I am actually looking at the 1920 English volume, based on the German 5th edition (c. 1919), with the original 1916 preface, and a specially written Appendix III. The 14th German edition was published in 1922. If you have a "15th edition" you are probably talking about some modern print run like the 1961 English paperback, complete with an ISBN number. But when you say "Deflection of Light by a Gravitational Field" you are talking about GR, not STR which was one of my main points.
STR was introduced in two scientific papers in 1905. Minkowski gave it simpler mathematical foundations in 1907. By 1910, these German-language papers were accepted by many German physicists, and the ways that STR made the universe more understandable was beginning to be grasped well by others. By 1912, the first calls for Einstein to get a Nobel prize began, from the 1911 Nobel prize winner! So by 1916 (German First edition) or 1920 (The below English edition), STR was highly thought of by people who matter, and people who don't matter (in physics) wanted to wrap their heads around it. That's why this is a popular physics book -- not a scientific paper. The Times (London) on November 7, 1919 broke the news to the world of the successful test of Einstein over Newton, but that was a test of GR, not STR per se. Your jealousy of Einstein's actual merits and fame does not in the least manner make him wrong.
First, if you are going to converse with me you must cease your little pedetrian digs at, for instance, "my jealousy of Einstein". You exhibit a classic SRT persona, to wit, AE being " highly thought of by people who matter" and was detested by those in physics who didn't matter. So your scientific nugget of supporting data for SRT/GR is AE's reputation in the circle of the intelligent and all klnowing.
His fame was instantaneous as some SRTists convinced the paper world of AE's "merits". So the reporting contained the victory over Newton. The scientific value of AE is a defeat of Newton? Perhasps AE was standing in for Leibniz who was screwed by Newton in the matter of who discovered calculus first. IN was quoted after his hand picked panel voted 100% in IN's favor, that "It felt so good in Breaking Leibniz's heart."
Two things here. I do not dislike nor envy AE. Infact I recognize his EPR paper as instrumental in spreading the concept (which he opposed) of 'action at a distance' which IN didn't oppose but remained reluctant to suggest his law of gravitation permitted anything other than predictive calculations of the moon's position in orbit, but he was able to see that QM was teetering on the brink of disaster as EPR focused on the ability of an observer to predict the 'spin state' of a photon before it was measured, and that measuring a twin particle on opposite sides of the universe immediately set the parameter of the unmeasured photon. This spookiness has prevented a lot of intelligence to go to waste. Being forbidden to know before measuring a particular characteristic of matter is fundamental to QM
The figures in the table of paragraph 14 of Appendix III in this freely available English edition are for seven stars, but each is measured twice in orthogonal directions. This makes it 14 datapoints. But your argument against the paucity of the data is misplaced, since the datapoints are in agreement with GR over a null result or the Newtonian prediction.
I was pointing out that only seven out of dozens of points were published. The unpublished data was scattered all over the sky which proved only that the experimentors were incompetent as manifest by their claiming the data shown was "good data". The paucity of data is not my complaint. The refusal to permit all the being available for public scrutiny is my complaint added with the retention and nonuse of actual data.
Yuor claim that the data was GR consistent provides the same level of confidence belief inspiring as was Richard Nixon's statement to the press, "I am not a crook". History says this is Nixon's only lie.
You haven't mentioned anything about the telescopes having a resolution of approximately 1 cm where separation of the stars was on the order of hundreths of a millimeter imbedded in photographic paper, represnting approximately 2=3 tenths within 20 arc seconds. And what is so secret about the matter that the public was denied a clean look? Eddington was so convinced re SRT that he thought it unnecessary to conduct the experiment and he only agreed to do so upon his promise (to the British Govt) to engage in some public project after he refused induction into the military on religious grounds. Eddington's manner was devious and corrupt.
Your argument against the paucity of the data is and ignorant of the most basic fact of astronomical observation since there was only one eclipse and there are only so many bright stars available in frame. And any argument you might have had with the wide margin of error of the 1919 result is antique when compared with the Hipparcos 1997 repeat, as well with many other tests.
http://www.bartleby.com/173/a3.html
The point here is that AE was famous overnight and remained so throughout his life, by those that matter of course. You want the 1997 test to negate the fraudulent one of 1919? What value did thew later test have? Was anything added to the sciences by line of SRTists strung out together all neatly joined at the hip pointing to "yet another confirmation of AE's relativity theory?" There is something smelly when a scientific law of nature needs repeated publication of claims that must always keep the knowledge level above a certainly level. And the proof to the public with other than arguments like your own about people who matter is nonexistent. Are you claiming special relativity qualities that permit you be granted an unquestionaabthe. This is telling the viewers of this thread that you are an unimpeachable source of truth; that if they are persuaded my Geistkiesel's anti-AE that aren't within the group of persons that matter. WHy do you do this?
So if the conditions weren't favorable for acquiring competent data why hide this fact? Well, they hid the facts because they had already claimed fanatic religious belief in SRT and because the press was would up tighter cork in beer keg.
Pointing a telescope at the sun and getting accurate results is hard in-atmosphere, because the Sun is hot. The 1973 Mauritania result is not much different than the 1919 expedition. But you get better results out of atmosphere or with a different form of light, like radio waves.
How did this 1973 expedition locate bent light rays and hence the source stars using radio waves? Or did they? Or was some other form lof light involved, visible wav e lengths? Or were the data like infrared where the markings necessarily needed scientific translation? I can tell you are no donator to funds for research of disproving scscientists in the same sense that fans and supporters of the (Soccer) footbal team,
die Augburger Bladder Hunde are faithful and loyal to their team. You are an honest person inthe same sense that a court judge that has been bought by one side in a litigation process, remains bought, as he promised.
rpenner, think, before responding to this question, consider your answer so Cas not to be embarrassed. Carefully now, do you know the difference between pigeon shit and chicken shit?
Chicken shit is saltier.
Eddington was not the one who threw out the distorted images from the 1919 result, Dyson did. So your whole anti-Eddington tirade is baseless. Likewise, Einstein (who did not go on the 1919 expedition) is being completely ethical by quoting the results of and conclusions of other's original research.
I have no tirade against anyone. Since you brought it up, Eddington at any moment in his life could have come clean to the world regarding the nature of the data. So you are saying Eddington was not a co-conspirator of
Dyson?
And the book, with the full title of: Über die spezielle und die allgemeine Relativitätstheorie, gemeinverständlich or for the English edition: Relativity, the Special and the General Theory: A Popular Exposition tells you he is not writing for the professional physicist at the edge of human knowledge. These are pop-science books in the truest sense of the term. Physics for the masses with very little math.
So, AE is justified in feeding his popular version on pieces of sweet bread? Like his simulataneity argument in chapter 9/ AE is saying that the observer on the train located at the midpoint point of siimultaneous lightning strikes at both ends of the train whom sees the forward strike before the one from the rear is justified in claiming that in his frame the forward strike occured before the latter? Even though observers on both ends of the train measured the two lightning bolts entering the moving frame simultaneously? Only the observer's particlular position in the moving frame permits one to believe the silly statement that the forward strike occured before the one from the aft end of the train. And when the observer is handed paper proof of the time of arrival of both lights onto the moving frame was simultaneous, the oberver may start screaming, "fooking liars, fooking liars, fooking liars".
And Dayton Miller's 1933 experiment, unlike the 1919 expedition, did not return the expected number (assuming an Earth which moves through a absolute ether) -- just a number different than zero. But Miller processed his numbers far more than the 1919 team.
Are you calling dayton miller and all the people on his team made up data fooking liars ? Miller has made all his data available for scrutiny, even to those who published rubish about Miller's failure to account for temperature effects which distorted the data? Miller spent considerable time and detail discussing temperature and Shankland paper is nothing but hypothetical "coulda shoulda wouldas". Shankland had been associated with Miller earlier in the series of experiments.
And Dayton Miller's 1933 experiment, unlike the 1919 expedition, did not return the expected number (assuming an Earth which moves through a absolute ether) -- just a number different than zero. But Miller processed his numbers far more than the 1919 team.
How the hell do you knlow who and how the data was processed?
See R. S. Shankland, S. W. McCuskey, F. C. Leone, and G. Kuerti, "
New analysis of the interferometric observations of Dayton C. Miller,"
Rev. Mod. Phys. 27, 167–178 (1955) for a reason why Dayton Miller cannot be trusted in isolation. Where are the repeats of Miller's work? For 30 years Miller's experiment was repeated and nothing was seen. Are the laws of physics different when Miller works as opposed to other researchers? Or is the conclusion that Miller somehow goofed a more likely hypothesis?
You should read the venom coming through your posts -you discuss people, events, circumstances as if you were there in person. You called me jealous of AE, I observe you as an equivalent of a religious fanatic. When you went to school and studied SRT you knew nothing of it, and yet you accepted the spoonsfull of insanity as if being fed by the Archangel St Michael.
Or look at
http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0608238 -- Miller set up a procedure which could be fooled, but the raw data exists and there is no signal. So the very tiny science mystery of why Dayton Miller, a devout anti-Relativist, got an answer which was neither compatible with Ether theory nor Relativity when all other experiment confirm Relativity is solved without disgrace to Miller's memory. And the 1919 expedition, the 1973 expedition, the Hipparcos space-based tests, and many others confirm General Relativity, which helps confirm Special Relativity in the special circumstance that gravity is negligible.
Did the eclipse data get such an intensive scrutiny? You didn't read Miller's
paper, or Shankland's. I get the distinct impression that you have an assigned peripheral mission in life which is to maintain a close and failthful allegience to the SRT silliness. The link to the data analysis was interesting but describes nothing except a slight failure to disguise a demeaning attitude about anyone challenging that religious order into which you were inducted and as you are trained.
Oh well I do appreciate the time and effort you put into this post, but I feel as if my time and effort have been violated' I notice you have failed to respond to the the thread here as it was presented. Your approach is naively immature - why disuss points of scientifically contested matters when it is much easier to simply utter the "1000 supporting experiments of SRT" in such a way as if no experiment will ever cast a cloud of suspicion on the theory, which is you life. What possible benefit does SRT offer to anyone on this planet? Cancer abatement, political equilibrium , travel in space to the stars, can it alleviate
any kind of human discomfort. No, SRT cannot even be inserted into a line of words intended as humorouse. Regarding SRT? It's no joke.
One thing distinguishes SRT from Ptolemaic models providing information regarding the location of planets in the solar system : Ptolemy's system worked and contributed to satisfying spoken needs of those availing themselves of Ptolemy's circles within cirlces.