[geocentrism] Re: Gravity 1
- From: "philip madsen" <pma15027@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <geocentrism@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2007 10:35:16 +1000
Relative to experiments done to establish the presence of an aether using light
beams based upon the analogy of wave motion in a material fluid. Keeping in
mind that all these aetheric experiments were to prove the earth moved in a
stationary aether.
Robert, thanks for your input. I am in the process of incorporating your
comments into the draft, which is developing.
In the meantime I am stopped at a point by your confidence in Dayton Miller's
follow-up experiments. Why would you place more confidence in such relatively
unsophisticated equipment compared to what can be done today?Modern precision
experiments have continually verified the results brought into question by
Miller, discounting his repeated attempts. I place here some conflicting
reports. . Perhaps you could provide some other source or link that better
explains how Dayton intended to prove the existence of this aether.
Philip.
From 1902 to 1933 Miller performed experiments producing more accurate
measurements. This work was published as a positive result for the existence of
an aether drift. However, the effect Miller saw was tiny. In order for it to
detect aether, the properties of aether drag would have to be more pronounced.
Furthermore, the measurement was statistically far from any other measurements
being carried on at the time, fringe shifts of about 0.01 were being observed
in many experiments, while Miller's 0.08 was not duplicated anywhere else --
including Miller's own 1904 experiments with Morley, which showed a drift of
only 0.015. The measurements are perfectly consistent with a fringe difference
of zero -- the null result that every other experiment was recording.
Einstein was interested in this aether drift theory and acknowledged that a
positive result for the existence of aether would invalidate the theory of
special relativity, but commented that altitudal influences and temperatures
may have provided sources of error in the findings. Miller commented:
"The trouble with Professor Einstein is that he knows nothing about my
results. ... He ought to give me credit for knowing that temperature
differences would affect the results. He wrote to me in November suggesting
this. I am not so simple as to make no allowance for temperature."
During the 1920s a number of experiments, both interferometry based, as in
Miller's experiment, and others using entirely different techniques, were
conducted and these returned a null result as well. Even at the time, Miller's
work was increasingly considered to be a statistical anomaly, an opinion which
remains true today[1], given an ever growing body of negative results.
Shankland analysis
In 1955, Robert S. Shankland, S. W. McCuskey, F. C. Leone, and G. Kuerti
performed a re-analysis of Miller's results. Shankland, who led the report,
noted that the "signal" that Miller observed in 1933 is actually composed of
points that are an average of several hundred measurements each, and the
magnitude of the signal is more than 10 times smaller than the resolution with
which the measurements were recorded. Miller's extraction of a single value for
the measurement is statistically impossible, the data is too variable to say
"this" number is any better than "that" -- the data, from Shankland's position,
supports a null result as equally as Miller's positive.
Shankland concluded that Miller's observed signal was partly due to statistical
fluctuations and partly due to local temperature conditions and, also,
suggested that the results of Miller were due to a systematic error rather than
an observed existence of aether. In particular he felt that Miller did not take
enough care in guarding against thermal gradients in the room where the
experiment took place, as, unlike most interferometry experiments, Miller
conducted his in a room where the apparatus was deliberately left open to the
elements to some degree.
In Shankland's analysis, no statistically significant signal for the existence
of aether was found. Shankland concluded that Miller's observed signal was
partly due to error rather than an observed existence of aether holding radiant
energy. Thus, a large, but indefinite, number of mainstream scientists today
hold the conviction that any signal that Miller observed was the result of the
experimenter effect, which was a common source of systematic error before
modern experimental techniques were developed (ed, Miller did publish an early
textbook on experimental techniques; cf., Ginn & Company, 1903).
William Broad and Nicholas Wade, reporters who wrote Betrayers of the Truth:
Fraud in Science (1983), have stated that scientists should have reviewed
Miller's research more seriously at the time, and that their refusal to do so
is evidence of incompetence and unprofessional conduct. Robert Crease argues
that it would have been "irrational and unscientific" to suspend Einstein's
theory because of a contrary experiment. In Crease's opinion, this would allow
some antiscientific ideologues (eg., some Soviet scientists) to stop progress
through falsification.[2]
Modern precision experiments have continually verified the results brought into
question by Miller, discounting his repeated attempts.[3][4][5][6][7]
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