Regner,

Thank you for addressing this issue. I think this is a good place to start.

First, let me deal with the Holger Müller experiment. We cover this in Galileo Was Wrong: The Church Was Right, on page 458, Vol. 1, second edition.

Holger Müller (2002)

Müller made use of two devices known as “optical cavities,” two mirrors held at a constant distance, pointing in different directions. A set of standing light waves in a chilled cavity was monitored over a 190 day period, more than 1/2 of the Earth’s orbit, altering the velocity of the equipment by a net change of 60 km/sec.

The round-trip time of a light beam between the mirrors is a direct measure of the speed of light perpendicular to the mirror surfaces. If c were to vary with lab speed, then the constant comparison of the standing waves to a highly stable atomic clock would fall out of resonance with the cavity. Any dependence of this speed on direction would be evident when the cavity is rotated.

To avoid errors caused by temperature effects and material aging processes, cavities were made from a pure sapphire crystal, virtually immune from aging, and operated at the temperature of liquid helium, near absolute zero. Being made of sapphire, the cavity has very little thermal expansion at a temperature of 4° K.

Using advanced laser techniques for reading the cavity round-trip time, a new limit on possible violations of light propagation isotropy was established. The latest experiment is part of a whole new generation of Relativity tests. The stability of the resonance frequency produced a three-fold improvement in precision over past experiments. A 100-fold improvement in the near future is anticipated.

Protocol Precautions:

-relies solely on Earth’s rotation – no turntable vibration.

-avoids the systematic effects associated with active rotation

-overcomes the creep of room temperature resonators made from glass ceramics, e.g., ULE (UltraLow Expansion)

Comments:

The experimental care taken in this experiment is impressive, but futile, if intended to detect the influence of the ether on c. Lessons learned long before have been forgotten. The experimenter’s text below indicates the missteps taken: solid silica and sapphire crystal; and vacuum-sealed, instead of a gaseous medium.

At the core of the experimental setup is an optical cavity fabricated from fused silica (L = 3 cm, 20 kHz line width) which is continuously rotated on a precision air bearing turntable. Its frequency is compared to that of a stationary cavity oriented north-south (L = 10 cm, 10 kHz line width). Each cavity is mounted inside a thermally shielded vacuum chamber.

The apparatus diagram, although only a schematic, indicates the clutter of support and ancillary structures used in a vain attempt at accuracy. It is also a safe assumption the experiment was performed in a laboratory, buried in the bowels of a building. Can sunlight be detected in a windowless cellar?  What value would be placed on a null result of < 10-15 for sunlight detection, if the cellar shielded the detector from the sun? Would we say there is no sunlight, because the experiment was done in darkness? Modernists should review the Miller experiment of 80 years ago.

As indicated, Dayton Miller did extensive tests, far and above those did by Michelson and Morley, and the results confirm that the light beam in one direction was resisted while the other was not. Not only Miller, but every interferometer experiment to 1932, including the masers and lasers done in the 60s and 70s, measured a slight resistance.

Second, what you and they call “null” is only w.r.t an assumption that the Earth is moving. If you expect fringe shifting corresponding to the Earth moving around the sun at 30/km/sec around the sun and you only get 1/40 or less of that, then, obviously, you will believe that the results are “null.”

But if you assume the Earth is not moving, then a result of 1/40 or less of 30/km/sec confirms that the Earth is not moving around the sun.

One other possibility, of course, is that the Earth is rotating on its axis but not revolving around the sun, and this rotation answers to the slight resistance in the interferometer experiments, since the speed of a rotating Earth is “1/40 or less” of a revolving Earth.
But in the heliocentric system, in order to create the seasons, the Earth must not only rotate on its axis,
it must revolve around the sun, so this solution to the interferometers isn’t possible (unless, of course, as you say, you invent Special Relativity).

The only logical solution is that the Earth is motionless in space and the slight resistance that all the interferometers registered is to be attributed to a rotating universe against a fixed Earth.

As we note in GWW:

What, precisely, do all these figures mean in regard to the heliocentric/geocentric debate? In the heliocentric theory, the Earth is moving through the ether with both a diurnal and translational movement, that is, it spins on its axis at about 1054 mph (0.45 km/sec) and orbits the sun at about 66,000 mph (30 km/sec), which means that the Earth’s rotation speed is 1.6% of its revolution speed.[1] Clearly, then, the bulk of the ether resistance against the Earth will come from the translational movement as opposed to the diurnal rotation. But if we subtract the translational movement, the remaining resistance will come only from the diurnal movement. This situation is identical to what would occur in the geocentric model, since in the geocentric system there is no translational movement of the Earth against the ether, yet there is a diurnal movement. In other words, the universe’s ether is rotating around a fixed Earth at the same rate that the Earth in the heliocentric system would be rotating against the fixed ether, that is, on a 24-hour basis. Accordingly, in the geocentric system only the diurnal movement of the Earth against the ether will show up as fringe shifts in the interferometer experiments, and thus we would expect a measurement of shifts much less than the fringe shifts corresponding to the translational movement of 30 km/sec. All things being equal, we would expect the diurnal movement to produce fringe-shifting corresponding to a mere fraction of the fringe-shifting expected for 30 km/sec.

This is precisely what we find in the description given above by Michelson and Morley (albeit, they did not attribute it to a non-translating Earth).

They tell us that: “The actual displacement was certainly less than the twentieth part of this.”[2] A “twentieth part” of the fringe shifting corresponding to 30 km/sec yields fringe shifting of at least 1.5 km/sec. A “fortieth part” yields 0.75 km/sec, and “less than a fortieth part,” say, one-sixtieth to one-seventieth, yields 0.50 to 0.43 km/sec, respectively, very close to the rotation speed of Earth in the heliocentric theory.

After Michelson and Morley run these figures through their calculations in order to make the square of the velocity proportional to the displacement, they then tell us: “the velocity of the Earth with respect to the ether is probably less than one-sixth the Earth’s orbital velocity, and certainly less than one-fourth.” One sixth of 30 km/sec is 4.8 km/sec, which agrees closely with the average of 1-4 km/sec in the other interferometer experiments. In brief, the geocentric model has a simple explanation for the unexpected results of the Michelson-Morley experiment: the Earth is fixed and the universe and its ether rotate around it.

 

Lastly, you admit in your closing statement the following:

Interpretations:

1) The Universe is Geo-centric, i.e., the aether frame is the same as the Earth frame.

2) The aether is dragged along by moving bodies.

3) Special relativity is valid and a possible aether has no effect.

Just for the record, then, you are admitting that geocentrism is a viable interpretation to the interferometer experiments. In regards to the scientific debate, this is all we are asking from the scientific community.

The next step, scientifically, is to look at other evidence that allows the Earth to assume a central position in the universe, and we do have such evidence, and plenty of it.

As regards using Special Relativity as an option, doesn’t this beg the question? If a fixed Earth in a rotating universe will answer the interferometer data, then why invent a whole new physics to avoid that possibility, especially since we know that the Lorentz transformation and Einstein’s commandeering of it for Special Relativity was invented precisely to keep the Earth moving instead of being fixed?

Why would we want to resort to the bizarre world of mass increasing, time dilating or lengths shortening

to answer the interferometer experiments when we can answer it on the classical level by simply accepting the Earth as fixed? At the least, Occam’s Razor is on our side, not the heliocentric side.

If you happen to get a hold of GWW to read someday, you’ll find a whole series of quotes from today’s scientific icons who tell us that they choose heliocentrism based on philosophical reasons, not scientific ones, since they all admit that: (a) geocentrism is just as viable, if not more so, than heliocentrism, and (b) having the Earth fixed means that Someone had to put it there, ‘cause it ain’t going to happen by chance.

Robert Sungenis

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[1] However, in terms of acceleration, where a = v²/r, the translation is only 5% of the rotation. 

 

[2] “On the Relative Motion of the Earth and the Luminiferous Ether,” Art. xxxvi, The American Journal of Science, eds. James D and Edward S. Dana, No. 203, vol. xxxiv, November 1887, p. 341.

 

In a message dated 3/27/2008 2:53:19 AM Eastern Daylight Time, art@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx writes:

Dear all,

  Time for the first of the five point challenge.
There has been general agreement among you, that point a):
  "a) Failure of the Michelson-Morley experiment - No motion of Earth detected."
is central to this debate and I will therefore begin with that.
  I believe, however, that the focus on the Michelson-Morley experiment is a bit
limiting, and the underlying question is whether there is a luminiferous aether,
i.e., a substance through which light propagates, which can be used as an absolute
reference frame.
  But lets begin with the Michelson-Morley experiment and it's follow ups.
First a little background...
Physics:
  In Newtonian (non-relativistic) physics the Galilean transformations are valid:
      u = u' + v
  where u is the velocity of an object in one reference frame, S, (the unprimed one)
  and u' is the velocity of the same object in another (primed) reference frame S'.
  Frame S' moves with velocity v with respect to S  (this _expression_ also work with vectors).
  Example 1: I'm sitting still in a train, frame S', which means u' =0. The track-side view
  is frame S and v is the speed of the train. My speed in this frame will be u=v. There is
  hopefully nothing controversial about that...
  Example 2: Now consider me shining a flashlight [torch] down the length of the train in the
  direction of travel. According to all experiments, the speed of that light will be c.
  In the track-side frame, S, the speed will be u=c+v according to Newtonian physics
  - obviously larger than c!
The Aether:
  ..is a proposed medium for light to propagate through. The idea is that light always travels
  at the speed, c=299792458m/s with respect to this aether. If an observer moves with
  velocity v, with respect to the aether frame, S', where the speed of light is u'=c, then the
  observer would see the light propagate at speed u=c+v.

Goal of the Michelson-Morley experiment:
  To measure difference in the speed of light, due to Earth's
  movements, v, w.r.t. the aether.
Method:
  Send light down two paths - one along and one perpendicular to Earth's motion
  and measure the differences in travel times.
  In practice this was done by:
 * having one light source
 * and splitting the light with a semi-silvered mirror, so that half went down one
    arm and the other half down the other arm of the experiment.
 * At the end of each arm, the light bounced of other mirrors
 * returning the light beams to the semi-silvered mirror
 * which now sends the recombined light to a detector.
Since the light going down the two arms come from the same light-source, the
electro-magnetic waves of the light in the two arms will be in phase, or coherent.
recombining the two light beams will therefore result in an interference pattern if
the travel times of the two beams differ. And they obviously differ - even now we
can't engineer things tens of meters long, to a precision of a few tens of nanometers
- that is a precision of 1 in a billion (US lingo: 1 billion = 10^9).
So we get fringes like this:
They key is whether this pattern shifts (left or right) when the experiment turns w.r.t.
the Earth's motion, so that one arm changes from being along the motion to being
perpendicular and the other arm does the opposite.

Results:
The original experiment from 1887 found less than a 40th of the expected shift and
the results was below the measuring error of the experiment. The experiments were
done day and night and at different times of the year and on a rotating slab in order
to cover all conceivable sources of error. And keep in mind that this is quite a difficult
experiment since the effect they tried to measure is of the order (v/c)² or one part in
a 100 million - far from trivial.
The experiment has also had modern incarnations and with improved equipment and
set-ups, the upper limits to the result has steadily decreased. Müller et al. (2003) found
a upper limit of  to the difference of the speed of light in the two arms
of their experiment. That's quite a null result!

Interpretations:
1) The Universe is Geo-centric, i.e., the aether frame is the same as the Earth frame.
2) The aether is dragged along by moving bodies.
3) Special relativity is valid and a possible aether has no effect.

       Regards,

           Regner

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