RankingsPrimerArbiterPhysicistMathematicianContrarianQEClaimsSources

Central claims: Gift-Stephan

Source gap (revised after QE deep reads). Closed: the 2001 gravity paper (garbled text layer) was read from page images, PDF pp.3-10, including the Lagrangian, the time-local gauge step and the page-7 light-bending and perihelion equations; the 2006 ether paper's equations (Roemer, Doppler) were read from page images; Fig. 5 of the 2018 paper (Shtyrkov) was viewed; equations 3.1-3.13 of the 2009 paper were read from page images. Still open: (1) The 2009 magnetism paper is now read in full (second QE round: PDF pp.5-9 text layer in full, pp.6 and 8 checked on page images), so nothing in it rests on the digest alone; what remains is that Greenspan's simulations, Barut's resonances and Luder's book are known only through Gift. (2) All cited primary sources are absent from the folder, so anything about them is second-hand through Gift: Shtyrkov (NPA 2005; Eur. J. Natural History 2011), Marinov (Gen. Rel. Grav. 12, 57, 1980), Greenspan's simulations (refs 15, 16: H2, D2, HD, HT, Li2, B2, C2, N2), Barut, Luder, Marmet, Kelly, Sato, Hatch, Weisskopf (the 'absolute frame' quotation), and DI Herculis. To obtain: those papers, especially Shtyrkov's and Marinov's, and Greenspan's H2 papers. Page convention: digests and manifest use PDF pages; reviewers often used printed pages (2001 paper: PDF = printed minus 318).

  1. Light travels at different speeds in different directions relative to the Earth's surface: c - v eastward and c + v westward (v = surface rotation speed), as shown by GPS clocks, the GPS range equation, the ITU time-transfer formula and a GPS-clock Michelson-Morley arrangement (2018 paper). The deep reads note that every derivation assumes light moves at c in the Earth-centred inertial frame and synchronises clocks by that rule, so the "speed relative to the Earth" is a convention-dependent quotient, not an independent measurement.

  2. The Earth's orbital motion is also detectable from apparatus at rest on the Earth: through the Roemer (Io eclipse) and stellar Doppler first-order effects (2006), planetary radar and spacecraft ranging (2018), and, as the only new experimental anomaly, Shtyrkov's geostationary-satellite aberration measurement (2018) and Marinov's modified-Sagnac absolute-velocity measurement of 303 +/- 20 km/s (2006). Both are reported second-hand: Shtyrkov's Fig. 5 shows about 25-30 points near 28-31 km/s with no error bars and no stated method, and Gift writes "we await confirmation by others"; Marinov is given with no apparatus detail and no replication.

  3. Therefore a cosmic ether (preferred reference frame) exists and the light-speed invariance postulate, hence special relativity, is invalid; second-order experiments like Michelson-Morley were simply the wrong kind of test because of FitzGerald-Lorentz-Larmor contraction (2006, 2018). The cosmic microwave background is suggested to be this medium's thermal radiation, with Weisskopf's "absolute frame of reference" quotation and Marinov cited as support. The paper's own final formulas (v/c period and Doppler changes) equal the special-relativity first-order results.

  4. Einstein's equivalence principle is false (a charge at rest in an accelerating rocket radiates, one hovering above a mass does not), so general relativity is invalid; it should be replaced by a Newtonian-type gauge theory with massless spin-0 gravitons that gives Newton's law, the redshift and orbit precession, with no black holes, dark matter or Einsteinian gravitational waves (2001). The page-image deep read adds that the source is the constituent fermion's rest mass times number density, so composition-dependent free fall follows from the written coupling (flagged for the arbiter as refuted by calculation), and that the wave-equation kinetic term is not invariant under the paper's own time-local shift (flagged as internally inconsistent); light bending and the redshift use a heuristic photon mass E/c^2 and Aspden's force law taken from other sources, not eq 8.

  5. Magnetism is a fundamental interaction separate from electromagnetism, mediated by new massless spin-1 "magnatons" that arise by relaxing Lorentz covariance with a space-local gauge phase; it supposedly explains the Pauli exclusion principle, chemical bonding and the stability of matter, with Greenspan's simulations as confirmation (2009). The second deep read (PDF pp.5-9) finds that the Earnshaw argument is a single supporting sentence with no reply to the quantum stability answer; that Greenspan's simulations (second-hand) are classical, spin-free, give no diameters or force law, and the paper prints the H2 frequency as 1.38e14 Hz against the usual ~1.32e14 Hz; and that no coupling, energy or bond-length estimate appears, with the 1/r^3 potential asserted to dominate at short distance without a coefficient. The deep read of eqs 3.1-3.13 finds that the "magnetic charge" nu = div(mu) is zero or undefined and never given a value, that no kinetic term is written, and that the written coupling is a charge-type coupling to the Dirac current, not to the particle's moment.

  6. The same "relax Lorentz covariance, make a gauge field, name a particle" device extends to the strong force: a time-local or space-dependent isospin gauge rotation generates pi-mesons (unified with the gravitons) or massive rho-mesons (2001 Table II; 2009 future work: a space-dependent isospin rotation hoped to give massive rho-mesons; the time-dependent version 'yielded pi-mesons' only via the author's own ref 22, with no masses compared). This is asserted and derived elsewhere (ref 29, 1999), not in these papers.