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Mountain Man's Global News Archive The Aether Hypothesis and MMX
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Mountain Man's Global News Archive The Aether Hypothesis and MMX
Web Publication by Mountain Man Graphics, Australia
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The Aether Hypothesis and MMX |
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Some other dude wrote ... I am not a scientist, so spelling out test implications is not something that I can do. To test for an aether drag is perhaps a good test implication, but failure to detect this aether wind or drag could've been a result of faulty equipment Mati Meron wrote ... Of course. That's why theories don't stand or fall on single experiments but on accumulation of a critical amount of information. The picture, often presented in popular books, of single, seminal experiments pointing science in the right direction is very romantic but quite wrong. Other dude ... (it is interesting to note that the assumption that certain mechanical devices will detect certain effects is an auxiliary hypothesis) Mati wrote: That science works is also an auxiliary hypothesis. The other dude wrote ... or faulty hidden assumptions. This is why the Michelson-Morley experiment did not conclusively destroy the aether hypothesis. Mati Meron replied: Define the "aether hypothesis" Physical entities do not come with labels attached. Do not expect any experiment to reveal a golden shimmering fluid filling space with holographic letters spelling "Aether, release 6.66, call Microsoft to arrange delivery":-) An experiment probes for an entity defined by a set of properties, not an entity bearing a certain name. The Michelson-Morley experiment (and other experiments of its kind) ruled out an aether with a specific set of properties. Yet other experiments ruled out yet other sets of properties. Eventually you get to a point where the properties required of an aether consistent with all the negative results so far become as convoluted as the good old-fashioned epicycles. And, at the same time you've a theory which accounts for all this without any such convolutions. Which you choose? Furthermore, this harping on the Michelson-Morley experiment is downright silly. A physical theory goes through a process of evolution. Usually you'll have various experimental results which provide hints (but only hints) at the underlying mechanisms. Based on such hints people formulate guesses. Eventually somebody (or quite a few somebodies) guesses at a set of axioms (in physics we call them postulates) based on which a theory explaining the results can be formulated. Now the next statge takes over. The theory starts being used not for post mortems but for predictions of new and yet unobserved phenomena. And each time a new prediction is being made and the corresponding phenomenon observed, as predicted, the theory is strengthened. At this stage the original experiments which provided the hints cease to be relevant (other than as historical enecdotes). If somebody tomorrow would come with a clear cut evidence that Michelson and Morley cheated all along, that they never performed their measurement and instead blew their funds playing rolette in Monte Carlo, it would've been devoid of any significance. Anybody who woould want to question relativity now would've to do it not on the level of MMX but on the level of all the stuff that accumulated since. Completely different playing ground. Going back to MMX is like questioning the existance of America based on inaccuracies in the diaries of Colombus. Mati Meron | "When you argue with a fool, meron@cars.uchicago.edu | chances are he is doing just the same"
Further on MMX Interpretations |
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Earlier in the year, some other Dude had written:
The Michelson-Morely experiment about 100 years ago
proved specifically the constancy of speed of light.
Etherman writes:
For the billionth time, it proved no such thing.
That's one of many possible interpretations.
I listed several of them in another thread,
but there was no follow-up discussion.
So here again is a list:
1) The one-way speed of light is constant (relativity)
2) The two-way speed of light is constant, but the one-way speed is variable.
3) The aether is either fully or partially entrained by the Earth.
4) Motion relative to the aether causes a Lorentz contraction
in the direction of motion.
5) c^2 * k^2 - w^2 is an invariant (where c is the speed of light,
k is the wavenumber, and w is frequency).
6) There's no aether, so no aether wind, so no fringe shift.
7) Light is emitted at all velocities, but we can only observe it when
our relative velocity is c (Radiation Continuum Model).