fictitious particles, which
travel at the speed of light with respect to their emission sources. These
emission particles constituted a kinetic electrodynamic intermediate for
retarded elementary interactions. He did not address absorption or
scattering of his emission particles by other charged bodies, or even
specify if he considered there to be more than one type of them, but he
did indicate the need to account for their interactions with ponderable
matter. For example, he admitted that this preliminary hypothesis was
not compatible with Fizeau's experiment on the entrainment of
electromagnetic waves.(2c) According to
Ritz, the Coulomb field is not a static state of space, but rather a kinetic
particulate process, taking place in an otherwise empty space that has no
properties of its own. His coulomb "interaction" could be characterized as
a revised form of the vector potential.
The incompatibility of Ritz's theory with the
entrainment of waves was probably due to Ritz's strict observance of
the superposition principle (a problem which he intended to remedy). The
bottom line to superposition seems to be action without reaction.
My personal conviction is that our adherence to the superposition principle,
in electrodynamics, is what prevents the merger of gravitation and
electrodynamics. The idea that charges can exert limitless coulomb forces
on remote charges (where the field's flux of virtual photons is not thinned
out by interactions with intervening charges) is what creates the need for
gravity, as a different kind of interaction, with different kinds of
particles (gravitons) to balance the books.
Ritz does have his present-day proponents but his theory is
outside the vale of the geometrodynamic paradigm and is not always
accurately represented
371
in the English speaking world. This is due, in part, to his works being
generally inaccessible in English. For example, Waldron keeps the fire
going, but his one-time claim that if you have a high enough potential,
particles can be accelerated to any speed(3) is not compatible with Ritz's
theory. Ritz hypothesized that electrodynamic accelerating influences
approach zero, rather than masses increasing to infinity, as bodies
approach the speed of light with respect to any given accelerator.
(2d)
Waldron acknowledges (in private correspondence) that his "unlimited
speed" proposition is his own and not Ritz's.
In Ritz's day Einstein was a staunch defender of the time
symmetry of the space-time continuum. Indeed he should have been. In 1921
he stated, "The space-time theory and the kinetics of the special theory
of relativity were modelled on the Maxwell-Lorentz theory of the
electromagnetic field.(4)
The world of science has become polarized on the speed of light
issue, and the dividing line has been Einstein versus Ritz. Ritz's theory
held to Galilean relativity, i.e., c + v for electrodynamic
processes, including optics, whereas Einstein assumed the velocity of
light is independent of the motion of the source.
In 1963 Fox added Tolman's extinction theorem to Ritz's
electrodynamic theory. (Charges in a transparent medium absorb and
reradiate transient oscillatory electromagnetic energy. The secondary
radiation travels at the speed of light with respect to the medium. The
incident energy becomes absorbed and extinguished in the process.)
Fox reckons one extinction length , i.e., the distance into a medium
for the incident energy to be attenuated to 1/e times its original
amplitude, at sea level conditions in the Earth's atmosphere, is 0.2 cm.
In interstellar space, removed from regions of appreciable stellar gases
as in that surrounding binary stars, it is calculated to be one light-year.
By making this adjustment to Ritz's theory (which is a superposition
principle fix), Fox claims to have invalidated the majority, if not
all, of the speed-of-light experiments (including binary star
observations) that have been conducted to help us choose between Ritz
and Einstein. Based on the long lifetimes of fast muons (which are
taken as evidence for time dilation) and the speed-of-light gamma rays
from rapidly moving sources,
Fox gave a decision in favor of Einstein, but did so in a manner that
seems to suggest that the final verdict is not in.(5a) In private
correspondence Fox says:
...it is of interest for the general philosophy of science that Ritz's
theory, so different in structure from that of Maxwell, Lorentz
and Einstein, could come so close to describing correctly the
vast quantity of phenomena described today by relativistic
electromagnetic theory.(6)
2. THE LORD GIVETH, THE LORD TAKETH AWAY
It may be ironic the Eddington played such a central role in the solar
eclipse expeditions of 1919, the results of which brought world acclaim to
Einstein's general theory of relativity. Eddington was also the first to
coin the phrase "time arrow"(7) and is known as the father of the time
arrow concept. Actually, he popularized Helmholtz's earlier ideas about
monotonically increasing entropy in a universe that was considered to be
microscopically reversible.
According to Roger Penrose, we now have up to seven perceivable, or
deducible, arrows of time, all asymmetrical, and all pointing from
past to future.(8) Arrow No. 2 on Penrose's list is none other that Ritz's
restriction to retarded electrodynamic actions. Cramer(9) ponders which
comes first, the electromagnetic arrow or the entropy arrow, which is No.
7 on Penrose's list. According to Ritz, the electromagnetic arrow has
priority. He has a finite (flat space) universe in which electrodynamic
emissions escape at the periphery, so that the universe has to be running
down.
Table 1: Ritz-Einstein Exchanges on the Ultraviolet Catastrophe
|
|
