Ether Drag Hypothesis Explained - 65 Characters

[yogi]

Chronos - Model --What model are you talking about - I don't even have model - at least one I am willing to share with you.

Zz - my-my - quackery.

Your posts reflect the hostility I was referring to in my post 29. Its really unbecoming guys.

Russ - I would agree that the typical engineering problem may have many end run solutions - I had in mind some specific examples that were at one time thought by the experts to be limitations which proved to be otherwise.

So what is the subject of this thread - its a question about ether drag. Its not a question about the existence of an ether - its whether something is entrained by the Earth as it moves through space - a proposal put forth after MMx to save the ether hypothesis. This is a different question than whether an ether exists - the lack of evidence for ether drag does not translate into "there is no ether" MMx was a two-way experiment - the nearly null result is nicely explained by the difference in the time rates of measuring clocks in relatively moving frames. The null results however, were first explained by assuming a physical length contraction as per Fitzgerald and later Lorentz. The existence of an ether is not relevant to over and back experiments. MMx and KTx and all over and back experiments will give the same result whether or not light propagates relative to a medium. We have not been at all successful in making an experiment to verify one way isotrophy - if and when that is done, then the ether theory as a propagation medium will finally be put to rest. For a reference see Zhang - Experimental bases of Special Realtivity.

In the meantime, perhaps someone can tell me how to regard the measured 377 ohm impedance of free space, and the fact that its permeability and permittivity determine a velocity which coincides with that of light

 

[ZapperZ]

Zz - my-my - quackery.

Your posts reflect the hostility I was referring to in my post 29. Its really unbecoming guys.

As is becoming a common theme here, you still missed the whole point of my question. My "hostility" here has NEVER been, and is not directed to, the "ether" claim. It has always been towards the idea that one can put forth so-and-so idea and leave it at that without proper justification. I asked you, way in the beginning, on whether ALL the experimental evidence collected, especially recently, are consistent with BOTH the "yes, there is ether" and "no, there is no ether" idea. You said, yes. Then I produce SEVERAL publications that reported on such thing, and in each one of them, a specific point was made that no such ether was ever measured. I then asked you if you did not find it highly dubious that with all the experimental claims that has been put forth that clearly indicated that there is no ether, that no one in the "yes, there is ether" camp would even manage to submit even ONE rebuttals against those reports? I mean, c'mon now! Not even ONE?

From there, it deteoriates into "well there are many important science that never got published", which is often the reply I always get from quacks when they can't justify why any of such ideas can only exist on the web and online forums.

Let's be clear about one thing: you STILL could not produce ANY published papers that would contradict the conclusions made by the papers that I cited. It means that IF there are "intelligent" people who disagree with such conclusions, then these people are highly "closeted" and would not or could not "out" themselves simply by the apparent lack of any legitimate response from them.

I have no way of evaluating if their stand is in any way legitimate or not simply because they haven't put their ideas clearly in such form (which is always a requirement when one submits a paper for publication). This is why I said this is NOT an argument on questioning if "ether exists" versus "ether does not exist", something you keep confusing this with. This is more of a question : "So where the hell are these people?" Do they their ideas only exist on open forums on the 'net (which would make it even more doubly dubious)? Or on someone's quack websites (go to Crank Dot Net if you don't believe me)?

If this is all they have managed to do - and by all practically appeared, by your lack of ability to cite them, it appears that way - then I am surprised that you are so willing to stick yourself out buying into such ideas.

Zz.

 

[yogi]

Zz - First of all I have not been able to download the articles you cited - when I try I get a message that what I have to install conflicts with a program I already have on my computer. So admittedly, I don't know what experiments were made.

So what I will say next can be discounted - but in general I find it very hard from an argumentative standpoint to conclude the absense of something becasue of the failure to detect some property of something. Absense of proof is not proof of absense as the old saying goes. If you could give me a one or two line summary of the essence of the property sought to be revealed, I might find a reference or two in rebuttal. But maybe not.

I know I am missing something in the point your are trying to make - but to me, it is premature to dismiss the ether, whether or not there is rebuttal experimental evidence that contradicts the positive experimental evidence that the property is not revealed by the methods used to detect it.

In my previous post a asked how it is that we measure a spatial impedance for the void and an em propagation velocity for the void that precisely corresponds to what we calculate based upon the permeability and permittivity of free space. I ask again - what does that mean to you. Isn't it incumbant upon those that deny the existence of a medium to explain this coincidence.

Zz - I am a skeptic through and through - I don't buy into ideas.

 

[ZapperZ]

Zz - First of all I have not been able to download the articles you cited - when I try I get a message that what I have to install conflicts with a program I already have on my computer. So admittedly, I don't know what experiments were made.

So what I will say next can be discounted - but in general I find it very hard from an argumentative standpoint to conclude the absense of something becasue of the failure to detect some property of something. Absense of proof is not proof of absense as the old saying goes. If you could give me a one or two line summary of the essence of the property sought to be revealed, I might find a reference or two in rebuttal. But maybe not.

I know I am missing something in the point your are trying to make - but to me, it is premature to dismiss the ether, whether or not there is rebuttal experimental evidence that contradicts the positive experimental evidence that the property is not revealed by the methods used to detect it.

In my previous post a asked how it is that we measure a spatial impedance for the void and an em propagation velocity for the void that precisely corresponds to what we calculate based upon the permeability and permittivity of free space. I ask again - what does that mean to you. Isn't it incumbant upon those that deny the existence of a medium to explain this coincidence.

Zz - I am a skeptic through and through - I don't buy into ideas.

That's strange that you would have said that, considering you bought into the idea of the ether, and, without waiting for whatever "definition" and "observations" necessary. On the other hand, the CLASSICAL ETHER, which is what these experiments were testing, clearly predicted a set of observations. At the very least, such a concept is falsifiable, which is something that can't be said about YOUR idea of the ether, which seems to mimick the non-existence of the classical ether.

As for your "permeability and permittivity" of free space, would you CARE to find out how such values were derived? It is one thing to say that these quantities have some definition and values - it is another to make the huge leap into insisting that these are tell-tale signs of an "ether" (it certainly is NOT the classical ether). It is also a major clutching at straws - because I have yet to see any papers that are claiming that these quantites are connected to an ether (I won't hold my breath about getting any legitimate citation that is forthcoming).

And I am appalled that you are only now trying to read the references I have days ago, especially after dismissing them as not discounting your version of the ether. And *I* get accused of not being open minded?

But really, ALL of this is MOOT! If what you believe has never appeared in a peer-reviewed journal, it will NEVER, ever amount to anything. Evidence within the last 100 years or so has clearly shown this to be the absolute necessary criteria. Short of this, we are wasting out time.

Zz.

 

[yogi]

Zz you have peer-reviewed journel hang up. The free space properties were known for many years and measured by different methods - they were key to Maxwell's interpretation of light as em waves. The connection is so obvious, I can't believe you can dismiss it with such cavalier concission .. you make wild assertions, but have not offered a single rationale as to why these free space parameters have the values they do--- values which determine both the velocity of light and the impedance of space. They define c and Z in precisely the same way that the corresponding parameters of a transmission line determine its characteristic propagation velocity and impedance.

Where did I accuse you of not being open minded? Hostile, yes.

You have no idea of what my view of the ether is - - stop presupposing what you think you know - because you don't. I have said that space has measurable properties - see how far you can ride that donkey

 

[yogi]

Here is quote from one of the other threads posted by Turbo 1:

"How does it happen that a properly endowed natural scientist comes to concern himself with epistemology? Is there no more valuable work in his specialty? I hear many of my colleagues saying, and I sense it from many more, that they feel this way. I cannot share this sentiment. ...Concepts that have proven useful in ordering things easily achieve such an authority over us that we forget their earthly origins and accept them as unalterable givens. Thus they come to be stamped as 'necessities of thought,' 'a priori givens,' etc. The path of scientific advance is often made impassable for a long time through such errors. For that reason, it is by no means an idle game if we become practiced in analyzing the long common place concepts and exhibiting those circumstances upon which their justification and usefulness depend, how they have grown up, individually, out of the givens of experience. By this means, their all-too-great authority will be broken."

Einstein

 

[ZapperZ]

Zz you have peer-reviewed journel hang up.

Damn right I do! It is the simplest, quickest, most OBVIOUS way to differentiate between quackeries and non-quackeries. If it is the necessary criteria for anything to be considered as legitimate, what's wrong with imposing it OUTRIGHT? After all, in the 15 years that I've posed the challenge on the 'net, NO ONE could come up with even a single, miserable example of anything within the past 100 years that have made any significant contribution to the advancement of physics that has NEVER appeared in peer-reviewed journals. So take THAT!

The free space properties were known for many years and measured by different methods - they were key to Maxwell's interpretation of light as em waves. The connection is so obvious, I can't believe you can dismiss it with such cavalier concission .. you make wild assertions, but have not offered a single rationale as to why these free space parameters have the values they do--- values which determine both the velocity of light and the impedance of space. They define c and Z in precisely the same way that the corresponding parameters of a transmission line determine its characteristic propagation velocity and impedance.

What wild assertion did I make? All I asked was that you look at HOW these values were derived! Go look at the most recent values published in CODATA and see what KIND OF EXPERIMENT were done to arrive at those values, and figure out what kind of ASSUMPTIONS that were implicit to those experiments! The fact that I DID NOT offer "a single rationale as to why these free space parameters..." is EXACTLY the proof that, unlike you, I did NOT make any "wild assertion"!

Where did I accuse you of not being open minded? Hostile, yes.

You have no idea of what my view of the ether is - - stop presupposing what you think you know - because you don't. I have said that space has measurable properties - see how far you can ride that donkey

I do not ride any donkeys on here. It was *I* who said that it is one thing to say that space has measurable properties - it is ANOTHER to implicate these properties as due to the presence of the ether. If it's anything, I was being overly conservative in this approach by refusing to jump to such conclusions. It is YOU who are riding this donkey to its death and trying to wildly make the connection between such properties and the presence of the ether, devoid of any theoretical foundation to connect those two. I suggest you stop accusing me of doing what you are practicing.

Zz.

 

[Locrian]

Chronos - Model --What model are you talking about - I don't even have model

That much seems clear.

 

[juju]

Hi Yogi,

I think that the permittivity and permeability properties must arise from the underlying vacuum field structure as I mentioned previously in this thread.

Another possibility is that they arise from quantuum vacuum fluctuations and the virtual particles produced.

juju

 

[yogi]

Juju - That is probably as good a guess as one can make - looking at capacitance as measure of the capability to store charge - it seems unavoidable that, in the absense of physical charges, what is being contained must exist in the form of a field. I have always found Feynman's explanation of the charging of a capacitor enlightening.
--says Feynman at page 27-7: "When the capacitor is being charged, the volume between the plates is receiving energy ...so there must be a flow of energy into that volume from somewhere. Of course you know that it must come in on the chargeing wires-NOT AT ALL. It can't enter the space between the plates from that direction because E is perpendicular to the plates; E x B must be parallel to the plates ..."

After some equations, "So there is an energy flow proportional to E x B that comes in all around the edges...the energy isn't actually coming down the wires, but from the space surrounding the capacitor"

So in the case of the permittivity of space - the relationship between the capacitive properties and the underlying field energy may be analogous

 

[russ_watters]

So what is the subject of this thread - its a question about ether drag. Its not a question about the existence of an ether - its whether something is entrained by the Earth as it moves through space - a proposal put forth after MMx to save the ether hypothesis. This is a different question than whether an ether exists - the lack of evidence for ether drag does not translate into "there is no ether"

Well, yeah, it does. The way to find the ether is by assuming it exists and hypothesizing about what properties it might/must have. That's what the MMx did and the failure of the hypothesis means that the starting assumption is called into question. The logic goes like this:

-If the ether exists, it probably has xxxxx properties.
-XXX properties were tested and not found.
-Therefore the ether may not exist.

I know I am missing something in the point your are trying to make - but to me, it is premature to dismiss the ether, whether or not there is rebuttal experimental evidence that contradicts the positive experimental evidence that the property is not revealed by the methods used to detect it.

Its not really about dismissing it, its simply about not considering it until there is a reason to: If there is no evidence that it exists and all theories that assume it exists are indistinguishable from those that assume it doesn't, what is the point of assuming it does? Isn't 100 years enough wasted time before we can stop considering its existence?

Remember, if observations are made that contradict with existing theory, we can, of course, re-open that door. But until such observations are made, speculation is just plain useless.

Its the invisible, purple elephant theory: you, of course, have no evidence that there is not an invisible, purple elephant in my garage and I can't prove that there is. Why are you not putting any effort into theorizing about this elephant? Why are you not putting any effort into speculating about God? Why aren't you speculating about any of the other infinite hypotheticals for which we have no evidence? What is it about the ether that makes you want to put effort into it, but not my invisible purple elephant? I think I know the answer, but I'd like to hear it from you.

 

[ZapperZ]

Its the invisible, purple elephant theory: you, of course, have no evidence that there is not an invisible, purple elephant in my garage and I can't prove that there is. Why are you not putting any effort into theorizing about this elephant? Why are you not putting any effort into speculating about God? Why aren't you speculating about any of the other infinite hypotheticals for which we have no evidence? What is it about the ether that makes you want to put effort into it, but not my invisible purple elephant? I think I know the answer, but I'd like to hear it from you.

Russ,

You forgot to include my invisible friend. He wants you to know that he is deeply offended for being left out, considering that he spent a whole day feeding and caring your invisible purple elephant.

Zz.

 

[russ_watters]

Russ,

You forgot to include my invisible friend. He wants you to know that he is deeply offended for being left out, considering that he spent a whole day feeding and caring your invisible purple elephant.

Zz.

I knew my garage smelled better than it should for having an elephant living in there...

 

[juju]

Hi Yogi,

I think what happens in the capacitor case is that the E and B fields restructure the symmetry and structure of the vacuum field allowing the energy potentials of that field to be realized in the E and B field energy densities.

The energy is actually inherent in the field but in a potenial form that needs certain structure and symmetry to be manifest.

This would be similar for the case of quantum fluctuations and virtual particles. The E and B fields would restructure the random fluctuations and virtual particle alignments to produce a manifested enrgy field out of these potentials.

juju

 

[yogi]

Juju - so you are saying the E and B fields somehow restructure the space surrounding the capacitor to permit a convergent energy flow into the volume between the plates. So would there be an energy density gradient that drives the charging process?

Russ - your analogy would be appropriate if there were not so many things that indicate there could be a massless medium of some sort; it is not a case of equal likelihoods, albiet you might consider the two probabilites equal, i do not.

 

[pervect]

I knew my garage smelled better than it should for having an elephant living in there...

#include <humor.h>

Well, I think maybe we should postulate an infinite number of invisible elephants and invisible elephant handlers, each of which is smaller than the last, all lliving together in your garage, in a sort of symbiotic relationship.

Now we do have to make sure we can renormalize the infinites away, but we can look to quantum mechanics for guidance on how to do that :->

 

[juju]

Hi Yogi,

There would of course be a temporal gradient, but I think that the energy comes from potential vacuum fields that only need the restructuring to manifest the energy.

It's sort of like the energy is inherent in the field structure but cannot be realized without the restructuring functions.

A crude analogy is like water in your house. It's there but you cannot get at it until you turn on the spigot.

juju

 

[russ_watters]

Russ - your analogy would be appropriate if there were not so many things that indicate there could be a massless medium of some sort; it is not a case of equal likelihoods, albiet you might consider the two probabilites equal, i do not.

I thought we had already established that this hypothetical ether has had absolutely no effect on any experiment ever performed? What, exactly, are these "indications" you speak of?

 

[yogi]

Russ - see my post #17 - to that partial list, consider for example the standard explanation of cosmological red shift - a stretching of space (its not a Doppler shift and its most likely not tired light). So how can nothing be stretching?

What I am saying is that there are a lot of phenomena that are better explained by a medium than a void devoid of connectedness, but nonetheless exhibiting measurable properties. Recall Hawking comment: "Empty space isn't empty"

 

[ZapperZ]

Russ - see my post #17 - to that partial list, consider for example the standard explanation of cosmological red shift - a stretching of space (its not a Doppler shift and its most likely not tired light). So how can nothing be stretching?

What I am saying is that there are a lot of phenomena that are better explained by a medium than a void devoid of connectedness, but nonetheless exhibiting measurable properties. Recall Hawking comment: "Empty space isn't empty"

But that's a bastardization of Hawking's comment, considering that he was illustrating vacuum fluctuation that's possible in QFT. This is NOT what you are referring to, and I would bet you considerable money that Hawking did NOT meant this to indicate that this is the "ether".

Secondly, you need to look at the GR scalling factor that is "stretching". This is how much space is expanding. However, this is not just two points in space spreading apart, because it is not THAT simple.

Thirdly, again, if you think the red shift data (have you actually SEEN one, with ALL the spectral lines shifted, to make such claims?) isn't indicative of a doppler shift, then you should submit a rebuttal to all those papers that claim so. You have not been able to show any quantitative results that indicate that what you are claiming is consistent with the observation. All you have done is produce hand-waving argument and then claim that, yes, this can explain that too. It is sad if you somehow think that this is how physics is done. Lack of ANY quantitative agreement is a FATAL flaw.

Zz.

 

[russ_watters]

Russ - see my post #17 - to that partial list,

There are no experiments in that list. Its just a bunch of what-ifs. Could you comment directly on what I just said, please? I'll say it again: "I thought we had already established that this hypothetical ether has had absolutely no effect on any experiment ever performed? What, exactly, are these "indications" you speak of?" Are these "indications" simply the idle speculations listed in post #17? That's not scientific. Its not suggestive of further research being needed. It is directly analogous to my invisible purple elephant.

consider for example the standard explanation of cosmological red shift - a stretching of space (its not a Doppler shift and its most likely not tired light). So how can nothing be stretching?

Who ever said there was "nothing" stretching? Its Einstein's "ether". It is not the classical ether postulated in the MMx. We've already had that conversation: they are not the same thing and you agreed (in post 21). This is what I meant when I said that it appears ether proponents mix the two in a purposeful attempt at obfuscation. Stop mixing these two separate ideas.

What I am saying is that there are a lot of phenomena that are better explained by a medium than a void devoid of connectedness, but nonetheless exhibiting measurable properties. [emphasis added]

"Better explained" translates into 'a universe that operates according to my preconcieved notions and biases'. yogi, I say again: if i does not affect any experiment ever performed, then it cannot better explain anything. The only thing it currently does is satisfy your bias.

edit: regarding "nothing". Why are you hung up on the idea that "nothing" can't have properties? "Nothing" has lots of very well-defined properties! Say, for example, you have a 1m square box with "nothing" in it. Just off the top of my head, its properties are:

-it has a volume of 1cu m
-it has a mass of 0g
-it has a temperature of 0k
-it allows light to pass through at C, without absorption
-it has a Reynolds' number of 0
-it has a pressure of -14.7psi (g)

Seems to me like your desire for there to be an ether is just a hang-up on the concept of "nothing".

 

[russ_watters]

But that's a bastardization of Hawking's comment, considering that he was illustrating vacuum fluctuation that's possible in QFT.

I don't think that goes far enough: yogi, you are putting words in people's mouths (first Einstein, now Hawking) that you know they did not say.

 

[yogi]

Russ - Hardly putting words in anyone's mouth - the words speak for themselves - and the properties you have cited Russ for a volume of space are not necessarily true - there is nothing to gauge the energy by - energy is a relative concept - so is pressure - for all we know space could be under uniform pressure or uniform tension -you would not be able to differentiate your volume from any of the surrounding volumes to measure its absolute energy or pressure. Take Feynman's explanation of the charging capacitor - where is the spatial energy coming from? Or Einsteins distortion of space - the excess radius and all the other consequences of the influence of mass upon space - for GR to work there must be a physical change in something -

How do you explain the Casimir effect - you forgot to include all the virtual photons in your 1 square meter of space - or whatever it is that causes two closely spaced parallel plates to be attracted.

Zapper - you are sadly misinformed as to the current (generally accepted) explanation of the cosmological red shift - Robertson (the same guy that codeveloped the Robertson-Walker metric) first published the stretching of space scenereo about 40 years ago (peer reviewed no less). The other explanations (Doppler and tired light) are held by a small minority of persons (most of whom are steady state followers).

And Russ - all those experiments you keep harking back too are based upon detecting two way isotrophy. Two way experiments will always lead to a null result - by the very nature of the transforms - time dilation wipes out any chance of measureing light anisotrophy in two way experiments. As I said above, when there is good "one way" repeatable data that renders a null result, then the notion of velocity wrt to space should be forever put to bed. I will be the first to say yea. Until then it would be good for the both of you to reread my post 41.

 

[yogi]

Another quote from Einstein:

“...to deny the ether is ultimately to assume that empty space has no physical qualities whatever. The fundamental facts of mechanics to not harmonize with this view. For the mechanical behavior of a corporal system hovering freely in empty space not only depends upon relative positions (distances) and relative velocities, but also on its state of rotation, which physically may be taken as a characteristic not appertaining to the system itself. In order to be able to look upon the rotation of the system, at least formally, as something real, Newton objectivises space. Since he classes his absolute space together with real things, for him rotation relative to absolute space is also something real. Newton might no less well have called his absolute space “Ether”; what is essential is merely that beside observable objects, another thing, which is not perceptible, must be looked upon as real, to enable acceleration or rotation to be looked upon as something real.

 

[yogi]

and another: “...The ether was invented, penetrating everything, filling the whole of space, and admitted as a new kind of matter. ... it was overlooked that by this procedure, space itself had been brought to life...It (the ether) was thus to some degree identical with space itself... In this way the field theory was born as a illegitimate child of Newtonian physics.”

“To become fully conscious of this change in outlook was a task for a highly original mind whose insight could go straight to essentials, a mind that never got stuck in formulas. Faraday was this favored spirit. His instinct revolted at the idea of forces acting directly at a distance which seemed contrary to every elementary observation.” If one electrified body attracts or repels a second body, this was for him brought about not by a direct action from the first body to the second, but through an intermediary action. The first body brings the space immediately around it into a certain condition which spreads itself into more distant parts of space according to a certain spatiotemporal law of propagation. This condition of space was called ‘the electric field.’ The second body experiences a force because it lies in the field of the first, and vice versa. The ‘field’ thus provided a conceptual apparatus which rendered unnecessary the idea of action at a distance. Faraday also had the bold idea that under appropriate circumstances fields might detach themselves from the bodies producing them and speed away through space as free fields; this was his interpretation of light.”

And, o yes Russ - your little volume of space will be measured to have capacity and inductance - where do they come from?

 

[ZapperZ]

Zapper - you are sadly misinformed as to the current (generally accepted) explanation of the cosmological red shift - Robertson (the same guy that codeveloped the Robertson-Walker metric) first published the stretching of space scenereo about 40 years ago (peer reviewed no less). The other explanations (Doppler and tired light) are held by a small minority of persons (most of whom are steady state followers).

No, I suggest that it is YOU who are sadly misinformed. I suggest you read Scott Dodelson's book and figure out what "stretching of space" really mean and if it has anything to do with the GR scalling factor.

This is getting hilarious by the minute. And sad, because you think that physics is done by one's ability to quote stuff. Well, I can play that game too...

"The propensity for quotation shows the lack of original thought" - Lord Peter Wimsey in one of Dorothy Sayer's book.

 

[ZapperZ]

And, o yes Russ - your little volume of space will be measured to have capacity and inductance - where do they come from?

It is very strange that you keep using this and then asking the rest of US to give YOU an explanation. Since you are equally hung up on this the way I am towards peer-reviewed publications, why don't YOU give us YOUR reason for such values? Typically, when one has some wild connection to make, one MAKES it, rather than pussyfooting around on a fishing expedition.

Take up on my challenge and produce some quantitative results. So how an ether model, ANY ether model, could arrive at the permittivity and permeability of space. So how, from the standard experiments that these values were obtained, that any ether model could produce such quantitative agreement. Please ride this donkey to its end and see if it really is an as*.

Zz.

 

[yogi]

Zz - Quotes from authorities like Einstein should be taken seriously. Einstein did not have a model of space, he defined it in terms of some of its known characteristics. I have done the same, expanding slightly upon his ideas because we have new experiments that were not known during his lifetime. All that is being said is that space has many properties - at some point in the future, the totality of those collective properties will be the bases of a complete description of space (or ether - whatever one chooses to call it).

Why are you so hostile and defensive ?

If you have a link to a reference that purports to have verified one-way isotrophy, let's have it. If you don't, say so.

 

[Reshma]

All members--please forgive me if I am wrong.

The sacrosanct property of light was completely novel in Einstein's STR. When asked late in his life why he made such an assumption, Einstein answered he believed in the Maxwell equations. But by 1905 it was clear to Einstein that the ether was unnecessary in explaining the physics of light. Maxwell's equation give perfectly good description of the constancy of light with no reference to an ether.

Indeed the only mention of ether in Einstein's paper of relativity is, "The introduction of a 'luminferous ether' will prove to be superfluous in as much as the view here to be developed will not require an 'absolutely stationary space' provided with special properties."

Thus making a century of work on the ether--irrelavent.

 

[ZapperZ]

Zz - Quotes from authorities like Einstein should be taken seriously. Einstein did not have a model of space, he defined it in terms of some of its known characteristics. I have done the same, expanding slightly upon his ideas because we have new experiments that were not known during his lifetime. All that is being said is that space has many properties - at some point in the future, the totality of those collective properties will be the bases of a complete description of space (or ether - whatever one chooses to call it).

But you can NEVER use quotes from anyone, even god, to justify ANY physical explanation. You seem to think such things are perfect all right by your propensity in doing it. It is BAD enough that you completely twisted Hawking's comments and somehow implicated that as justifying this ether business. And you saw nothing WRONG with this?

Why are you so hostile and defensive ?

Because you exhibit the very same symptoms that any quacks do. You produce "evidence" that purported to support your argument with no justifications and no references. Not only that, you go on a fishing expedition by throwing out bits and pieces of information such as the permittivity of free space and then somehow make the connection to the existence of the ether, WITHOUT any theoretical justifications. This is BOGUS!

All you have done is made hand-waving arguments and somehow this is convicing enough for you to adopt the existence of the ether, dispite the fact that there has been ZERO quantitative agreement to anything in existence. And such things are enough to challenge conventional theories? Get real, why don't you?

If you have a link to a reference that purports to have verified one-way isotrophy, let's have it. If you don't, say so.

Why? (i) Have you read the previous ones that I gave? (ii) Why should I produce more when you can't produce even ONE? (iii) I have no desire to make any more concrete and logical argument to counter your stand. All I wish to do is make hand-waving, unjustified, unverified, and vague fishing expedition. In other words, I will only respond in kind.

Zz.

 

[russ_watters]

Russ - Hardly putting words in anyone's mouth - the words speak for themselves

So, you are now asserting that both Einstein and Hawking were talking about the classical ether in those quotes? Seriously? yogi, you're being rediculous, but more importantly, you're contradicting yourself.

and the properties you have cited Russ for a volume of space are not necessarily true - there is nothing to gauge the energy by - energy is a relative concept - so is pressure - for all we know space could be under uniform pressure or uniform tension -you would not be able to differentiate your volume from any of the surrounding volumes to measure its absolute energy or pressure.

That was just an example, and in any case, I did specify gage pressure.

How do you explain the Casimir effect - you forgot to include all the virtual photons in your 1 square meter of space - or whatever it is that causes two closely spaced parallel plates to be attracted.

Are you now claiming that QM provides the classical ether? Evidence? C'mon, you're reaching.

And Russ - all those experiments you keep harking back too are based upon detecting two way isotrophy. Two way experiments will always lead to a null result - by the very nature of the transforms - time dilation wipes out any chance of measureing light anisotrophy in two way experiments.

Well good - we're still in agreement: this hypothetical ether has had absolutely no effect on any experiment ever performed. So it is exactly analogous to my invisible purple elephant. Why do I keep harping on the evidence? I have a bias (much like ZZ): I don't accept a hypothesis for which there is no evidence. Though is it really right to call that a bias? It is, after all, what the Scientific Method demands.

As I said above, when there is good "one way" repeatable data that renders a null result, then the notion of velocity wrt to space should be forever put to bed. I will be the first to say yea.

I bet - but here's a question I never get a satisfactory answer to: if it is as simple as doing a one-way test, why don't any ether "theorists" ever perform one? A couple thousand dollars aught to get you a couple of hours of lab time to do it. My perception is that ether theorists are afraid of the result.

The past 100 years for ether theorists has been about escaping closing loopholes (or, perhaps, finding ways to stay inside them?). The remaining loopholes in which the ether could still reside are extremely small and that is why most scientists considered it unreasonable to assume it existed 100 years ago.

Until then it would be good for the both of you to reread my post 41.

Indeed:

Concepts that have proven useful in ordering things easily achieve such an authority over us that we forget their earthly origins and accept them as unalterable givens. Thus they come to be stamped as 'necessities of thought,' 'a priori givens,' etc.

Yogi, you don't see it? He's talking to you!

And, o yes Russ - your little volume of space will be measured to have capacity and inductance - where do they come from?

Good question. Write an hypothesis and test it. Otherwise, "Ether!" is just idle speculation based on the "a priori given" that there must be an ether.

Yogi, you keep posting Einstein quotes, but we've been over this already: Einstein was not talking about the classical ether and you agreed. Are you trying to drive home the point that you're mixing separate concepts? We get it.

 

[russ_watters]

All members--please forgive me if I am wrong.

The sacrosanct property of light was completely novel in Einstein's STR. When asked late in his life why he made such an assumption, Einstein answered he believed in the Maxwell equations. But by 1905 it was clear to Einstein that the ether was unnecessary in explaining the physics of light. Maxwell's equation give perfectly good description of the constancy of light with no reference to an ether.

Indeed the only mention of ether in Einstein's paper of relativity is, "The introduction of a 'luminferous ether' will prove to be superfluous in as much as the view here to be developed will not require an 'absolutely stationary space' provided with special properties."

Thus making a century of work on the ether--irrelavent.[emphasis added]

Now there is a quote with no ambiguity.

Yes, Reshma, I think you're right: it really is simply 100 years of irrelevancy.

 

[yogi]

In the two papers from which I have quoted - Einstein was talking about an ether - the whole of both papers dealt with his views on the reality of an ether - he was attempting to correct the notion that he did not believe in an ether - and that relativity had proved there was no ether.

Even though to this day many copy cat textbooks will say that SR proved there was no ether - its an erroneous line of thought that developed in conjuction with SR -
There may not be a classical ether - I do not know - but it was not disproved by SR.

WE note there is only one line in 1920 Layden address that was limiting - and as we have discussed before Russ - it was "the idea of motion cannot be applied to it"

So your saying the classical ether doesn't exist - and Einstein said so - that may be what he meant. But he may have meant that c is determined by the properties of space, but the velocity appears isotropic because of the way we measure things. Einstein was convinced that we could never detect our motion wrt space - that does not mean there is no ether. The fact that it isn't revealed by round trip experiments does not rule it out.

You say - set up an experiment and test for one way isotrophy - not so easy - there are a lot of papers written about how this may not even be possible because in order to measure the distance that is required we need to first know the velcoity of light in the direction of the measurment - but to get that we need to know the distance and our clock rate - its a dog chasing his tail. At least as far as lab experiments go - where the source, frame and the receiving clock are all comoving - there is a problem in testing for one way isotrophy . It may be possible to measure the one way speed astronomically - like the old Roamer experiments - if we could get better accuracy - I don't know

With regard to the above quote in the 1905 paper - yes ---one sentence which said it is superfluous - --- and we all agree - the consideration of a medium is unnecessary because of the way Einstein derived the LT ... with reference to observations in relatively moving frames. But contrast this with his later address, as quoted above. The shoe is now on the other foot. In these later papers, we have many paragraphs all about the nature of the ether, with one limiting reference (the idea of motion cannot be applied to it).

 

[yogi]

How important is the peer review system anyway? Rustum Roy & James R. Ashburn (co-author of the 1:2:3 superconductor paper) recently wrote (Nature 414:6862, p.394, Nov 2001): "...many leaders [...] such as Nobel laureates [...] regard peer review as a great hindrance to good science [...] An enormous amount of the best science has been and is run without the benefit of this rubric, as is the worldwide patent system [...] Everyone except the true believers know that it is your nearest competitors who often `peer' review your paper [...] The enormous waste of scientists' time, and the absolute, ineluctable bias against innovation, are its worst offences. `Review by competitors' is an all-too-accurate description of this system, wreaking devastation on papers and proposals [...] ... should not repeat the old canards such as:" despite the problems thrown up by peer review, no serious alternative has yet been proposed." Nonsense. They have not only been proposed but have been in regular use worldwide for a very long time. The users include the world's largest research agency [...] and industrial research worldwide." I omitted many statements - do read the full letter.

 

[yogi]

Zz: Where are you? - there are some famous papers have been published without review. These include:

Publication of Watson and Crick's 1951 paper on the structure of DNA in Nature. This paper was not sent out for peer review. John Maddox stated that “the Watson and Crick paper was not peer-reviewed by Nature... the paper could not have been refereed: its correctness is self-evident. No referee working in the field (Linus Pauling?) could have kept his mouth shut once he saw the structure” (Nature 426:119 (2003)). The editors accepted the paper upon receipt of a “Publish” covering letter from influential physicist William Lawrence Bragg.

The 1905 issue of Annalen der Physik, in which Einstein published five extraordinary papers including special relativity and the photoelectric effect. The journal's editor in chief, Max Planck, recognized the virtue of publishing such outlandish ideas and had the papers published; none of Einstein's papers were sent to reviewers. The decision to publish was made exclusively by either the editor in chief, or the co-editor Wilhelm Wien—both certainly ‘peers’ beyond doubt (who were later to win the Nobel prize in physics). However, at the time there was a policy that allowed authors much latitude after their first publication. In a recent editorial in Nature, it was stated that “in journals in those days, the burden of proof was generally on the opponents rather than the proponents of new ideas.”