This paper offers elegant Newtonian explanations for key experiments that support special relativity (SR). Rossi’s high altitude µ-meson measurements are shown to accurately reveal µ-meson flight times between known altitudes, consistent with µ-meson speeds of up to 20 c, thus contradicting SR’s universal speed limit concept. The speed-limited E‑field and spiral H-field trajectories of electrons are explained classically by augmenting the Lorentz force with a flux-proportional radiation damping Lentz force:
F = (eE + e v x B ) - [(e/c) (v ∙E) E/|E| + e α (B x v x B)/|B|]
In the above model, an electron in an E-field reaches a terminal velocity of c when its Lorentz motive and radiation damping forces are equally opposed. The spiral trajectories of charged particles in H-fields are shown to be due to the progressive radiation dampening of their tangential velocities while their Lawrence cyclotron frequencies remain unaffected. The remarkable experiments of Ives and Stillwell, and of Kundig are re-interpreted as being due to impulsive momentum transfer to photons emitted from accelerating molecules or nuclei. However, the impulsive momentum transfer time is a fraction of the photon emitter lifetime that is proportional to the characteristic light transit time.
SR’s time-dilatation formulation is shown to be theoretically flawed because: (i) both its postulates are traceable to Newton’s Corollary V, in which time and mass invariance are implicit, and (ii) SR’s unjustified expectation of an inertial frame outcome for a non-inertial experimental design that places observer and apparatus in separate frames; a simple solution by Galilean velocity transformation proves no time dilation. Additionally, SR’s time dilation formulation is ambiguous for rotations and wave-clock types. Replacing the light clock with a sonar clock also leads to ambiguous time dilations and an unlikely upper speed limit.
Consequently, Newton’s laws alone are sufficient to fully explain the experimental data that are now believed to support SR.