Talk:Le Sage's theory of gravitation/Archive 3

message: 1) The revival and the 20th century section are combined, because corpuscular and wave models together were analyzed and criticised by J.J. Thomson and Poincare - it makes no sense to devide them. Also little chapter's are included. 
2) Based on the German translation of Poincaré's Science and Method (Wissenschaft und Methode, pp. 186-191), and because of its importance, I have extendet the Poincare-passage.
3) The Majorana passage is shortened and moved into the predictions-section. Also the GR-Aberration part is there now. --D.H 15:07, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Revival and 20th century 

message: The problems with Le Sage theory have nothing to do with general relativity, per se. Also, Le Sage's theory was never popular or mainstream, even prior to general relativity. As Darwin said in 1905 "Suffice it to say that no scientist believes Le Sage's theory affords the true path" (or words to that effect). This is a fair appraisal, echoed by many others of the time. The only two notable individuals in the 19th century to even remotely advocate it were the partners Thomson & Tait, and even they only toyed with the idea. Frankly, prior to general relativity, the mainstream theory of gravity was the theory of Newton/Cotes and action at a distance. That's the theory that was "eclipsed" by general relativity. Le Sage's theory was never regarded as viable by mainstream physicists. By the 20th century the reasons could be expressed in clear and empirically based objections, but in previous centuries the reasons were mainly due to the realization by most physicists that Le Sage theory just doesn't make sense, and serves only to turn a mystery into a mystery squared. There's no need for the article to go into all these reasons, because they are only of historical interest now, but suffice it to say that Le Sage theory was never the accepted or leading or even prominent theory. You can assess this by looking at the physics literature from the 19th and early 20 centuries. Le Sage is barely mentioned, because frankly it was regarded as ridiculous. The point is, it is NOT correct to say that general relativity was responsible for loss of interest in Le Sage theory. The level of interest in Le Sage theory is about the same today as it ever - which is to say, extremely low.SJC1 21:37, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It's simply not true, that Le Sage's Theory "was regarded as rediculous". Why do you think, that J.J. Thomson described the theory as one of only two theories, which where possibly compatble with the electon-theory?  Or why Poincare has given the theory so much space in his "Science and Method"? Or why it was the only "machinery" of gravitation, which was mentioned by Feynman in his lectures? Or why the theory was mentioned and critizised by Maxwell in various papers? Or why the theory was described in two seperate editions (1875,1911) of the Encyclopedia Britannica? For Example, in Germany the theory had attracted the interest of C. Isenkrahe, P. Drude or D. Hilbert. So the interest in the theory certainly was not "extremely low". (Particularly between 1870 and 1911). --D.H 09:40, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Dietmar has it right.  Le Sage was very much part of the story in the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth century.  Here is a reference which covers the period - Van Lunteren, F.H., 1991. Framing Hypotheses: Conceptions of Gravity in the 18th and 19th Centuries, PhD thesis (Rijksuniversiteit Utrecht).  I quoted a passage from it in my historical article in PG.  Perhaps it would be better to say that it was Maxwell who undermined Le Sage most, not with his Atom article but with his electromagnetic theory which required no ether.  By 1900 ether theories were definitely on the wane.MRE 15:03, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I won't rule on this dispute, but do think that this tension between the views is a good thing.  I had never heard of this theory before I came to Wikipedia, and agree with SJC1 that its study seems to have always been something of a backwater in physics.  That is not to say that it did not see a heyday in the late 19th century, but it obviously has always taken a back seat to another theory, be it gravity or GR.  My request is that the pro-Le Sage editors work with SJC1 to create a balanced and reasonable POV for this article.  If nothing else, it is time to get that  tag resolved and removed one way or the other.  As "Fixwiki" is long gone, I propose that SJC1 become its new "owner", meaning the he/she is the one who will decide when it can go. --EMS | Talk 20:12, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why Le Sage theory is not considered viable 

message: Any elaboration of Radz's views must include his conclusions, which are as follows:
:The Lomonosov-Lesage hypothesis not only makes it possible to easily interpret the Majorana phenomenon, but also in clarifying the essence of gravity it opens up perspectives for further investigations of the internal structure of matter and for a study of the possibility of controlling gravitational forces, and consequently the energy of the gravitational field.  To illustrate the power of the energy, it suffices to recall that in the Majorana experiments the weight of the lead sphere, when introduced into the hollow sphere of mercury, decreased by 10^-6 g, which is equivalent to the liberation of twenty million calories of gravitational energy. 
So we can all look forward to routine intergalactic travel and limitless free energy! If only we can get the hide-bound reactionary mainstream scientific community to stop suppressing research into Lesage gravity! Write your congressman!SJC1 22:39, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Limitless Free Energy Again! 

message: I've added some impressions on Le Sage gravity. I hope they are useful for the article. --D.H 16:43, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I like them, gives the article some colour.MRE 18:07, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Le Sage gravity illustrations 

message: The reference to J.J. Thomson's 1911 encyclopedia article seems out of place, because overall the section is proceeding chronologically, and yet Thomson is 1911 whereas the following sub-section is Poincare 1908. Furthermore, the whole content of Thomson's 1911 article is just a repeat of what Poincare described explicitly in 1908, so I'm thinking it would be more appropriate to include that discussion in the Poincare section, maybe with just a footnote saying that Thomson repeated Poincare's comments in a 1911 encyclopedia article.
The beginning of the Thomson reference, in which he talks about matter being purely electrical in origin, is also problematic, because it was already known in Thomson's day (although not well known) that this hypothesis was untenable. In fact, it was Poincare (again) who first proved this in his famous Palermo paper of 1906. So, we have another situation here where we either need to expand the section to make it clear that the idea is now known to be incorrect, or else simply delete it altogether. SJC1 01:13, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It's not clear whether Thomson only repeated Poincare's arguments. He was very influenced by Drude (in his article in the "Annalen der Physik, 1897, Über Fernewirkungen") - and it's quite possible that Poincare himself was influenced by the same paper (I will check this out). So it seems not correct to me to abandon Thomson's Encyclopedia article to a short remark in the Poincare section. Therefore (and to maintain chronological order) I restored the Thomson passage. --D.H 07:43, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  The JJ Thomson reference 

message: I agree with the Fatio-related edits in the Kelvin-section. But the article says: "Subsequent workers pointed out that this rested on an invalid application of Clausius's hypothesis on the partition of kinetic energy in a gas at equilibrium". But no reference is given für this claim. Who are those "subsequent workers"? 
I've deleted the phrase "with his characteristic sarcasm" in the Maxwell-section. The readers should decide for themselfs, what is sarcastic or not. --D.H 09:32, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Kelvin/Maxwell 

message: As I recall, the section on Kelvin originally included the quote of how, according to Kelvin's understanding, and his application of Clausius's principle, it would be possible to construct a perpetual motion machine and extract limitless free energy from the ultramundane flux. But some editors objected to including this aspect of Kelvin's understanding (even though a direct quote was provided), because they thought it makes him look foolish, and obviously implies that his understanding of the thermodynamics of the situation was incorrect, or, at the very least, shows that his ideas were inconsistent with the first and second laws of thermodynamics. Clausius's principle, on the other hand, is entirely consistent with the first and second laws of thermodynamics - in fact, it is a consequence of those laws. It would be easy to provide quotes confirming this, and therefore Thomson's application of Clausius's principle was self-evidently erroneous. (It's also easy to see WHY it was erroneous.) But still, some editors wanted to soften how foolish Kelvin looks in the article, so they demoted his "perpetual motion machine" to a footnote. But this left the article seeming to endorse Kelvin's obviously false claim, so someone (not me) added the comment that "subsequent workers" had falsified Kelvin's application of Clausius' principle. The difficulty here is that, like all Le Sage literature, it simply has not been taken seriously enough by serious scientists to make it worthwhile to publish critiques. The only explicit commentary on Thomson's use of Clausius that I've seen is Maxwell's wry comment that Thomson "has also suggested the possibility of the vortex corpuscle regaining its swiftness and losing part of its vibratory agitation by communion with its kindred corpuscles in infinite space". But here again the reader must know Maxwell to understand the significance of this comment.
Perhaps the solution is to return to the original text, which puts Thomson's limitless free energy and perpetual motion machine back into the article. Say something like 
:Thomson also asserted, based on his understanding of the applicability of Clausius's principle, that it would be possible to extract limitless amounts of free energy from the ultramundane flux, and described as perpetual motion machine to accomplish this. Other researcher's, however, have asserted that Clausius's principle, correctly applied, cannot lead to any production of infinite free energy. [Here there are plentiful references that can be provided, if needed.]
Frankly, I think the existing wording of the article is better than this. At SOME point people ought to agree that we can appeal to simple logic and reason, rather than going through these verbal contortions... but if that's what people prefer, so be it.SJC1 18:14, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Kelvin, Limitless Free Energy, and Clausius 

message: The current figure P5 supposedly represents how matter is mostly empty space, so the force is proportional to the mass, but the actual figure shows a solid blue sphere, just like the previous figures. I think a more useful figure would be to show small blue dots, sparsely separated, composing the sphere. This would illustrate what is described in the text.SJC1 02:35, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: A new "P5" for mass proportionality is added. --D.H 17:27, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Improved Figure for Mass Proportionality? 

message: The current article says this theory is commonly called (in the scientific community) "particle gravity". Does anyone have a reference for this?  (I've never heard the term "particle gravity" used to describe this kind of theory.)SJC1 00:02, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Particle Gravity? 

message: Maybe it would be helpful, if the "drag" section is expanded. Because we have some explanations in the article. 
# Now, we have Fatio, who says that the bigger the velocity or the density of the medium, the greater the resistance. So he was forced to decrease one of those variables (but to fulfil Newton's postulate that space have to be free of matter, Fatio decided to increase the velocity and therefore decrease the density).
# Le Sage derived this formula (v + 1) × 1 / (m + 1) - (v - 1) × 1 / (m + 1) = 2 × 1 / (m + 1) but at the end he came to a similar model as Fatio, because to reduce condensation and drag he was forced to assume very high particle speeds and therefore space is also in his model mostly empty.
# According to Poincare drag is proportional to S \rho v, where S is earth's molecular surface area and v is the velocity of the corpuscules. 
Any suggestions? --D.H 13:43, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Resistance of Medium 

message: I suggest adding some actual rational references to the "recent activity" section of the article, to complement the current list of crackpot citations. For example, the mechanism of Lesage gravity has actually found application in the field of dusty plasmas. See "Frontiers in Dusty Plasmas" by Y. Nakamura, T. Yokota, and P.K. Shukla (2000). Of course, this isn't an attempt to explain gravitation by this mechanism, but I think it is still relevant and worth mentioning.SJC1 18:53, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Recent Activity 

message: The current article says there was a gradual loss of interest in Le Sage's theory, and ultimately it was eclipsed by general relativity. That is misleading, because it suggests that Le Sage theory was at one time highly regarded, but then lost ground, and finally was replaced by general relativity. The historical fact is that Le Sage's theory was never well-regarded within the scientific community. The mainstream theory of gravity that was superceeded by general relativity was the Newton/Cotes/Laplace action-at-a-distance theory. Le Sage's theory was always regarded by most scientists (those who heard of it at all) as an amusing (or appalling) contrivance, serving mainly as an example of how NOT to do physics.
There is, however, one sense in which general relativity did "eclipse" Le Sage's theory, and that is in the sense of actually accomplishing in a theoretically satisfactory way the objectives that Le Sage theory tried but failed to accomplish. In this way, general relativity removed the motivation for anyone to be interested in a theory like Le Sage's, because all the problematic aspects of the Newton/Cotes theory (such as instantaneous action at a distance) were resolved. If this is the sense the article is trying to convey, I think it should be re-worded for clarity.SJC1 21:27, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: As I understood the passage, it says exactly that what you are talking about. The passage says, which problems lead to a progressive loss of interest in mechanicle models like Le Sage’s theory. And than it was (like all other theories) eclipsed by GR. But if you can describe it better, I have no problem with that. --D.H 09:21, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Recent Activity - Eclipsed by General Relativity?  

message: There is another problem in the Lorentz/Poincare/Thomson context: The article says in the Aberration section "This has been suggested by many, including Poincaré, as a conclusive disproof of any Le Sage type of theory". But Poincare didn't wrote a single word on Laplace-Aberration in the Lesage section in Science and Method, he was talking about drag and was mentioning Laplace only in the connection with gravitational shielding. On the contrary: Lorentz himself proposed also a second theory, which also was described in Science and Method and was also mentioned by JJ Thomson in his article. Here, Lorentz combined the Franklin/Zöllner theory for gravitation with the Maxwell-equations. In this theory the repulsive component of the electric charge is a little bit weaker than the attractive one so at the end some sort of universal gravitation arises. Now, Poincare defended Lorentz' second theory against Laplace's aberration critique by calling it (Laplace's argument) not well-founded. And that was the only statement of Poincare regarding Laplace-Aberration. (Before that in 1905 he also critized Laplace in the context of the same theory of Lorentz in his Palermo paper). --D.H 18:05, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree that Poincare didn't discuss aberration for Lesage in Science and Method. However, it certainly has been discussed historically, such as in Aargo's biography of Laplace, where he explicitly talks about how Laplace's analysis of the lunar orbit taking account of possible time delay in the transference of gravity placed a lower limit on the speed of Lesage's ultra-mundane corpuscles. Also, keep in mind that Poincare's (and Whittaker's) dismissal of Laplace's reasoning applies only to a field theory. Everyone agrees that Laplace's reasoning is perfectly valid for a corpuscular theory with rectilinear motion. It doesn't apply to a field theory because a field can support non-central forces, as indeed it must if it is to be relativistic. In this sense Poincare did implicitly criticize all such theories, on the grounds that they are manifestly non-relativistic, and hence would exhibit aberration (which is not observed).SJC1 02:05, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Aberration