Can Lorentz E Theory replace S. Relativity?? (is George Sagnac correct?)

From: Q-on (physicsofchi_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 02/17/05

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    Date: 16 Feb 2005 20:02:41 -0800

    Anyone familiar with the work of George Sagnac in 1913 that put
    in doubt the theory of Special Relativity of Einstein? Sagnac
    made some experiments (a round version of MMX) that many argued
    disprove Special Relativity. What can you say about it? Before
    posting about details of Sagnac work for those who may not
    familiar with it. I'll share La Violette short history of what
    transpired after the failure of the Michelson-Morley Experiments
    with the involvement of some interesting personalities not all
    anti - Einsteinians may be aware of.

    (The following transpired after La Violette mentioned the failure
    of the MMX)

    La violette wrote:

    THE ELECTROMAGNETIC ETHER THEORY

    As a result of these developments, a new nonmechanical,
    electromagnetic view Of nature began to emerge in the 1890s. One
    of the key people shaping this view was the Dutch physicist
    Hendrik Lorentz. His attempts to account for the results of the
    Michelson-Morley experiment led him to devise a radically new
    theory Of matter. In 1904 he proposed that the subatomic
    particles making up material bodies were not billiard-ball-like
    spheres distinct from the ether, but resilient wavelike
    excitations formed in the et her itself. Thus he conceived
    matter, like energy waves, to be basically electromagnetic in
    nature.'

    According to his theory, as a body accelerated to the speed of
    light its constituent particles would become increasingly
    foreshortened in the direction of motion as well as increasingly
    massive. He demonstrated that if matter behaved in this way, then
    the arms of Michelson and Morley's interferometer would contract
    in the ether drift direction by an amount sufficient to produce a
    null result in the Michelson-Morley experiment. With the Lorentz
    contraction, a light signal would take the same amount of time t
    o cover its round-trip journey through the ether in whatever
    direction it traveled.

    The equations of motion that Lorentz formulated, the forerunner
    of today's "Lorentz transformations," also imply that a moving
    clock should slow down and its clock mechanism should physically
    move more and more slowly as its speed increases toward the speed
    of light.' Yet Lorentz did not come to recognize clock
    retardation as a real physical effect until several years later.'
    As a result, physics books often credit Einstein for first
    pointing out this phenomenon; however, Einstein interpreted the
    effect qui te differently from Lorentz. His special theory of
    relativity, published in 1905, attributed the slowing of the dock
    to the slowing of time itself. This came to be called the time
    dilation effect.* Although Lorentzs dock-retardation
    interpretation is not as well known, it is still considered just
    as valid.

    Gustav Mie further developed Lorentzs electromagnetic concept of
    matter by suggesting that fundamental particles such as electrons
    were simply places in the ether where the electric and magnetic
    field intensities achieved particularly high values, where the
    normal equations of electrodynamics no longer applied and a new
    type of nonlinear behavior emerged giving rise to matter .4
    Lorentz, Mie, and the many other proponents of the
    electromagnetic ether concept, therefore, envi- sioned the ether
    as the only reality. All physical phenomena, material particles
    a' well as energy waves, were understood to be superficial
    excitations in the universal ether. Thus the ether/particle
    dichotomy that had once plagued physics had now becorne repaired.
    The ancient concept of an omnipresent ether serving as the
    fundamental stuff of the universe was once again reinstated.

    About a decade before Lorentz and Mie proposed their ether-wave
    theory of subatomic particles, a nineteenth-century Chinese
    physicist, Tan Ssu-t'ung (1865-1898), developed a similar ether
    theory of matter based instead on the neo Confucian idea of a
    transmuting ether. Like the ancient ether physics, his theory
    assumed the existence of a bipolar ether consisting of mutually
    transmuting Yin and yang states. He proposed that the fundamental
    particles of matter are formed through a "condensation" of this
    ether substance. He explained the transmutation process of his
    ether in considerable detail, proposing that the ether as a whole
    maintains a dynamic steady state of continuous renewal, as its
    individual components engage in "the minute process of production
    and destruction.' In other words, at a "microscopic" level, ether
    transmutation would consist of individual etherons entering and
    leaving a given etheron state, whereas at a more macroscopic
    level, these countless events would blend together to produce a
    conti nuous transformation process:

    T'an developed his ether theory in an era when physical science
     was dominated by the mechanical ether theories of the West. In
     an effort to integrate his theory "'to Western terminology, he
     abandoned the traditional term ch'i and instead coined the term
     yi-t'ai, a transliteration of the word "ether." It is
     interesting to speculate what physics would be like today if the
     past three decades of research on oscillating reaction-diffusion
     systems had been carried out just one century earlier. Had it
     been further developed and elaborated using modern
     reaction-kinetics concepts, Pari's theory could have evolved
     into a version very similar to the twentieth century theory of
     subquantum kinetics.

    FROM ETHER TO VACUUM

    The unitary ether of Lorentz and Mie apparently did not secure a
     very strong hold on Western physics. In 1905, just when the
     description of physical phenomena in terms of an electromagnetic
     ether was gathering momentum, Einstein published his special
     theory of relativity. He noted that the results of the
     Michelson-Morley experiment could be explained in a simple
     fashion if one accepted the premise that the one-way velocity of
     light would always be equal to a constant value regardless of
     the observer's speed through space.

    This interpretation, of course, refuted the classical notion that
    the metrics of space and time are absolutes. Einstein theorized
    instead that the distance between two points in space or duration
    of a given event is an "elastic" quantity that can take on an
    infinite number of possible values depending on how fast an
    observer happens to be traveling relative to the object or
    transpiring event. Making space-time dependent on the observer's
    speed could make life very complicated. For example, suppose a
    person is in a crowd and simultaneously observed by a hundred
    people moving in a hundred different directions. If relativity
    theory is correct, these annoying observers should be causing
    that person to exist simultaneously in a hundred different
    space-time frames, each with its own unique space-time metric. Is
    one of these many space-time clones the real person? Or is his or
    her consciousness somehow distributed among all of them
    simultaneously, only to rebound into a singular state once the
    crowd stops obs erving? Indeed, this schizophrenic concept of
    reality is difficult to reconcile with any common sense view of
    the world.

    Einstein's theory led to other equally perplexing contradictions,
     such as the twin clock paradox 6 and the light-source-velocity
     paradox, neither of which had troubled the electromagnetic ether
     theory, with its single measure of time and space. But the
     majority of physicists, accustomed to thinking about
     electromagnetic phenomena solely in mathematical terms and to
     working with field equations divorced from any kind of concrete
     conceptual grounding, were not bothered by these paradoxes. They
     were willing to accept relativity on the basis of its
     mathematical elegance and to overlook its counterintuitive
     implications. By 1910 special relativity began to be widely
     accepted.

    A choice to adopt relativity was a choice to deny the existence
    of the ether. Relativity theory with its infinite space-time
    frames was incompatible with the ether concept, which involves
    the existence of just one metric of space and one metric of time
    uniformly valid for all reference frames.

    Shortly after Einstein proposed his theory, relativity
    encountered a serious challenge. In 1913 the French physicist
    Georges Sagnac conducted an experiment in which he mounted a
    light source on a turntable. He used a half-silvered mirror to
    divide its beam into two beams and, by means of a system of
    mirrors, made these two light beams travel in opposite directions
    around the perimeter of the turntable.

    He then recombined the two beams to produce a light interference
    pattern and found that clockwise rotation of the turntable caused
    the fringes of the interference pattern to shift by an amount
    proportional to the turntable's speed. This indicated that
    rotation of the turntable had caused the counterclockwise
    traveling light beam to complete its circuit in less time than
    the clockwise traveling beam. He considered this as direct
    evidence that light travels in an ether. According to Sagnac:

    The observed interference effect is clearly the optical whirling
    effect due to the movement of the system in relation to the ether
    and directly manifests the existence of the ether, supporting
    necessarily the light waves of Huygens and of Fresnel.'

    Sagnac's discovery later led to significant advances in guidance
    system technology. The ring-laser gyroscopes that daily guide
    passenger jets such as the Boeing 757 and 767 through the skies
    operate on this very same principle.'

    Although Sagnac's experiment initially threw relativity theory
    into a state of turmoil, it was not long before relativists
    proposed a way to explain its results. Paul Langevin in 1921
    claimed that the experiment's results would be "neutralized" if
    its calculations were adjusted to take into account relativitys
    time-dilation effect, which he assumed would apply to the locally
    revolving reference frame of the apparatus.

    Herbert Ives, a prominent American inventor and Bell Laboratories
    physicist, published a paper in 1938 demonstrating Langevin's
    "local time" argument to be incorrect." Therefore, Sagnac's
    interpretation remained valid and special relativity stood
    disproven, at least for rotating frames of reference.
    Nevertheless, few physicists read Ives's astute rebuttal. In the
    years following Langevin's paper, the ether concept gradually
    faded into the background, lingering only as a philosophical
    abstraction. With speci al relativity, physicists could focus
    their attention just on the field equations and forget about the
    ether. It was a relatively small step for them to deny the
    ether's existence entirely. Contrary to what some textbooks say,
    the ether notion was not abandoned because of any experimental
    disproof, it just went out of style.

    With this shift in thinking, physics entered the era of the
    vacuum. In so doing, it excluded the possibility of a nonphysical
    realm of existence. If there was a spirit world beyond the
    material, it had to be potentially observable and quantifiable,
    just like the rest of the physical world. Those adopting this
    modern worldview had the choice of either viewing God as a
    physical entity composed of energy fields drifting in space, or
    of simply denying his existence altogether.

    In 1951 Ives exposed a crucial flaw in Einstein's theory.
    Applying Jules-Henri Poincare's principle of relativity to the
    results of the Michelson-Morley experiment, he demonstrated that
    the one-way velocity of light, as defined by Einstein for a
    relatively moving frame, is not equal to a constant c as Einstein
    had claimed. Rather, what remains constant from one reference
    frame to another is a very complex mathematical function that
    includes readings of rods and clocks and terms describing their
    method of us e. Apparently Einstein's result is obtainable only
    by using time and space quantities that are not measurable by
    normal physical means. Irritated by the physics community's
    complacency with special relativity's insecure observational
    foundations, Ives commented:

    The assignment of a definite value to an unknown velocity [the
    one-way velocity of light] by fiat, without recourse to measuring
    instruments, is not a true physical operation, it is more
    properly described as a ritual.... The "principle" of the
    constancy of the velocity of light is not merely
    "understandable:, it is not supported by objective matters of
    fact."

    With the abandonment of the "principle" of the constancy of the
    velocity of light, the geometries which have been based on it,
    with their fusion of space and time, must be denied their claim
    to be a true description of the physical world."

    Ives continued his battle against relativity throughout the 1940s
    and early 1950s. He published a series of papers demonstrating
    that the electromagnetic ether theory accounted for the results
    of all experiments normally cited in support of special
    relativity." His elucidation of Lorentzs theory has today come to
    be known as the rodcontraction-clock-retardation ether theory."
    His efforts and those of others, however, did not sway the
    scientific community away from their relativistic outlook.

    THE ETHER RETURNS

    Einstein's special theory of relativity specifically requires
    that the one-way velocity of light be a constant. If that turns
    out not to be so, special relativity falls. The Michelson-Morley
    experiment, however, demonstrated only that the two-way,
    over-and-back, average velocity of light was constant. It did not
    necessarily prove that the one-way velocity of light in any
    direction was also constant. Consequently, special relativity is
    founded on a tentative extrapolation that goes far beyond the
    experimenta l results of the Michelson-Morley experiment.

    Although no one has succeeded in accurately measuring the one-way
    velocity of light, in 1987 Ernest Silvertooth published the
    results of an experiment that clearly showed that the wavelength
    of light varies with the direction of light propagation."' His
    finding provided evidence that the one-way velocity of light also
    varies with direction. While the Sagnac experiment showed that
    special relativity does not apply for rotating frames of
    reference, Silvertooth's experiment indicated that special
    relativity al so does not apply for straight-line motion.
    silvertooth assembled a special kind of laser interferometer
    apparatus to carry out his "wavelength measurements, shown in
    figure 12.2. His apparatus included a cornplex array of
    adjustable mirrors and beam splitters that caused two oppositely
    directed laser beams to interfere and produce a standing wave
    pattern of regularly spaced bright and dark bands or fringes (see
    figure 12.3). He was then able to determine the spacing of these
    fringes, using a specially built television camera tube with a
    transparent light-sensing surface. Since the effective thickness
    of his detector's light-sensing surface was less than 10 percent
    of the laser light wavelength, he could very accurately determine
    the positions of consecutive bright fringes. He found that t he
    fringe s achieved their closest spacing of approximately
    one-fourth of a millimeter (one-hundredth of an inch) when the
    opposed laser beams were pointing along a direction aligned with
    the constellation of Leo. When the path of the opposed laser
    beams was rotated away from that heading, the fringes spread
    apart to greater distances. He concluded that this unique
    direction in which the fringe pattern attained a minimum spacing
    marked the direction of the Earth's motion through the ether.

    By measuring the minimum fringe spacing, Silvertooth determined
    that the Earth moves through the ether toward Leo at a speed of
    about 378 (+-19) kilometers per second. Several years later he
    built a substantially improved version of his earlier apparatus
    and obtained a similar result." By comparison, astronomers have
    found that the solar system is moving toward the southern part of
    Leo at a speed of about 365 (+-18) kilometers per second relative
    to the surrounding 3 Kelvin cosmic microwave background radia
    tion field. 16 This matches Silvertooth's result within the
    accuracy of the respective measurements, implying that the
    microwave background radiation is stationary with respect to the
    local ether rest frame.

    Other evidence against relativity and in support of an ether
    comes from electrodynamic experiments carried out by the Greek
    physicist Panagiotis Pappas 17 and the American physicist Peter
    Graneau. These indicate that the relativistic Lorentz force law,
    which physicists use to describe how moving charged particles
    generate a magnetic field, is not universally valid and should be
    replaced instead by the more correct nonrelativistic cardinal
    force law of Andre Ampere. According to Ampere's force law, all
    elect rodynamic interactions take place relative to a preferred
    absolute reference frame, namely that of the ether rest frame.

    The findings of Silvertooth, Sagnac, Ives, Pappas, and others
     bring the relativistic era to an end. Relativistic concepts such
     as "space-time" and "warped space," must be replaced by Newton's
     concept of absolute space and absolute time, and the ether
     concept must come forward once again to fill the vacuum of the
     past century. With the undermining of special relativity,
     however, general relativity is rendered invalid as well, and
     with it goes the expanding-universe theory. Consequently, the
     entire edifice of modern relativistic cosmology has begun to
     crumble.

    To what conceptual model can physicists now turn? They cannot
    return to the nineteenth-century mechanical ether theory, since
    that fails to explain the results Of the Michelson-Morley
    experiment. The mathematically abstruse electromagnetic ether
    theory of Lorentz and the rod-contraction-clock-retardation ether
    theory of Ives explain the Michelson-Morley experiment results,
    but they are not grounded in a conceptual model. In seeking a
    conceptual model for the ether, perhaps scientists would do well
    to turn t o the notion of a transmuting ether, such as that
    described in ancient myth and lore or more explicitly explored
    through Model G of subquantum kinetics.

    http://www.etheric.com/LaVioletteBooks/ether.html

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