97 year old found flaws with Einsteins Theory.of R

[pillj123]

I work for a 97 year old.He is amazingly bright...well I think so.Over the last few weeks he has been scrawling equations which look mindboggling to me,onto paper in his office.He used to teach Physics...and told me that he is refining what he discovered many years ago...that there is a flaw in The theory od Relativity.
At the time ,he wrote to someone he respected with his findings......but got no acknowledgement......even after chasing it up....so he gave up.
How can I help him find someone who will listen to him or read his paper to see if it hold any water...
At 97......I think he should be heard....you should see his eyes light up when he told me all about it!!
Where do I go,or to whom????

[Mosaic]

Scan his equations, make them into image files and post them on a free blog. Then the world has free access to them, you can make sure his name's all over it, and everyone's happy.
You can go to private book publishers, and they will put anything you want into print for a very scaleable fee.

[pillj123]

How interesting , Mosaic...I think he deserves to be heard somewhere...what a good idea to blast the blogs...tho not sure if he would actually like to also show someone with a bit of clout,his findings

[jake-the-peg]

I don't think it's likely that he'll have found a significant flaw.

Relativity ( is it special or general There are two types?) has been so well tested - General relativity was needed to correctly explain the orbit of Mercury, it is seen in "gravitational lensing" by astronomers and is needed to correctly operate your sat nav.

Special relativity is tested to the extreme in atom smashers ike CERN. If there was a fundamental flaw in it it would have shown up by now.


Don't get me wrong it's not perfect - it doesn't properly agree when you try to make it work at very small scales with Quantum Mechanics so there are changes needed to both of these to make them work nicely together.

Thing is there's a long history of retired "semi-qualified" people spending their time convinced they have overthrown a major building block of science - often Maths.

Fermats last theorum used to be a particular favorite because it was so easy to understand - one maths professor said he used to get at least 1 letter a month from some retired general who'd "solved it" in his spare time.

Thing is he's now so "invested" in this idea that I can't imagine anything in the world will convince him he's wrong.

Telling any professional physicist that relativity is "wrong" is a little bit like telling them the Earth is flat.

I don't actually think you're dong him any favours if you get his hopes up.

[HowardKennitby]

If he wants this to be considered seriously it would need to be properly typed up and he could offer it to magazines such as 'New Scientist' etc. Probably a telephone call the editor first would help.

[jake-the-peg]

To be taken seriously it needs to be peer reviewed!

Look if he must he should talk to some people on physics forums like

http://www.physicsfor...forumdisplay.php?f=70

[pillj123]

Thank you all for all this help.I reckon it will be the site Jake-the-Peg suggested as a start.He is Mr. Humble personified...and will not be upset if he gets shot down in flames, as he merely wants to get others to see his idea.If its wrong,then he has learnt something !

[Wak]

I reckon he could always write to Professor Brian Cox who's on the TV quite lot these days for starters???

[naomi24]

^^ That's not a bad idea - and perhaps he could also try sending his research to the major universities.

[Zacs-Master]

Has he tried painting it on the wall of an old cinema in Bradford?