Why Should There Be An Aether Wind? Mm Exp.

[Dubbelosix]

 

Events don't move. If they did, there couldn't be 'invariant intervals'.

Events fixed in space are equivalent to a 'fixed ether', and why SR works without an ether.

In the 1920 speech at Leiden, Einstein was in favor of an ether for GR, but without any special properties such as those defined for the ether of 1900. He also reconsidered electromagnetic fields as a fundamental form of energy independent of a medium.

The Lorentz ether is another example of human analysis interpreting new things in terms of known established things. A plumber could describe electricity in terms of fluid dynamics, but that doesn't mean electricity is water. Reminds me of a slogan, 'bricks are not made from smaller bricks'.

 

 

 

Oh but there are special conditions for the gravitational aether - and in a way, we are only just starting to understand them. For instance, we now know that gravitational waves do not propagate at the speed of light when such a medium is considered - the dilation of the gravitational wave differs to electromagnetic radiation and this has been detected a number of times through the Sagnac effect.

 

We also know now that light can escape a black hole, because the speed of light can only approach zero speeds, never actually reach zero - solving the information paradox. We can't always take quotes from the giants of the past for absolutist statements, or physics will never progress. There is an importance behind a gravitational aether, I think what worried Einstein was how to prove it. In a sense, today, we can in a number of ways.

[Dubbelosix]

Events don't move themselves, events are the objectivity of a movement. The background metric does move, but not in the physical sense - hence why there is no gravitational wind, because if there was it would be in a quantized sense (ie. gravitons). All we can say about such a gravitational aether is that it ''gives spacetime a dynamic thickness.''

[Dubbelosix]

And while the Lorentz aether was interpreted wrongly, it did use transverse and longitudinal mass, which led to the realization of dilation - dilation is due to the gravitational aether.

[Mattzy]

No. It turned out to be bad idea, leading to inescapable contradictions, not a good one. Science does snuff out bad ideas, thank goodness, though it can take a while. But then again we often see in the history of science the wheel turning, if not full circle then partly so. Who knows what our model will be in another two centuries.

 

It is always important to keep a slight distance from all these theories and remember they are models that work (i.e. fit the observations) but cannot claim to be any kind of absolute or final "truth" about nature.  

That is very profound exchemist. And I think good advice. I wonder when was the last example of a theory becoming a law. I'll check it out.

[exchemist]

That is very profound exchemist. And I think good advice. I wonder when was the last example of a theory becoming a law. I'll check it out.

A law is just a term for a simple relationship that is part of a well-known theory. Laws are often associated with the person who first formulated them, e.g Newton's laws of motion, Dalton's law of partial pressures, Boyle's law and Charles's law (part of the "gas laws") and so forth. But not always, e.g. the laws of thermodynamics.

 

Laws are quite often not exactly obeyed, and a lot of interesting science is concerned with explaining the deviations from a law.

 

So laws are no more final than any other theory of science, really. Off the top of my head about the only laws that really do look pretty well final are the laws of thermodynamics.  But even the law of conservation of energy is contingent on certain assumptions about the world (See Emmy Noether's theorem).

 

(Emmy Noether is an unsung female hero of science - and yet another brilliant Jew idiotically driven out of Germany by Hitler.)

[Mattzy]

A law is just a term for a simple relationship that is part of a well-known theory. Laws are often associated with the person who first formulated them, e.g Newton's laws of motion, Dalton's law of partial pressures, Boyle's law and Charles's law (part of the "gas laws") and so forth. But not always, e.g. the laws of thermodynamics.

 

Laws are quite often not exactly obeyed, and a lot of interesting science is concerned with explaining the deviations from a law.

 

So laws are no more final than any other theory of science, really. Off the top of my head about the only laws that really do look pretty well final are the laws of thermodynamics.  But even the law of conservation of energy is contingent on certain assumptions about the world (See Emmy Noether's theorem).

 

(Emmy Noether is an unsung female hero of science - and yet another brilliant Jew idiotically driven out of Germany by Hitler.)

That's very interesting. A good correction for me.

[sluggo]

Oh but there are special conditions for the gravitational aether - and in a way, we are only just starting to understand them. For instance, we now know that gravitational waves do not propagate at the speed of light when such a medium is considered - the dilation of the gravitational wave differs to electromagnetic radiation and this has been detected a number of times through the Sagnac effect.

 

We also know now that light can escape a black hole, because the speed of light can only approach zero speeds, never actually reach zero - solving the information paradox. We can't always take quotes from the giants of the past for absolutist statements, or physics will never progress. There is an importance behind a gravitational aether, I think what worried Einstein was how to prove it. In a sense, today, we can in a number of ways.

So what is the revised speed? 

[Dubbelosix]

From what I recall, as small as the difference is, Sagnac's first prediction was off by something like a factor of 1000.