BREAKING THROUGH EDITORIAL Satellites , Spinning Disks , and Textbooks

In this issue we offer our readers an assortment of articles on various topics. Starting with our first article, Dr. Ruyong Wang challenges the relativistic physicists to an experimental show-down. In [1] he states: “. . .please don’t try to make the light-speed constancy un-definable. If you care to define that the speed of light is the same for any moving observer, we will design a GPS experiment to show it is not the truth. Give us a clear definition, and we will disprove it.” This dilemma illustrates one of the most serious problems with special relativity theory (SRT). It also helps to explain why the theory has not yet been rejected as fashionable nonsense—it is protected from refutation by way of its own circular logic. SRT assumes that the speed of light is constant by way of the second postulate, and then modifies the measurement of length and time, based on the velocity of the observer. This ensures that the desired assumption of constant light-speed (second postulate) is achieved. But this makes it quite difficult to get agreement on exactly how to go about disproving SRT, because of its inadvertent immunization against refutation. Hence, it fails on logical as well as experimental grounds. Despite the difficulties, Dr. Wang has achieved the noble task of invalidating SRT. He uses the GPS constellation to show that the Sagnac effect applies not only to rotating systems, but also to systems in linear translation! This invalidates the second postulate and shows that the speed of light is constant with respect to a non-rotating Earth-centered inertial (ECI) frame of reference (in the vicinity of the Earth). To be sure, this is a controversial topic; we offer a reprint of an important paper by Ruyong Wang and Ron Hatch. These men are true experts when it comes to the GPS constellation. We can only hope that the mainstream will stop sticking their collective heads in the sand and acknowledge the experimental implications. In this issue we also have an experimental paper by Jorge Guala-Valverde et al. on another source of controversy and fascination, the Faraday unipolar generator. The unipolar generator consists of a magnet and a metal disk, with the disk completing an electrical circuit along a radial path from its center to its edge. Rotate the metal disk with respect to the closing wire circuit and viola!—a DC voltage is generated by Faraday’s Law (∇ x E = -dB/dt). What makes Faraday’s Law so interesting is that it is utterly vital to our modern way of life and, yet, it does not describe the actual physics of how a voltage is induced in a circuit. This is another one of those awkward situations within modern physics that is conveniently ignored. We can illustrate the point with an admittedly outlandish thought experiment. Suppose we obtain a homeland security contract to construct an electric fence around the continental U.S., that is, we stretch a single conductor, suspended on insulators, all the way around the border. We connect the ends together to make a continuous loop of wire. Next, we insert a voltmeter in series with the loop somewhere, anywhere, along the perimeter—say at the mouth of the Mississippi. Next, we cause a time-varying magnetic field to pass through the loop. In particular, we constrain the magnetic flux so that it passes through the loop and into the ground entirely within the borders of an interior region of the country, suppose within the confines of the state of Iowa. The magnetic field passes into the ground, through a portion of the earth’s interior, and back out again well outside of the continental U.S. (Recall that the magnetic flux lines must close on themselves per ∇ . B = 0.) So, we pass the magnetic field through the plane of the wire loop. It is nearly a thousand miles between the closest location of the magnetic flux and the voltmeter. Does the voltmeter indicate a voltage? Before we answer this question, note that there is no magnetic flux in contact with the wire loop itself. It is literally hundreds of miles from the flux to the nearest point on the border. There is no magnetic flux in contact with any of the electrons in the wire. Nevertheless the voltmeter does indeed register a voltage, exactly as predicted by Faraday’s Law. The magnetic flux need only pass through the plane of the wire loop—it does not need to come in contact with the wire to generate a voltage. But we hardly need to resort to a thought experiment to illustrate this conundrum; we can inspect the common everyday transformer. Look out a window or around the office and you are likely to spot one. A properly designed transformer works most efficiently when the magnetic flux created by the primary winding is completely constrained to its magnetic core. Stray flux (leakage flux) at the location of the secondary winding is undesirable. Designers may even add a Faraday shield between the primary and secondary windings to block the electric flux from reaching the secondBREAKING THROUGH EDITORIAL