Beckmann, Bethell, Relativity: A Rant

Related:

• Post-scarcity, Superabundance, Money, and Star Trek Space Cadets
• Petr Beckmann, Einstein Plus Two
  • Einstein Plus Two and dissident material
• Tom Bethell, Questioning Einstein: Is Relativity Necessary?
• ——, Rethinking Relativity, and related links
• Tom Bethell, Relativity and the Priesthood of Science

From a conversation with friends (not cleaned up and edited; just a rant):

Discussing March 3, 2026 Are prime numbers hiding inside black holes? The strange case for prime numbers at the heart of physics By Lyndie Chiou:

“not sure what’s more dumb, [X’s’ faux mystical amateur arguments for god and against infinity, or this dumb idea of black holes and the scientistic numerology bullshit in this article”

Friend: “Where someone claims to have identified a black hole, what in your view have they actually identified?”

Kinsella:

dunno but I don’t believe in special relativity or quantum bullshit or in singularities, event horizons, etc.

remember we only ever have tentative hypotheses of causal phenomenon. It’s never confirmed. WE never observe causal laws. We see something and try to fit into a given model but that might be wrong or right or there may be a simper explantion. For eample see Beckmann’s views on physics vs. that of Einstein: in STR he never proves light speed is indeppendet of the observer it’s just a postulate, and that leads to stupid shit like time and space dilation, and that leads to a given interpretation of black holes e.g. the idea of time slowing down at event horizon etc., all of which must surely be wrong or at the least like GTR needless complicated (like epicycles “worked” but are not really accurate). So theere is something tey are seeing but they explanining it in teh conceptual language of STR and quantum which must be somewhat wrong so I do not blieve there is any proof that there “are” “black holes”–not as popularly understood anyway. All this retarded wormhole Einstein-Podolosky-“Rosen” space cadet bullshit

***

all these small minded apes want mystery and easy answer and also to think they unlocked some deep knoweldge, they are all just cowards and low IQ and lazy. To afraid to just be honest and admit that there are somethings we do not yet really konw. This also explains you stupid, embarrasing loser conpsiracy apes

Friend 2: Crank alert. https://g.co/gemini/share/bb471c4db1c3

Kinsella:

See below. I am not saying Beckmann is right, but maybe he is is or partly, and in any case this and other dissident views including by other prominent physicists does make me doubt STR, overly-complex GTR, the STR postulate, black holes, and also the spooky action at a distance of some interpretations of quantum physics.

https://x.com/i/grok/share/4a2f9853051f4b2b93921c7efdeb838c

*Summary of the book’s argument (Tom Bethell’s Questioning Einstein: Is Relativity Necessary?, following Petr Beckmann):*

The constancy of the speed of light—specifically, that light always travels at the same speed c in all directions and is independent of the motion of the source or the observer—is not an experimentally verified fact. It is simply Einstein’s second postulate in the 1905 Special Theory of Relativity (STR). Bethell (drawing heavily from Beckmann’s Einstein Plus Two) argues that this postulate was introduced as an assumption to resolve the null result of the Michelson-Morley experiment and to preserve the form of Maxwell’s equations, rather than being deduced from unambiguous measurements.

Key points on why it’s a postulate, not a fact:

• No direct measurement of one-way speed of light: All classic experiments (including Michelson-Morley) measure round-trip (two-way) light travel time. The one-way speed cannot be measured without assuming synchronized clocks or some other convention that already presupposes isotropy. Chapter 3 (“Michelson-Morley”) stresses this: Michelson aimed to detect Earth’s orbital motion through the ether but found no fringe shift. Einstein’s second postulate simply decrees that c is constant “irrespective of the motion of the emitter” (and, by extension, inertial observers), making the null result automatic without needing an ether.
• The second postulate as “stage magic”: Bethell calls it the heart of Einstein’s “conjuring trick.” Accepting it forces the Lorentz transformations, length contraction, time dilation, and observer-dependent space-time. Without it, STR collapses. Einstein himself treated it as axiomatic, not proven (see Chapter 5). Later claims that it follows from Maxwell’s equations are rejected in the book; Maxwell’s equations describe wave propagation in a medium, not an observer-independent c in vacuum.
• No experiment proves east-west isotropy on Earth: Beckmann and Howard Hayden offered a $2,000 reward (publicized in Science, 1990) for any published optical experiment showing the one-way speed of light is the same east-to-west as west-to-east (within ~50 m/s). No one claimed it. The book notes that effects like the Hafele-Keating clock experiment (eastbound clocks run slower than westbound) actually show asymmetry consistent with Earth’s rotation, which Hawking later mentioned—but STR did not originally predict this directional dependence.

Beckmann’s views (the core alternative theory):

Beckmann rejected STR entirely and proposed a simpler classical explanation that accounts for all the same experimental results without relativity or deformed space-time:

• The “ether” is the local dominant gravitational field: The luminiferous medium is not a universal, stationary substance (as in 19th-century ether theories) but simply the Earth’s (or Sun’s, etc.) gravitational field. It is entrained (carried along) with the Earth’s orbital motion around the Sun, so no orbital “ether wind” is detectable—explaining the Michelson-Morley null result perfectly.
• But Earth rotates through its own gravitational field: Daily rotation creates a small relative velocity between the surface and the field (the field does not co-rotate perfectly). Light speed is c relative to the local grav field/ether, so there is a tiny anisotropy: light traveling with or against the rotation direction has a minuscule speed difference (effect ~ (v_rot/c)², very small). This predicts a tiny fringe shift in rotating interferometers—far below what Michelson could detect in 1887 but potentially detectable in modern setups.
• Explains key experiments without STR:
  • Michelson-Morley (orbital): null, as expected (field entrained).
  • Michelson-Gale and Sagnac (rotational): positive fringe shifts, as expected from rotation through the field.
  • Stellar aberration, binary stars, etc.: handled via local field transitions (e.g., Earth’s field to Sun’s field boundary).
• No need for relativity’s “strange” features: No observer-dependent reality, no length contraction/time dilation as real deformations of space-time. Effects like muon lifetime extension or GPS “corrections” are real physical interactions with the grav field, not relativistic. E=mc² can be derived independently (as Lewis did in 1908 and Einstein later did “elementarily”).

Beckmann’s theory (outlined in Chapter 12 “On Beckmann’s Theory”) is presented as simpler, Ockham-friendly, and consistent with the facts. It restores a physical medium (the grav field) without the paradoxes of STR. The book notes that Einstein later (in general relativity) revived a variable “ether” tied to the gravitational field—strikingly similar to Beckmann’s idea—but never abandoned the special-relativity postulate.

In short, the book claims STR’s second postulate is an unproven assumption that “saves the appearances” at the cost of physical intuition. Beckmann’s entrained-gravitational-field ether explains the data classically, predicts directional effects on rotating Earth that STR does not naturally anticipate, and makes relativity unnecessary. Bethell emphasizes that while many experiments are consistent with STR, none prove the postulate; Beckmann’s view fits the data at least as well (or better) with far less conceptual baggage.

https://x.com/i/grok/share/f51c3ce091b149e3bea1fc0c8d7091a3

Beckmann’s rejection of Special Relativity (STR) has profound implications for General Relativity (GTR), according to Tom Bethell’s analysis in Questioning Einstein (drawing directly from Petr Beckmann’s Einstein Plus Two). The core of Beckmann’s view is that the “ether” (luminiferous medium) is simply the local dominant gravitational field. Light always propagates in this real physical medium, so its speed is not constant (it slows and bends in denser fields) and its path is not straight. This directly rejects STR’s second postulate (constant c independent of source/observer).

Key implications for GTR:

1. The STR–GTR distinction largely collapses:
   • STR assumes an idealized, gravity-free inertial frame where light travels straight at constant c. But gravity is always present (especially on Earth), so this “special” case is a fiction.
   • Beckmann’s theory treats all frames as “general” (non-inertial) because light always travels through a gravitational/ether field. There is no need for a separate “special” theory or its exemptions. Einsteinians often retreat to GTR to “save” STR when experiments (e.g., Sagnac, Michelson-Gale) contradict it; Beckmann eliminates this loophole entirely.
2. GTR becomes unnecessary and overly complicated:
   • Einstein developed GTR after STR and had to preserve STR’s constant-c postulate. This forced him into:
     • complex tensors and differential geometry,
     • “curved four-dimensional space-time” (geodesics that look curved in 3D but are “straight” in 4D),
     • the principle of equivalence, etc.
   • Howard Hayden (Beckmann’s key collaborator) notes: If Einstein had tackled gravity first (without STR’s constraints), he could have used a far simpler classical approach—light speed varies with gravitational field density, paths curve naturally. The result would closely resemble Beckmann’s theory, producing the same experimental predictions without relativity.
   • Einstein himself admitted (in his 1916 GTR paper and popular writings) that the constancy of c has “no unlimited validity” in gravitational fields—i.e., STR only applies when gravity can be “disregarded” (which is never the case in real experiments).
3. GTR’s famous predictions are explained classically (no relativity needed):
   • Light bending (starlight near the Sun), gravitational redshift, Shapiro time delay: Beckmann derives these directly from variable light speed in the gravitational medium (analogous to sound speed in air). No curved space-time required. Chapter 19 calls some GTR derivations “relativistically incorrect” while agreeing with the observations.
   • Mercury’s orbit precession: Explained pre-Einstein by others (e.g., Paul Gerber in 1898) via classical means; Beckmann’s approach handles it simply.
   • Overall: GTR “works” observationally in many cases, but Beckmann offers a simpler, non-relativistic route to the same results. The book argues that GTR’s mathematical overhead is an artifact of clinging to STR’s unproven postulate.
4. Einstein later converged toward Beckmann-like ideas:
   • In 1916–1920 (post-GTR), Einstein revived a “gravitational ether” tied to the local field—very similar to Beckmann’s (though Beckmann was unaware of this). He abandoned the old universal stationary ether but kept STR’s framework, which Beckmann discards entirely.

Bottom line (per the book): Rejecting STR removes the artificial constraints that made GTR complex and “magical.” Beckmann’s single, unified classical theory (gravitational field = ether) accounts for all the same phenomena—Michelson-Morley null result, Sagnac/Michelson-Gale positive results, light deflection, redshift, etc.—without observer-dependent space-time, length contraction, time dilation, or curved 4D geometry. Relativity (special or general) is simply not necessary. The book presents this as a more physically intuitive, Ockham-friendly alternative that restores a real medium while preserving relativity’s valid empirical successes.

https://x.com/i/grok/share/4765b2a1ac0d43879448a3375de2070e

Implications of Beckmann’s theory (as presented in Bethell’s Questioning Einstein) for black holes, gravitational time dilation (“time slowing down”), event horizons, and related concepts:

The book does not discuss black holes, event horizons, or singularities in any detail. The single passing reference to “black hole” (p. 192) is purely illustrative: it quotes a physicist saying you’d hypothetically need to travel to one to test electromagnetism in extreme gravity—then immediately uses the equivalence principle to show why you don’t. There is no analysis of black-hole physics, Schwarzschild solutions, or collapse scenarios.

All implications below are therefore logical consequences of Beckmann’s core framework, which Bethell endorses throughout:

• The “ether” = local dominant gravitational field.
• Light always propagates at speed c relative to that local field.
• In stronger gravity (deeper potential), light speed decreases and paths curve naturally (like waves in a refractive medium).
• STR’s constant-c postulate is false, so it is not imported into gravity.
• There is no curved 4D spacetime geometry; gravity is a classical field effect.

1. Gravitational time dilation (“time slowing down”)

• Not “time itself” slowing relativistically. Clocks and all physical processes (atomic vibrations, radioactive decay, etc.) slow because they are real interactions within the denser gravitational field/ether. This is the same mechanism that produces gravitational redshift: light loses energy (or changes speed) climbing out of the field.
• Matches observations (e.g., Pound-Rebka, GPS corrections) but without any observer-dependent spacetime curvature or “proper time” vs. “coordinate time” distinction.
• In extreme gravity there is extreme redshift and clock slowing, but it remains finite and physical—no infinite dilation.

2. Event horizons

• Do not exist.
  In GTR the event horizon is a one-way relativistic boundary (Schwarzschild radius r = 2GM/c²) where escape velocity equals the constant c, light is trapped, and distant observers see infalling objects freeze asymptotically.
  Beckmann eliminates the constant-c postulate entirely. Light speed is always local and variable: as gravity strengthens, c locally drops. There is no fixed “horizon” radius with the peculiar coordinate singularity or information-trapping properties of GTR. Light may become unable to escape a sufficiently deep potential well, but the physics is continuous and classical—no relativistic “freezing” for outside observers.

3. Black holes (and singularities)

• Black holes as described by GTR almost certainly do not exist.
  GTR black holes are an artifact of forcing STR’s constant-c postulate into strong gravity, leading to the Schwarzschild solution, infinite curvature at r=0 (singularity), and the horizon. Beckmann’s variable-c model avoids this mathematical pathology.
• Very massive, ultra-compact objects can still form (analogous to the 18th-century “dark stars” of Michell and Laplace, where escape velocity exceeds c). Light and matter may be trapped, producing objects that appear “black” from afar. But:
  • No event horizon or frozen-star appearance.
  • No singularity (point of infinite density). Collapse is halted or behaves differently once c locally approaches zero.
  • No Hawking radiation, information paradox, or other quantum-GTR exotica (which rely on both relativity and quantum field theory on curved spacetime).

4. Broader “and so on” consequences

• Gravitational redshift, Shapiro time delay, and light deflection around massive bodies are all retained (and explained more simply via light-speed variation in the field—see Ch. 19 and notes citing Hayden & Beckmann).
• The entire edifice of GTR-derived phenomena that assume constant c in vacuum (wormholes, closed timelike curves, cosmological singularities, etc.) loses its foundation.
• Gravity remains a real field effect in a physical medium. Extreme gravity produces extreme but finite and classical consequences—no “magic” of relativity.

Bottom line (per the book’s thesis):

Beckmann’s theory makes relativity (special or general) unnecessary for all observed gravitational effects. Black holes, event horizons, and relativistic time dilation are not required to explain the data; they are artifacts of Einstein’s postulates. The universe is restored to a more intuitive, classical picture in which gravity is simply a variable-speed medium for light and matter. Bethell presents this as a simpler, Ockham-friendly alternative that accounts for everything relativity “works” for—without the conceptual baggage.