Re: Experimental Evidence for Special Relativity

On Sep 11, 10:28 am, Sean2008 <mac.offic...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Thank you all for your opinions and suggestions. Maybe "wading
through" all the comments, as I suggested before, might not really be
so bad. As a couple of you have suggested in previous replies, I
suppose I can just ignore the ones that are clearly not productive. I
don't know if, as Mr. Smith has suggested, that I am seeking a
"Socratic" method, per se. I think my search could be characterized
better by imagining the discussions between a student and a teacher.
The student (myself) will have probably have some confused notions
about the meaning of various things and a discussion of that with a
teacher will often clear that up. Perhaps there will be enough
informed opinion offered here for me to follow that model and I can
just skip over the comments which resort to name-calling and emotional
hand-waving.

So, along those lines, I have a question regarding the experimental
research in Relativity. If I am correctly understanding the things I
have read thus far, Einstein's second postulate obviates the need for
a medium. Is that correct? If that is correct, do any of the
aforementioned experiments conclusively show that a medium cannot
exist?

(Again, please excuse me if my question seems childish. I'm afraid I'm
just starting out with all of this and I am probably asking 3rd grade
questions in a class of post-college graduates. Hopefully, you'll bear
with me.)

No, a medium can exist, but is doomed to be undetectable (accoording
to SR). And such a medium might as well be ignored. Google "William
of Occam" for the philosophical basis for ignoring the undetectable.

Your questions are good. It is a teacher's dream to have a student who
really wants to learns!

Uncle Ben

Uncle Ben
.

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