5} JOURNAL OF SCIENTIFIC EXPLORATION VOLUME 21, NUMBER I Spring, 2007 ISSN 0892-3310 A Publication of the Society for Scientific ExplorationBook Reviews 219 CD REVIEW Gravity, Version 1.1, Various 2003-2006 by Tom van Flandern. Medium: Windows format CD. Sequim, WA: Meta Research. $19.00. http://www. metaresearch.org This CD is a collection of HTML documents, PowerPoint presentations and various supporting material, including short animations. It is authored by Tom van Flandern (henceforth TVF) and distributed by his company, Meta Research. The (13) PowerPoint presentations are not very useful for discerning TVF's message and will not be reviewed here. The index file claims there are 30 document files, though I could find only 18, 4 of which are USENET discussions of TVF’s ideas. In the remaining 14 there are informal discussions of the Lorentzian Relativity (LR) approach to special relativity (SR), the twin paradox, the speed of gravity, operation of the GPS system, and a shadow model of gravity mediated by superluminal ‘gravitons’ and differing substantially from general relativity (GR). Amongst these files is an article by Victor J. Slabinski giving some calculations based upon TVF’s graviton model of gravity (see below) and a review by TVF of the book Pushing Gravity: New Perspectives on Le Sage's Theory of Gravitation, edited by Matt Edwards and published by Apeiron. That book has a forward by Halton Arp, who appears to endorse TVF's view that GR does not respect causality (see below). Lorentzian Relativity In the essays “Lorentzian Special Relativity” (the filename on the CD is *GSRL-dok’) and “Lorentz Contraction” TVF explains the Lorentz interpreta- tion of relativistic length contraction, namely that material bodies contract according to their absolute speed through an ether, envisaged as a real mechanical contraction viewed from the perspective of an absolute static frame. Subsequently Ives contributed to the development of this approach, culminating in a theory—LR—that is fully compatible with SR; the absolute frame is never visible due to the non-availability of absolute clocks and rods. Though from the SR standpoint the ether is redundant, some people find the ether-based explanations more attractive. To some degree this seems to depend on an ingoing prejudice of which one is ‘really true’—no doubt either explanation of the twin paradox can be made to look contrived from the standpoint that the other is the more correct one. TVF claims, however, that there are some differences that go beyond predisposition and parsimony. In his article “Does the Global Positioning System Need Relativity?” TVF states that the two postulates of SR (equivalence of inertial frames and universal constancy of the speed of light) have not and cannot be tested. By this he appears to mean that they cannot be tested independent of the Einstein clock synchronization method, which, if true, would mean that the best one could hope for is self-consistency (of postulates with the clock-synchronization method). As TVF points out, the220 Book Reviews speed of light is not invariant if measured with clocks that keep universal time (e.g. synchronize moving clocks to a clock static with respect to the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB)). The objection seems to be that modern relativists unfairly bias presentation of the physics in favor of SR over LR. TVF points out that GPS clocks are set to run more slowly than earth-bound clocks prior to launch so that they become synchronized when in orbit, constituting an effective realization of a (‘local’) universal time and providing support at least for the utility of LR over SR. TVF is less solid in his position on superluminal motion, both in the piece cited above on the GPS and in another entitled “Is Faster-Than-Light Propagation Allowed by the Laws of Physics?” (Some of the text is common to both). He states that boosts from subluminal to superluminal motion are impossible in SR because proper clocks cease to advance at light speed. He contrasts this with the possibility that such boosts are permitted in LR because therein proper clocks have no special status whilst the (preferred) universal clock does not behave in a singular manner. But the singular behavior of the light-speed proper clock, as seen from a stationary observer, does not imply singular behavior in the time as witnessed on-board the light-speed craft. SR tells us—and LR must agree—that though one can describe the kinematics of moving objects with either clock, only the on-board proper clock describes the passage of time in the manner experienced by on-board observers. And those clocks tick quite normally even as the craft approaches light speed. Having greater merit is TVF’s objection to superluminal boosts in SR based upon the fact that objects with rest mass require infinite energy to pass through light speed, leading to the notion of inconvertibility of tardyons (or bradyons) and tachyons'. TVF claims that this difficulty does not exist in LR. He offers as an analogy the behavior of a propeller-driven airplane wherein any amount of power supplied to the engines will not take it beyond the speed of sound. The implication is that i) the relativistic mass increase is to some extent illusory; and ii) superluminal speeds are possible and only await discovery of the appropriate technology. This analogy perhaps warrants further thought, though, however, it fails to make a discriminating case in favor of LR over SR?; if a superluminally propagating force is discovered, both SR and LR would require radical reformulation, with neither necessarily the winner. TVF’s claims in these documents that LR is superior to SR must rest, therefore, on parsimony rather than on physically distinct predictions. At present most favor SR since it makes fewer assumptions, even if it is less intuitive. In the event that, for example, a superluminal force is discovered, and the new ph is more easily understood from the standpoint of the ether concept, then the situation will change and LR will be the more parsimonious. Shadow Gravity TVF is pethaps best known as a champion of a non-standard model of gravity. The model is motivated by a particular position he takes that all forces must be