The biggest 'WHAT IF' in scientific history.


The wave-ether theory was accepted for the best part of 200 years. It was given a massive boost by Maxwell. Physics was sailing in calm water, with the pieces falling nicely into place and then along comes Michelson and Morley to throw a spanner in the works. According to theory their experiment should have detected the ether by showing our movement w.r.t it. It didn't.

WHAT IF at that point in history physicists had bit the bullet and accepted that their theory was wrong, that there was no ether, and moved on. As mainstream physicists today are adamant that there is no ether one has to conclude that that would have been the 'CORRECT DECISION'.

WHAT IF they had made the CORRECT DECISION? There would be no Lorentz ether theory, no Lorentz transforms and no relativity theory. If you study how physics actually got to where it is today, making the 'WRONG DECISION' is an absolutely vital step. Lorentz did not accept the CORRECT DECISION that there was no ether and came up with a fix. That is the first step down the path which leads to modern physics.

Einstein's starting point was Lorentz. He says:

"Lorentz entered upon the scene. He brought theory into harmony with experience by means of a wonderful simplification of theoretical principles. He achieved .. the most important advance in the theory of electricity since Maxwell". AE 1920 lecture

It was not the concept of the ether which he was trying to get rid of

".....the whole change in the conception of the ether which the special theory of relativity brought about, consisted in taking away from the ether its last mechanical quality, namely, its immobility." AE 1920 lecture

He was trying to get rid of the asymmetry in the theoretical structure of LET.

"For the theoretician such an asymmetry in the theoretical structure, with no corresponding asymmetry in the system of experience, is intolerable."

Essentially Lorenz's theory says there is an ether but because of interaction between the ether and ponderable matter it APPEARS to every observer that he is stationary w.r.t the ether. Einstein simplified it by assuming that every observer IS stationary w.r.t. the ether. His second postulate describes what an observer would perceive if he was stationary w.r.t the ether. Analogy - If you were in a balloon floating above a lake and you dropped something into the lake then if you remained at the centre of the expanding circle you would know that you were stationary w.r.t the lake. That in essence is what the second postulate describes.

Note that Einstein saw no reason to justify assuming source independence. He always considered that light was a wave propagating IN something although how one can be physically interpret - every observer actually being stationary w.r.t. the ether - is a problem which Einstein ultimately failed to resolve.

I'm not sure at what point in history the ether became unacceptable. The myth is that somehow Einstein came up with a theory which didn't need an ether but closer examination of what Einstein wrote indicates not only that he didn't, but that he did not claim to have done so.

While the WRONG DECISION was a vital step in the sequence of events which led to current theory WHAT IF the CORRECT DECISION had been made following the MMX result? Physics would have taken an entirely different route. If they had 'CORRECTLY' interpreted MMX = no ether then obviously the speed of light is not constant w.r.t the ether as previously thought. Logically it has then got to be constant w.r.t the source. After all if the source is surrounded by nothing physical which can control the speed of light that only leaves the physical processes taking place in the source which can physically influence the speed at which light leaves it. Theory would have been developed based on source dependency and when later it was discovered that light consisted of particles they would have been even more confident that they were on the right lines. The whole history of physics would have been different.

If modern physics is correct then one might assume that at some point that route would have failed.

Students are taught that theories cannot be proved but that a single experiment can disprove them and force them to be abandoned. Let us not however be that naive. If there is an adverse result challenging accepted theory then one is faced with either finding a fix which modifies the theory to explain the adverse result or you need a different theory. In practice, one does not abandon an established theory if there is no alternative theory as that would leave you with no theory at all. That isn't realistic. Had the CORRECT DECISION route been taken the only 'alternative' would be to return to the wave-ether theory which would make no sense to anyone. MMX had failed to detect the existence of the ether and the black body radiation/the photo electric effect had shown that light wasn't made up of waves - no ether - no waves. It is therefore hard to see how, if the CORRECT DECISION had been made and physics had taken that route how it would ever have merged with the route it did take based upon the WRONG DECISION and leading to current theory.

There seem to be a number of possibilities:

1/ Because the wrong decision was made physics is exploring the wrong route.

2/ That what I have called the wrong decision is indeed the correct decision i.e. Lorentz was right and there is an ether and the success of relativity indicates this. Einstein's attempt at improving on Lorentz's theory ended in failure because he could not find an alternative ether concept which corresponded with the symmetry of his maths - leaving us with LET.

3/ That there is no ether. That the decision made post MMX was wrong but fortunately so because although it was wrong and although nothing Einstein did now makes sense, somehow we ended up with the right theory which today can be justified by more modern treatments.

Many modern relativists have such a vague understanding of the historical context of relativity that I can only assume that those who teach the subject carefully and deliberately avoid it. The well informed presumably believe in 3. A student of human nature might be suspicious that the longer one believes in a theory the harder it is to question it at a fundamental level and the more there is the tendency to find an alternative reason for retaining one's beliefs. As an outsider it seems to me highly unlikely that present theory is fundamentally sound based on its actual provenance.

Though not likely it is of course possible to make a series of wrong turns and somehow end up in the right place. If that were to happen the assumption is that had you taken the right turns you would have got to the right place more quickly. In the case of relativity it seems that the only way to get to the 'right place' is by taking a wrong turn.

I would have thought that any true scientist's natural curiosity would have him want to know where physics would be now had the CORRECT DECISION route been taken. Even if I was an ardent relativist I would be curious. It is arguably the biggest WHAT IF in scientific history. But then one might say that never in history, since the Spanish Inquisition could exhibiting curiosity on matters outside of orthodoxy have such a detrimental effect on one's career as is now the case in Physics.

--
John Kennaugh
to email convert the number from hex to decimal
.

Quantcast