[geocentrism] Re: New Scientist Mag. The ether rediscovered!
- From: "Philip" <joyphil@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <geocentrism@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 5 Apr 2005 10:36:44 +1000
Thanks for the article Jack.
I want to say that I do not expect Morley did or anyone else will detect any
movement of the aether. It is a bit like the people sealed in the cabin of a
rocket in space doing thousands of miles per hour and not knowing it, trying
to detect their motion if any.
The worldlings think the universe is still or moving around a galactic centre,
whilst we revolve, so using that basic incontestable (to them) reference , they
will not find anything, as they assume the light travels in a straight line.
and it will look like it.
With an aetheric theory and a rotating universe, it becomes obvious that what
appears as light travelling in a straight line, cannot be true. Note: I am
using the photon, (particle) corpuscular theory (property) of light.
Consider.. To the accentrist who sends a pulze of EMR into space, headed for a
star assumes that after it is sent, he with the earth moves on to the east.
The reality according to us: We are stationary , and the ray or pulse of light
is rotating around the world as it moves away. still heading for the star which
also is rotating radially around us. All motions being considered. Does that
not make the pulse that takes say four years to reach its target, actually
prescribe a spiral path?
An aside? Has anyone heard any more about the anomaly discovered with the
pendulum under a lunar eclipse. Strange we have heard no more on that one.
Philip.
----- Original Message -----
From: Jack Lewis
To: geocentrism@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Tuesday, April 05, 2005 8:02 AM
Subject: [geocentrism] New Scientist Mag. The ether rediscovered!
Dear Members,
I have just bought the latest edition of 'New Scientist' magazine because of
this cover headline:
'WIND OF CHANGE For 100 years we have rejected the idea that the universe is
filled with invisible ether. But no longer...'
This is an article that resurrects the Michaelson-Morley and others,
interferometer experiments. It is also suggesting that Einstein nicked
Lorentz's theory. This is a 'must' read for all on this forum. I have already
spoken to Neville about and he is very interested in it.
I have scanned the article in to my computer and it appears below. This would
best be read using HTML format setting.
Cover story
Catching the cosmic wind
We killed off the ether a hundred years ago.
So why is the search back on, asks Marcus Chown
TWO hundred thousand dollars seems a small price to pay. If the most famous
null result in science was right, at least we'll finally be sure. And if it was
wrong, then Einstein is no longer king of the universe. No wonder Maurizio
Consoli is keen to get started. This experiment could be dynamite.
Consoli, of the Italian National Institute of Nuclear Physics in Catania,
Sicily, has found a loophole in the 19th-century experiment that defined our
modern view of the universe. The experiment established that light always
travels through space at the same speed, whatever direction it is heading in
and whatever the motion of its source: there is no way to put the wind in
light's sails.
Einstein used this foundation to build his special theory of relativity, but
it seems his confidence may have been premature. Consoli's paper, published in
Physics Letters A (vol 333, p 355), shows that there might be a wind that blows
in light's sails after all: something called the ether.
Until just over a century ago, most physicists believed that this ghostly
substance filled all of space. Their reasoning was straightforward enough: the
prevailing opinion was that light traveled as a wave, just like sound. And just
like sound waves, light waves would need something to move through. Light, they
believed, was the result of oscillations in the ether.
In 1887 Albert Michelson, who had recently produced the best-ever measurement
of the speed of light, teamed up with Edward Morley to design an experiment to
detect this ether. If it filled all of space, they reasoned, then all celestial
bodies must have some velocity relative to it. So someone standing on Earth and
facing in the direction of its motion
through space would have an "ether wind" rushing past their face. According
to this thinking, a light wave travelling with the ether wind would seem to
move faster than a light wave heading into it. And Michelson and Morley set out
to prove this.
They set up an ether detector at the Case Institute of Technology in
Cleveland, Ohio. Their "interferometer" measured the speed of two light beams
travelling in perpendicular directions. Any motion relative to the ether would
produce a difference in the speed of the light travelling down these two arms.
The pair then recombined the perpendicular light beams in a telescope eyepiece,
where any speed difference would show up in a striped pattern of interference
fringes. To make sure they would maximise the effect of a speed difference,
Michelson and Morley watched the fringes while they rotated their apparatus by
90 degrees; if the fringes then shifted their position in the eyepiece it could
only be the result of the Earth's speed through the ether.
The Earth is travelling at 30 kilometres per second around the sun, not to
mention racing around the centre of the galaxy. So Michelson and Morley
reasoned the ether wind should reduce the speed of light travelling in the same
direction as the Earth by at least 30 kilometres per second - 0.01 per cent of
the speed of light. The experiment was easily sensitive enough to detect an
effect of this magnitude. To the disappointment of the experimenters, it did
not, and reluctantly they accepted the conclusion that there is no ether.
Many similar experiments have been performed since then: in every case the
official conclusion has been the same. But not everyone has swallowed the
story. In 1902, William Hicks published a study of the Michelson-Morley
experiment, and claimed the results supported the existence of an ether wind
blowing over the Earth at 8 kilometres per second. Although the pair had
carried out their observations over a number of days, they had then averaged
out their results as if the experiment's orientation to a prevailing ether wind
had not changed. Hicks pointed out that this would cancel out any effect. Some
years later Dayton Miller, a former colleague of Michelson's, reworked the
Michelson-Morley measurements and also came out with a speed for the ether wind
of about 8 kilometres per second. He then redid the experiment with Morley and
obtained the same result, but this time with a much smaller error range.
In 1921 Miller took the result to Einstein, who thought there was probably
some mistake. He suggested that Miller's result might be explained by slight
temperature differences in the apparatus. "Subtle is the Lord, but malicious he
is not," Einstein declared. So Miller repeated the experiment 1800 metres up,
on the snowy summit of Mount Wilson in California. "He got exactly the same
result as Michelson and Morley in the warm basement of the Case Institute,"
Consoli says.
According to Consoli, many interferometer experiments carried out over the
past century have shown a measurable ether wind. "The textbooks say the
experiments produced null results," he says. "The textbooks do not tell the
truth."
And that's why he wants to carry out a definitive test, an adaptation of the
most recent ether-detecting experiments (see Diagram, page 34). These used two
sapphire cavities oriented at right angles to each other. Laser light bounces
back and forth inside the cavities; the size of the cavity and the wavelength
of the light means they resonate at an extremely precise frequency. Left to run
for over a year, the existence of an ether would create a difference in
resonance frequency between the two cavities. That's because the Earth's motion
around the sun, and thus the changing orientation of the ether wind, would
change the speed at which light
'A positive result would have profound implications for physics''
moved in the cavities. When this was done at Humboldt University in Berlin,
Germany, the frequency difference at the end of the run -less than 1 hertz -
was within the experiment's margin of error: the ether was denied again
(Physical Review Letters, vol 91, p 20401).
But hold on, Consoli says. So far, these sapphire cavity experiments have all
been \ performed with the light passing through an extremely high vacuum.
Consoli and his; colleague Evelina Costanzo are now proposing to repeat the
Humboldt University experiment \ with the cavities filled with a relatively
dense gas, such as carbon dioxide. This will slow the light, and that could
make a crucial difference '", to the outcome.
Consoli says any Michelson-Morley type of j experiment carried out in a
vacuum will show j no difference in the speed of light in different directions,
even if there is an ether. But he points out that some theories, such as the
electroweak theory and quantum field theory, suggest that light could appear to
move at different speeds in different directions in a medium such as a dense
gas. The size of the effect would depend on the refractive index of the medium
- and any motion relative to an ether.
With the Earth careering through space into an ether wind, light in one arm
of the gas-filled interferometer would travel faster than light in the other,
"just as was seen in the classic non-vacuum experiments of Michelson and Morley
and others," Consoli says. The 8-kilometres-per-second result for the speed of
the ether wind relative to the Earth came from using an interferometer filled
with air, he points out. Experiments performed using helium-filled
interferometers have obtained 3 kilometres per second and those using a "soft"
vacuum 1kilometre per second. The more rarefied the medium that light is shone
through, the smaller the effect of the speed of the Earth's movement relative
to any ether.
The cavity experiments will be even more sensitive to this. If there is an
ether, Consoli predicts there will be a large jump in the frequency difference
between the cavities -perhaps by a factor of 10,000, or even 100,000. The
experiment will cost about $200,000 to set up and perform, but it will be worth
it. "This is the crucial experiment," he says. "If such an effect is not seen,
we will have closed the last experimental window."
It is not a straightforward experiment to perform, though. Experimenters have
managed to produce a laser frequency stable enough to carry out experiments for
hundreds of days only by cooling the cavities to close to absolute zero. If a
gas is introduced at these temperatures it will freeze: it's going to take
quite some ingenuity to overcome the problem. Nevertheless, a group of
physicists at Humboldt University are considering taking on the challenge.
"There is a good chance we will do the experiment," says Achim Peters, one of
the group. It's going to be a much-watched piece of lab work. "If someone does
do it, I will be very interested in the result," says Holger Miller of Stanford
University, California, who was involved in laser cavity experiments at
Humboldt before moving to the US. Miiller admits that a positive result would
have profound implications for physics. For a start it would mean that one of
Einstein's contemporaries, Hendrik Lorentz, has been denied proper r
ecognition. Lorentz, not Einstein, would have to be credited with the
definitive theory of relativity (see "Einstein the usurper", page 34).
Another implication, pointed out by Consoli, is the possibility of signaling
at speeds that seem faster than light. In special relativity this is forbidden,
because an object moving faster than light would appear to some observers as
moving backwards in time. This can make an effect precede a cause, violating
the principle of causality. If there is an ether providing the universe with an
absolute reference frame, or "preferred" frame, faster-than-light signaling can
happen: the view of events in the preferred frame is the correct one and all
other frames must adjust their interpretation of what they see to fit in with
it. Consoli suggests that, if there is a preferred frame, that might explain
why physicists are able to use quantum entanglement to establish a link between
subatomic particles, then have them influence each other instantaneously no
matter how far apart they might be (New Scientist, 27 March 2004, p 32).
Einstein famously rejected this phenomenon as impossible -
he called it "spooky action at a distance"-but experiments have since shown
it to be an entirely real and repeatable effect. But, Consoli points out, the
effect wouldn't be instantaneous - and thus spooky - if measured in the correct
reference frame.
Proof of the ether's existence would also mean that one of the most
fundamental equations in physics needs adjusting. The Dirac equation is our
best description of how light interacts with matter - it shows how the laws of
relativity affect the properties of individual electrons. It is crucial because
the passage of light through any medium other than a vacuum depends on the
interaction of light with electrons of that medium. It is this interaction that
slows light down and gives the medium its refractive index. As it stands, the
equation does not allow a difference in the speed of light beams moving through
the same medium in different directions. "If the equation broke down, it would
be very big news indeed," Miiller says.
Consoli's experiment should tell us whether Einstein usurped Lorentz's throne"
He points out that the Dirac equation has already passed some stringent
experimental trials: this makes him very sceptical that Consoli can truly be
onto anything. He believes the experiment is misconceived and that Consoli
ought to have applied the Dirac equation to individual electrons in the gas to
see what effect there would be, rather than invoking the refractive index of
the gas as a whole. Do this, and the argument that the light's speed will be
boosted in one particular direction would fall apart, he suggests.
Robert Bluhm of Colby College in Waterville, Maine, also thinks Consoli is on
a hiding to nothing. He doesn't even buy the basis of the argument, the problem
with Michelson and Morley's averaged measurements. "I think it is safe to say
that the textbooks are correct that the Michelson-Morley experiments gave a
null result for the existence of an ether drift," he says. And even those who
think Einstein's relativity does have limitations are not convinced that such a
straightforward experiment can reveal anything. Researchers looking for a
quantum theory of gravity - a theory that would unite relativity and quantum
mechanics - suspect some form of "substrate" might underpin the universe. But
they also suspect that the quantum gravity effects will only show up in
experiments that probe matter over extremely short distances or at ultra-high
energies.
Well maybe, Consoli says, but we ought to find out for sure. "All we are
saying is that these experiments have not yet completely ruled out the
possibility of a preferred frame. A small experimental window for its existence
is left. We think it is worth investigating that window." And perhaps not even
Einstein would argue with that.
Einstein the usurper
The tenets of special relativity have withstood test after experimental test,
so why bother searching for an ether again? Maurizio Consoli of the Italian
National Institute of Nuclear Physics in Catania suggests that Einstein's
theory could be a special case in a broader theory developed by one of his
contemporaries. And the only thing that separates the ideas - the one test that
will bestow the crown of king of the universe - is the question of an ether.
Hendrik Lorenz came up with a description of how light travels through space
and time before Einstein formulated his special theory of relativity. Lorentz's
theory is so similar to special relativity that it has passed the same tests.
Indeed in his 1916 work, The Theory of Electrons, Lorenz commented: "Einstein
simply postulates what we have deduced."
In Einstein's theory, when two observers look at each other, the intervals of
space and time they see between them depend only on their relative velocity.
But in Lorentz's view, the effects - and they look exactly the same-originate
from the individual motion of each observer relative to an absolute reference:
the ether.
Though they sound similar, the two theories are equivalent only in a vacuum,
Consoli says. For the views from all reference frames to be equivalent, as
special relativity requires, the maximum speed has to be unattainable by
anything other than light, and that only in a vacuum. Ms gas-filled
interferometer experiment should tell us whether Einstein usurped Lorentz's
throne.
Read previous issues of New Scientist at http://archive. new/scientist.com
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