- #1
- 5,584
- 24
From [URL='https://www.physicsforums.com/insights/author/john-baez/']John Baez[/URL]’ page on the experimental basis of Special Relativity, he says that:
and
My question pertains to the remarks in blue: aether theories that are experimentally indistinguishable from SR. Where are these theories published? One member (Yogi) makes reference to the so-called Selleri (sp?) transformations, saying that they lead to the same predictions as SR, but are predicated on different premises. The problem is that no one who advocates the “alternative to SR” view ever presents the alternative in sufficient detail. So I’d like to know where Selleri’s theory can be found. I tried Googling it, but there’s nothing out there.
Baez makes reference to “Test Theories” of SR. Might I find what I am looking for here?
Thanks,
[URL='https://www.physicsforums.com/insights/author/john-baez/' said:John Baez[/URL]]
The existing experiments put rather strong experimental constraints on any alternative theory. In particular, Zhang showed that these experimental limits essentially require that any theory based upon the existence of an ether be experimentally indistinguishable from SR, and have an ether frame which is unobservable (the only alternative is for a theory to "live in the error bars" of the experiments, which is quite difficult given the high accuracies achieved by many of these experiments).
and
[URL='https://www.physicsforums.com/insights/author/john-baez/' said:John Baez[/URL]]
These theories share the property that the round-trip speed of light is isotropic in any inertial frame, but the one-way speed is isotropic only in an ether frame. In all of these theories the effects of slow clock transport exactly offset the effects of the anisotropic one-way speed of light (in any inertial frame), and all are experimentally indistinguishable from SR.
My question pertains to the remarks in blue: aether theories that are experimentally indistinguishable from SR. Where are these theories published? One member (Yogi) makes reference to the so-called Selleri (sp?) transformations, saying that they lead to the same predictions as SR, but are predicated on different premises. The problem is that no one who advocates the “alternative to SR” view ever presents the alternative in sufficient detail. So I’d like to know where Selleri’s theory can be found. I tried Googling it, but there’s nothing out there.
Baez makes reference to “Test Theories” of SR. Might I find what I am looking for here?
Thanks,
Last edited by a moderator: