Re: A little challenge for relativists.

Joe Fischer wrote: 
On Sat, John Kennaugh <JKNG@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Joe Fischer wrote: 

WITHOUT READING THE FOLLOWING, relativity paper #1

[QUOTE]
"Examples of this sort, together with the unsuccessful attempts to
discover any motion of the earth
relatively to the ``light medium,'' suggest that the phenomena of
electrodynamics as well as of
mechanics possess no properties corresponding to the idea of absolute
rest. They suggest rather
that, as has already been shown to the first order of small quantities,
the same laws of
electrodynamics and optics will be valid for all frames of reference
for which the equations of
mechanics hold good.1 We will raise this conjecture (the purport of
which will hereafter be called
the ``Principle of Relativity'') to the status of a postulate, and also
introduce another postulate,
which is only apparently irreconcilable with the former, namely, that
light is always propagated in
empty space with a definite velocity c which is independent of the
state of motion of the emitting
body. These two postulates suffice for the attainment of a simple and
consistent theory of the
electrodynamics of moving bodies based on Maxwell's theory for
stationary bodies. The introduction
of a ``luminiferous ether'' will prove to be superfluous inasmuch as
the view here to be developed
will not require an ``absolutely stationary space'' provided with
special properties, nor assign a
velocity-vector to a point of the empty space in which electromagnetic
processes take place."
[UNQUOTE]


It is from his SR paper "ON THE ELECTRODYNAMICS OF MOVING BODIES" A.E
June 30, 1905 which I would hope that anyone interested in relativity
will have a copy of. I have quoted and discussed the passage you quote 5
times this year already - the latest in this very thread on 4th Nov in a
post replying to Tom Roberts I wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------------------
One has to study the following with care to get the actual meaning:

 "The introduction of a 'luminiferous ether' will prove to be
superfluous inasmuch as the view here to be developed will not require
an 'absolutely stationary space' provided with special properties, nor
assign a velocity-vector to a point of the empty space in which
electromagnetic processes take place".

The key word here is 'inasmuch' - He is not saying the ether is
unnecessary he is saying that an ether which implies an 'absolutely
stationary space' is unnecessary. One can be sure of this interpretation
because he clarifies it in his 1920 lecture.


          The lecture was not a formal technical seminar, it wasn't even
a technical lecture.

"ETHER AND THE THEORY OF RELATIVITY" An address delivered on May 5th, 1920, in the University of Leyden. Obvious nothing technical Probably a misleading title disguising an informal chat on flower arranging :o)


    I suspect some ethernuts were in the audience
and he may have been trying to be nice.
           I also have been considering the possibility he had just found
out he was awarded the Nobel for the photoelectric effect, and he
might have been so miffed that it was not for anything about relativity,
he got a little goofy and talked about ether.


Now you're getting silly.

         Or, he might have just wanted to act as stupid as the ethernuts.

         LET _requires_ stationary space, if you don't understand that
you have no business thinking about physics.


I never said otherwise.
The theoretical foundations of LET are

1. There is an ether which permeates all of space and everywhere
   defines a unique inertial frame and ensures that the speed of the
   source has no effect on the speed of light.

2. Clocks and rulers in motion w.r.t. the ether frame behave as
   described by a Lorentz transform from the ether frame.

Because of the structure of the Lorentz transforms it is impossible to locate the 'unique inertial frame' [but then if one _could_ locate it, LET would not be a 'fix' re the MMX]. This means that _ANY_ inertial frame can be selected as "the ether frame" without changing the theoretical predictions for any measurement. Einstein chose to assume that the ether frame and the observers FoR are one and the same thing.

(With acknowledgement to Tom Roberts to avoid being accused of plagiarism)


         SR requires a stationary space, and a rigid equi-angular
reference grid, just like LET.

         What Einstein said and expressed many times, is that
an ether is not need, not needed for anything.

So you keep saying and so far you haven't backed up your statement by producing a quote.

         Only morons or strong faithed people will believe in
something that never reveals itself.

The only explanation for source independence is that light is a wave travelling in the ether and it is the ether which determines its speed of travel not the source. Thus any experiment which shows source independence has revealed the presence of the ether. It is therefore possible to show the presence of the ether but not its state of motion.

"More careful reflection teaches us, however, that the special theory
of relativity does not compel us to deny ether. We may assume the
existence of an ether; only we must give up ascribing a definite
state of motion to it..." AE

Whether there is an experiment clearly showing source independence is another matter.

         An ether just for light alone is an absurdity, and the
electromagnetic spectrum is quite complete, so something
more than a light ether is needed, for gravity, and inertia.

         The only reason an ether was ever considered is
because air carries sound,

The reason the ether was invented was to explain 'action at a distance' i.e. magnetic and electrostatic attraction e.g. the magnet causes stress in the ether and that stress causes a force on the pin which moves towards the magnet. Later it was pressed into service for light to propagate in.

but there is no comparison,
the speed of sound in air depends on temperature, and
_NOTHING_ else, are you aware of that?


Yes. - I don't see the relevance to the ether.


         It takes a wild ego, and a bad case of stupid to
totally obsessed with something that was never taught
in college, and which has never produced a positive
result in an experiment, and which the  entire physics
community has ignored because they have been
getting nothing but positive results using a better
model.

I am talking about Relativity what model are you talking about. There is no way Einstein would have come up with relativity if he had assumed no ether whatever anyone taught you.


Sorry you will have to try again to find something which justifies your
claim.


        My claim is justified by the fantastic sucess of the model
being used, just how long have you been deluding yourself
with this dead horse that hasn't moved a muscle, ever?

I would agree that this statement may have led to the
misconception but Albert did not always choose his words with precision.


        But he did save his correspondence, and if you have not
read the "collected Papers" published so far, then you should,
so that you can have a life other than being just one more
antagonist in this newsgroup, just one more ethernut in the
sci. newsgroups that have been posting foolishness or at
least 12 years.

His first attempt to define his second postulate is open to a least 3
interpretations and you have to await his second version later in the
paper to get clarification. We are perhaps reading it without ambience
of the time.


         I never saw a carpenter that cut every board correctly
on the first try.
         I am confident that the 1920 address was a fluke, anything
could have caused him to ease up on his efforts to rid physics
of the observer biased concepts, and to erase the nonsense.

That is why in 1938 a physics text book bearing his name states "Light is a wave travelling in the aether..."


        Possibly Lorentz was in the audience and Einstein had
just found out he was ill.
        Possibly there were national socialists there, who had
threatened to harm him if he continued his stance with relativity,
for they did shortly after that forcibly enter and search his
family home, and made conditions unacceptable for his return
to areas controlled by the nationalists (readers can find all
this in some of his biographies online.

        It would be extremely unlikely that he would clarify anything
in an address to a non-physics audience, when all of his formal
presentations were in major journals.

look for a relevant quote or accept that you were mistaken. 

        A good physicist searches and finds his own mistakes,
I am not the one that it matters to.
        Maybe you and all the other ethernuts can get together
and write a paper on the same thing ether is made of.

I am not an ether nut. I do not like the idea of the ether. I have never liked the idea of the ether. If it had been down to me post MMX I would have gone for the non ether option:

If there is no ether then the speed of light cannot be constant w.r.t the ether can it?

If the speed of light is not constant w.r.t the ether it must be constant with respect to something else mustn't it?

It cannot be constant w.r.t the observer because there is no possible causality whereby the observer can effect the speed at which light leaves the source, besides light leaves the source whether there is an observer or not.

Therefore if there is no ether the speed of light must be constant w.r.t the source because that is the only thing it can be constant w.r.t.

There was no route to relativity if Einstein assumed no ether because no ether = source dependency and SR is based on source independence.

Hence I assume Einstein still believed that light was a wave propagating IN something. He had no problem naming that something 'ether'. I see the 1920 lecture as him putting things straight because some of his followers had got it into their head that he had said that there was no ether and he hadn't.



        It is sad he had to leave Germany, his work his friends,
and even some of his close family behind, because there were
people against relativity, and were willing to do harm to others
to fight against it.

       Frankly, I am not at all happy with the current state of
physics, even though it is supposed to be formalized to a great
extent, there are far too many ideas, too many concepts, and
too much wasted time and money.

       Maybe if congress would not have killed the superconducting
supercollider there would be data now that would have removed
many of the misconceptions.

        I don't even know why anything about ether is mentioned
in this newsgroup, I don't know what people who don't like
relativity post here, I don't know why ther are so many people
who think they are smarter than Einstein and all other great
scientists put together.

I am trying to understand what Einstein actually did and actually said rather than simply accept the misconceptions which are taught and who people like you trot out which are totally inconsistent with what Einstein did and said.


        Do yourself a favor, get a life that himges on something
you can see, something you can feel, something you can
measure, something real, and workable, and something physical.

        I could get my books out and type in quote after quote
where he states reasons for not thinking of an ether.

All I asked you to do is to type out one and so far you have typed out loads of stuff in three postings but still no quote.



        But your attitude makes it clear that no quote will ever
change you mind.

How do you know unless you actually provide one? Maybe you can't find the quotes you thought were there because they aren't?

A quote will make me think but I doubt it will change my analysis of what Einstein DID because a very clear and completely consistent picture of what he tried to do and why emerges. I in no way base that analysis on his 1920 lecture but on the fact that if one assumes no ether then it means source dependence. Can you fault my logic above? An assumption of no ether simply will not get you to relativity.

OTOH if despite the MMX one still assumes that light is a wave travelling in some sort of ether THEN and ONLY THEN do you interpret the MMX as indicating that for some reason an observer always finds himself stationary w.r.t the ether. Both Lorentz and Einstein tried to come up with a theory which explained why. Einstein's 2nd postulate describes exactly what an observer stationary w.r.t the ether would experience.

The 1920 lecture merely confirms the consistent picture.

--
John Kennaugh
'Many people would sooner die than think - in fact they do' Bertrand Russell.
.

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