Page "Herbert Dingle" Paragraph 7

Initially Dingle argued that, contrary to the usual understanding of the famous twin paradox, special relativity did not predict unequal aging of twins, one of whom makes a high-speed voyage and returns to Earth, but he then came to realize and acknowledge that his understanding had been mistaken.

He then began to argue that special relativity was empirically wrong in its predictions, although experimental evidence showed he was mistaken about this.

Ultimately Dingle re-focused his criticism to claim that special relativity was logically inconsistent: " The theory relativity unavoidably requires that A works more slowly than B and B more slowly than A -- which it requires no super-intelligence to see is impossible.

" Hence he asserted that the well-known reciprocity of the Lorentz transformation is self-evidently impossible.

As Whitrow explained in Dingle's obituary, this is not correct .< ref > The Lorentz transformation is x '=( x − vt ) β, t '=( t − vx / c < sup > 2 </ sup >) β, and its algebraic inverse is x =( x '+ vt ') β, t =( t '+ vx '/ c < sup > 2 </ sup >) β, where β = 1 /√( 1 − v < sup > 2 </ sup >/ c < sup > 2 </ sup >).

These equations imply t '= βt at x = 0, and t = βt ' at x '= 0.

Dingle alleged that these two facts are mutually contradictory, because the first implies t '/ t