ritz-btr.narod.ru ("Ballistic Theory of Ritz", Russian site), 2026-10-04

URL: https://ritz-btr.narod.ru/tolchel.html (posted 17.07.2012) Found [web] (Russian, read in Chrome; summary is mine): S. A. Tolchelnikova-Murri, "Radar observations of Venus confirmed the classical (Galilean) rule of velocity addition", Izvestiya VUZov "Geodeziya i aerofotos'emka" No.6, 2001, pp.85-108; also in the collection "Problemy prostranstva, vremeni, dvizheniya" 1999 (originals at www.antidogma.ru). Her argument (related to Wallace, but not the same): - The 1961-62 Venus radar reductions (Pettengill et al. AJ 67, 181; Muhleman, Holdridge & Block AJ 67, 191; Shapiro and Muhleman in "Fundamental constants of astronomy", IAU Symposium 21, Russian edition 1967) used classical kinematics; Lorentz transformations were not used and testing SR was not their aim. - Pettengill et al. p.184 approximated the path as twice the non-relativistic distance at the moment the signal reaches Venus (her eq. 2R2 = (t3 - t1)c), judged negligible because orbital speeds << c. - She derives that Muhleman's Doppler formula (14) follows from the classical Doppler formula with source and receiver speeds and differs from her relativistic formula (16); hence, she argues, the Doppler reduction was not relativistic either (detailed in her GED 4(1), 3-6 (1993) and GED 5(6), 116-117). - She quotes G. M. Clemence (US Naval Observatory) in the IAU Symposium 21 discussion: since the second-order terms can be interpreted outside relativity, they cannot be taken as a new confirmation of relativity (her Russian quotation, p.254 of the Russian edition). - Difference from Wallace: she argues the round-trip measurement near inferior conjunction is insensitive to the solar-system velocity (forward and return effects cancel), so radar neither confirms nor refutes SR; Wallace argues it shows c+v. Bears on: claims 1-2 (independent professional astrometrist who reached a related conclusion from the same papers; priority 2/3). Primary for the reviewers: IAU Symposium 21 proceedings (Clemence remark), Muhleman et al. 1962.