Re: A challenge to non-SRians

From: greywolf42 (mingstb_at_marssim-ss.com)
Date: 08/07/04 

Date: Sat, 7 Aug 2004 10:42:30 -0700

"Tom Roberts" <tjroberts@lucent.com> wrote in message
news:cf0uhb$svb@netnews.proxy.lucent.com...
> greywolf42 wrote:
> > Most journals will not publish an anti-SR paper for any reason. They
> > are 'refused at the door'.
>
> This is quite clearly not true. The reason so many "anti-SR" papers are
> rejected by reputable peer-reviewed journals is not because they are
> anti-SR, but rather because they have clear and obvious flaws in
> technique, understanding of basic physics, or both.

I'd love to see the summary of the study. Oh, there is no study? Guess you
just made it up.

> Unfortunately, you display both in your description here.

The ususal vague claim.

> > Personally, I would offer a variant on the standard time-of-flight
> > timing test. Using light signals and recording detectors, on
> > predetermined physical locations (on the Planet Earth). Since
> > SR predicts there will never be any difference in arrival times,
> > different orientations and times of day and year will be examined.
> > Any substantive deviation from equality will demonstrate disproof
> > of SR.
> >
> > Oddly enough, this simple experiment has never been done! (Or at least
> > it has never been published in a journal.)
>
> There are reasons it has bever been published: systematic errors are
> much larger than any reasonable expectation of a "signal". See below.

LOL! So, you claim it has been done? Where?

> > A source of light pulses will be located at a position (S). There will
> > be a target/detector/reflector (T) placed a long distance away
> > (some miles). Each location will have a recording clock, synchronized
> > to the GPS time (no e-synching allowed).
>
> Aparently you do not understand the GPS clock synchronization method.
> All GPS clocks are E-synched in the ECI frame.

Did you have a point to make?

> > A light pulse will be sent from the source to the
> > target and back (at least two 'bounces'*).
>
> I count one bounce and two traversals of the distance, not two bounces.

Did you have a point to make?

> You are HIGHLY unlikely to be able to have enough intensity, and to
> align mirrors well enough, to achieve more than 1 reflection (and over
> several miles even that is questionable; yes, I know they bounce lasers
> off the corner reflectors on the moon, but you are not devoting millions
> of dollars to equipment and technique, not to mention issues of personal
> experience and competency).

Who said anything about lasers, Tom?

> > The arrival times will be
> > recorded. The orientation of the source-target will be changed, or
> > duplicated with other source-receiver combinations.
> >
> > According to SR, the time-of-propagation will always be exactly the same
> > on both trips (S-T and T-S).
>
> Aparently you do not understand SR, either. This is false. Your clocks
> are synchronized in the ECI frame,

Who said so?

> but the spatial interval between them
> is fixed at rest in the rotating earth frame. SR clearly and
> unequivocally predicts a different time difference for East->West and
> West->East propagation. The only way to get equal time differences is
> for a North->South and South->North orientation. This effect is a few
> ppm (depending on lattitude), so it is relevant.

But according to SR, it will never change. According to LET or any other
aether theory (or anything else that does not include a perfect second SR
postulate), the time difference will shift with time.

> > According to aether theory (LET, for example),
> > the time-of-flight can vary.
>
> Aparently you do not understand LET, either. LET will predict _EXACTLY_
> the same result as SR. As will any ether theory in which the round-trip
> speed of light is c in any inertial frame.

But LET does not have 'c' in any inertial frame. Your own, personal,
bastardized and made-up, SR doppleganger of L*E*T is not LET.

> > Let us say, for example, that the anisotropy in the CMBR background
> > indicates a local aether 'rest' coordinate system (which is commonly
viewed
> > as reasonable -- at least among aetherists). Then there will be a
> > difference of about 350 kps in the light travel speed.
>
> Of course if this is true, it has already imposed EXACTLY the opposite
> asymmetry in the synchronization of the GPS clocks, making it completely
> unobservable in your experiment.

Wrong again.

> For any ether theory in which the round-trip speed of light
> is isotropically c in the ECI frame, the GPS is unable to
> observe this, as is your experiment.

Since I don't expect an isotropic c aether, I don't care.

> Any ether theory in which the round-trip speed of light is
> not isotropically c in any inertial frame occupied by labs
> on earth is already refuted, unless the theory can "live
> in the error bars" of many experiments; no such theory is
> known today.

Your endless droning of this falsehood is irrelvant.

Whassamatta, Tom. Scared of experiment?

> > * This will eliminate any systematic errors due to timing measurement
> > variation for emission/reception.
>
> You have an overly-simplistic view of systematic errors. The way to deal
> with systematic errors related to emission/reception is to vary the
> distance between your two endpoints, and examine the variations of time
> differences with distance.

That is one way -- but only if you are doing a different experiment than I
have in mind.

> > I never said I was going to use visible light. I'm planning on
> > microwaves or radio.
>
> Then a reflector will be even more difficult. As will S/N. I hope you're
> aware you'll need an FCC license (in the U.S.A.; similarly for other
> countries).

Yes, I'm aware of it.

> > Since I'm doing a straight timing test -- not a phase
> > interference test -- there is no inherent advantage to using visible
> > light over radio.
>
> Aparently you don't understand timing tests of EM signals, either.

So many special pleads, so little time.....

> If,
> say, you used the 10-meter amateur radio band, you could not hope to
> time your signals much better than ~0.1 period, which is over 3 ns --
> enormously too large for the few-ppm resolution you say you need.
> Moreover, eliminating noise (and extraneous signals from other hams) is
> non-trivial. So there _IS_ an inherent advantage to using high-frequency
> signals, such as light. Moreover, you don't need an FCC license for
> light (but check out OHSA regulations on lasers (:-().

Thanks, I wrote compliance reports for lasers in a past job.

> > I'll probably use whatever EM source allows the cheapest total
> > hardware setup.
>
> If I were doing this, I'd use an easily-pulsed diode laser and the most
> expensive corner reflector I could purchase off the shelf from someplace
> like Edmund Scientific. A flat mirror is hopeless for a distance over a
> few dozen meters. For short distances (few hundred meters), a beam
> expander would be necessary to hit both the reflector and an adjacent
> photodiode (but for short distances there is ample intensity for that).
> I have no idea how far apart such a setup could be made to work, but I
> think a kilometer is likely (at least). It would take some R&D to learn
> how to mount things stably enough, and to focus the laser beam well
> enough.

Thanks for the input.

> >>Isn't use of the GPS signal equivalent to E-synching, though?
> >
> > Nope. Because GPS allows multiple sites to be synchronized. E-synching
> > can only synchronize two points at once.
>
> Aparently you don't understand E-synching, either. The GPS clocks are
> E-synched in the ECI frame. All of them. E-synch can synchronize any
> number of clocks, as long as they are all at rest in a single inertial
> frame.

:)

> Note the GPS uses "virtual clocks" at rest in the ECI frame,
> and all real clocks display the time of the instantaneously-
> collocated virtual clock.

Since I will be using real clocks, I don't care. :)

> Moreover, the use of GPS synchronization essentially turns this into a
> round-trip experiment, for each leg.

I'm not using GPS e-synching. At least not more than once.

> Hence the strong statements I can make about ether theories
> in which the round-trip speed of light is isotropically c.

Yes, the strong odor that arises from your statements is well known.

> > One cannot use e-synching in this experiment. Because e-synching would
> > just be a pre-run of the actual experiment.
>
> But by using GPS clocks you _ARE_ using e-synching, in the ECI frame.

But I'm not proposing to use GPS clocks, Tom.

> > I don't plan to address slow clock transport.
>
> Hmmm. The earth will rotate, and will slowly transport your clocks at a
> few hundred meters per second (relative to the ECI frame). You cannot
> avoid it.

Sure I can.

> Now, if you want to do science, as opposed to simply playing around with
> some rather expensive toys, you must first understand those half-dozen
> items above which you apparently do not understand.

The special plead again.

> And you must also understand the tools you are using, and the results of
> similar experiments. For instance, Torr and Kolen reported a "signal" of
> about 50 ps over their (shorter) path. That is more than a hundred times
> smaller than the GPS absolute accuracy, and at least ten times smaller
> than the differential accuracy you could expect.

But T&K is not a transmission timing test. So I don't care. And I'm not
using GPS for distance measurement.

> It is also more than 1,000 times smaller than the 24-hour
> stability of their clocks, which is why their "signal" is
> not significant. You, at least, don't have that problem to
> nearly that degree.
>
> So while I applaud your willingness to actually perform an experiment, I
> see no hope that any science will result -- you're only playing with toys.

What you demonstrate is simply the priest's need to find theological
(instead of theoretical) confidence before you ever look through the
telescope.

http://www.google.com/groups?selm=7qfpqv%24vu6%241%40nnrp1.deja.com

Science is nothing more than playing with expensive toys. It's
what one does with the toys that is the scientific method. 

--
greywolf42
ubi dubium ibi libertas
{remove planet for e-mail}
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