Re: The Aether and Relativity
- From: "Laurent" <cyberdyno1@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 02 Jun 2005 09:47:38 GMT
"N:dlzc D:aol T:com (dlzc)" <N: dlzc1 D:cox T:net@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote
in message news:mjtne.1816$Pp.280@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Dear Laurent:
>
> "Laurent" <cyberdyno1@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
> news:%csne.873866$w62.62300@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > The Aether and Relativity
> >
> > The reason that, in spacetime, frames must be
> > related is because it all comes from a single
> > entity, reality is one single process, the
> > universe is one, and all frames within the
> > observable universe are related by the aether,
> > through the aether. All frames depend on the
> > same aether.
>
> Or simpler still, frames are related by c-dominated rules,
> because light provides the only means of signalling. Therefore
> there is no need to posit an undetectable aether, since there is
> no physical way to either prove or disprove its existence.
>
> David A. Smith
>
>
Right, we need no aether to describe material reality, but if we are
to answer what David Chalmers called 'the hard problem', to
explain - what is that which is - we need to include the notion of
an aether. We need an aether in order to develop a strong and
coherent philosophical basis. Afterall, what is the real, this ever
changing material reality or the eternal?
"Bohr's approach has the merit of giving a
consistent account of the meaning of the
quantum theory. Moreover, it focuses on
something that is new in physics, i.e., the
wholeness of the observer and what is
observed. This question is surely relevant
also in discussing the relationship of mind
and matter. But Bohr's insistence that this
wholeness cannot be understood through
any concepts whatsoever, however new they
may be, implies that further progress in this
field depends mainly on the development of
the mathematical formalism without any
real intuitive or physical insight. On the
other hand, I have always felt that
mathematics and intuitive insight go hand in
hand. To restrict oneself to only one of these
is like tying one hand behind one's back and
working only with the other. This is important
in physics, but it is evidently even more
important in studying the mind, where
intuitive insight must itself be a primary
factor in all exploration." --- David Bohm
In the past, when others talked about what we now call 'the
classical vaccum' nobody complained, even though it was also
unobservable and undetectable. Now some, like me, talk about a
vacuum state with physical properties and the establishment
physicists go berserk.
--
Laurent
----------------------------------
",.that one body may act upon another at a
distance through a vacuum, without the
mediation of anything else, by and through
which their action and force may be
conveyed from one to another, is to me so
great an absurdity, that I believe no man,
who has in philosophical matters a
competent faculty of thinking, can ever fall
into it. Gravity must be caused by an agent
acting constantly according to certain laws,
but whether this agent be material or
immaterial I have left to the consideration
of my readers." --- Isaac Newton
------------------------------------
"What is fundamentally new in the ether
of the general theory of relativity as
opposed to the ether of Lorentz consists
in this, that the state of the former is at
every place determined by connections
with the matter and the state of the
ether in neighboring places, which are
amenable to law in the form of
differential equations; whereas the state
of the Lorentzian ether in the absence of
electromagnetic fields is conditioned by
nothing outside itself, and is everywhere
the same. The ether of the general theory
of relativity is transmuted conceptually
into the ether of Lorentz if we substitute
constants for the functions of space which
describe the former, disregarding the
causes which condition its state. Thus we
may also say, I think, that the ether of
the general theory of relativity is the
outcome of the Lorentzian ether, through
relativation."
[...]
"But this ether may not be thought of as
endowed with the quality characteristic
of ponderable media, as consisting of
parts which may be tracked through time.
The idea of motion may not be applied to
it." --- Albert Einstein, 1920
--------------------------------------
Sir Edmund T. Whittaker in the preface to
his scholarly and scientific "A history of
the Theories of Aether and Electricity"
published in 1951 said:
"As everyone knows, the aether played a
great part in the physics of the nineteenth
century; but in the first decade of the
twentieth, chiefly as result of the failure
of attempts to observe the earth's motion
relative to the aether, and the acceptance
of the principle that such attempts must
always fail, the word "aether" fell out of
favor, and it became customary to refer
to the interplanetary spaces as "vacuous";
the vacuum being conceived as mere
emptiness, having no properties except
that of propagating electromagnetic
waves. But with the development of
quantum electrodynamics, the vacuum has
come to be regarded as the seat of the
"zero-point" oscillations of the
electromagnetic field, of the "zero-point"
fluctuations of electric charge and current,
and of a "polarization" corresponding to a
dielectric constant different from unity. It
seems absurd to retain the name
"vacuum" for an entity so rich in physical
properties, and the historical word "aether"
may fitly be retained."
----- Sir Edmund T. Whittaker
--------------------------------------------
In 1954 P.A.M. Dirac, a Nobel Prize winner
in physics in 1933, said -
"The aetherless basis of physical theory
may have reached the end of its
capabilities and we see in the aether a
new hope for the future." --- P. Dirac
---------------------------------------------
The science popularizer G. Zukav writes -
"Quantum field theory resurrects a new
kind of ether, e.g. particles are excited
states of the featureless ground state
of the field (the vacuum state). The
vacuum state is so featureless and has
such high symmetry that we cannot
assign a velocity to it experimentally."
---- G. Zukav
--------------------------------------------
The very well known Tao of Physics by
Fritjof Capra states -
"This [quantum field] is indeed an
entirely new concept which has been
extended to describe all subatomic
particles and their interactions, each
type of particle corresponding to a
different field. In these 'quantum
field theories', the classical contrast
between the solid particles and the
space surrounding them is completely
overcome. The quantum field is seen
as the fundamental physical entity; a
continuous medium which is present
everywhere in space. Particles are
merely local condensations of the
field; concentrations of energy which
come and go, thereby losing their
individual character and dissolving
into the underlying field."
.
- References:
- The Aether and Relativity
- From: Laurent
- Re: The Aether and Relativity
- From: N:dlzc D:aol T:com \(dlzc\)
- The Aether and Relativity
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