Re: What is LET?



Tom Roberts wrote:

shevek wrote:

One thing I would add
to that [...] There is still room for some
other properties of the supposed ether, whatever they may be, to reveal
the local rest frame.



Not in LET. In LET there are no "other properties of the ether".

You are of course free to create a theory of your own in which the ether has such other properties. But be sure that _all_ of the existing experiments are consistent with your theory, or you will be wasting your time.

    For instance, some people want to add an assumption that the
    CMBR is at rest in the ether frame.... This does not introduce
    an inconsistency, but the addition is really irrelevant from
    the standpoint of experimental measurements.

That may be correct *so far as we know at present*. But given that light speed has been defined to be c always, then it also follows that any deviation to Maxwell recorded in the lab would naturally be interpreted as due to some other effect that skewered our measurements and generated an error in measurement. Once having provided the proper coefficient of X effect, then we can go back and get precise agreement with Special Relativity. Seems a bit circular to me. This would in turn account for the large number of effects that have been named and catalogued since the development of Special Relativity. The laws of physics keep piling up rather than becoming streamlined and closer to a ToE. IOW, our prioritization of the second postulate effectively prohibits any empirical contradiction of the theory, while simultaneously giving rise to an enormous volume of catalogued so-called relativistic effects.

But if we don't find any merit in testing the limits of the theory, then we would never discover whether this hypothetical master frame is central to em phenomena in general, or not. I believe you've already addressed your interest in expanding such knowledge, so no need to go back over that. I applaud your efforts, but I don't understand why you would continue to state matter-of-factly that such a frame is irrelevant to relativity in general. This implies that you already know what exists at the limits of the theory. We certainly haven't tested Maxwell from within frames of reference moving at relativistic velocities wrt Earth. And there are still unanswerable questions in the field of cosmology, observations that seem to run contrary to Einstein's relativity.

There is a distinct difference between our frame and frames that approach c wrt ours, in that the visible universe would appear to be flattened along the line of motion wrt a frame in motion at relativistic velocities wrt ours. This suggests that the visible universe does in fact have a definite center of mass, and thus a definite, or IOW absolute, *at rest* frame. That you believe this to be immaterial to the argument of relativity, and to the form of the Lorentz Transform in particular, is itself immaterial, since you simply don't know that this frame plays no central role in relativity. What is it, do you suppose, that constrains light to propagate at c in the first place? Does it simply decide on its own to do so? Why should this speed be uniformly consistent everywhere in the universe? Special relativity alone simply isn't large enough to address the subject of a master frame nor of the value c that is so central to that theory. After all, we cannot determine the source of the national debt by reviewing the declining market trends that resulted from it. Special relativity is caused by electromagnetic behaviors rather than being the source of them. Special relativity is a free creation of the human mind. It is simply a mathematical simulation, and as such can stake no claim to reality other than its ability to mimic one small aspect of it, or rather our perceptions of it, and then only wrt one of an infinite number of initial premises that are possible. The CMBR drift shouldn't be so carelessly dismissed from the argument.

Richard Perry



thanks for bringing to my
attention the differences in Lorentz's work to what is commonly
referred to here as "LET".


The only real difference is correcting his definition of charge density in the moving frame; this is absolutely required so charge is conserved in the moving frame, as zillions of observations show.

This is taking the attitude that further mathematical developments and derivations do not change the theory, only additional physical postulates would do so.


I wonder, are there similar difference
between Einstein's publications and the modern conception of "SR"?


No. But we have learned a lot since 1905, and the theory has been considerably expanded (e.g. complete kinematics are known, full 3-d boosts are known, general dynamics akin to Newton's three laws are known, etc.).

This is also taking the attitude that further mathematical developments and derivations do not change the theory, only additional physical postulates would do so.


Tom Roberts tjroberts@xxxxxxxxxx 

.

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