Einsteins light-beam thought experiments and relativity

How could we be anything but charmed by the delightful story Einstein tells in his Autobiographical Notes of a striking thought he had at the age of 16? While recounting the efforts that led to the special theory of relativity, he recalled · "...a paradox upon which I had already hit at the age of sixteen: If I pursue a beam of light with the velocity c (velocity of light in a vacuum), I should observe such a beam of light as an electromagnetic field at rest though spatially oscillating.

theory of relativity. Versions of the thought experiment were conducted after Einstein had · mastered Maxwell’s equation. During this time, Einstein gave long and serious consideration to · emission theories of light. In them, the speed of a light beam is c, not with respect to the ether,

Such a theory would no longer require an ether state of rest, because the motion of the source is added to the propagating effect and the principle of relativity is no longer threatened, Norton maintained. “We immediately see that the three objections Einstein records present serious obstacles to an emission theory,” he said. “Einstein’s first objection was that we don’t actually experience frozen light, while under the emission theory, a light source moving away from us at C will leave a frozen light wave behind in space.

THIS month marks the 100th anniversary of the General Theory of Relativity, the most beautiful theory in the history of science, and in its honor we should take a moment to celebrate the visualized “thought experiments” that were the navigation lights guiding Albert Einstein to his brilliant creation.

Watch visualizations of ideas that helped Einstein devise his theories of relativity and of the equivalence principle. Publish Date: 9/8/97Topic: Physics + MathPhysics & Math ... Albert Einstein famously used thought experiments—experiments carried out in the mind only—to work out complex ideas. Here, watch animations of Einstein chasing a light beam (which helped lead him to his theory of special relativity) and riding an elevator in free-fall (which convinced him that gravity and acceleration are one and the same).

But when you insist that you saw the police officer speeding neck and neck with the light beam, within a hairsbreadth of catching up to it, he says you are crazy; he never even got close. To Einstein, this was the central, nagging mystery: How was it possible for two people to see the same event in such totally different ways? If the speed of light was really a constant of nature, then how could a witness claim that the officer was neck and neck with the light beam, yet the officer swears that he never even got close?

To further clarify that the energy ... (a) A light source ... Conservation of energy demands that the difference in work between raising the mass and lowering the mass, ... In other words, the increase in gravitational mass predicted by the above arguments is precisely equal to the increase in inertial mass predicted by special relativity. Einstein then considered sending a continuous electromagnetic beam of ...

Wertheimer reported Einstein's intuitive explanation. Finally, Einstein's 1955 · explanation from the Skizze, unlike the Notes, contains locations, names and events. The thought experiment is described within the framework of the years Einstein spent

The whole Einstein light clock thought experiment has now been proven to have been based entirely on a misconception, because we obviously would be able to see a light clock moving at up to 1 m for every cycle and that would require the clock ...