Measuring One-Way Anisotropy of Light Speed

[seb7]

TL;DR Summary

Proposed method of measuring one-way light speed

I've always thought that light could possibly be transmitted faster in one direction than the other depending on the velocity of its container - despite what the current understanding of physics says! The problem is that its very hard to prove, and to this end I've read through all the different ways one-way light speed has been measured and they all appear to have flaws. So here I'm proposing an experiment which I hoping someone may have the tools to test.

1) central transmitter placed on a large circular board; pulsing with atomic accuracy a beat about 10 times a second.
2) 12 independent receivers placed equally around the board at a distance of about 1 metre from the transmitter. (also require atomic clocks.)
transmission can either be electrical or photons, shouldn't matter.

The receivers constantly attempts to sync by listening to the transmitted pulse, but not using an average, but with the earliest beat over the entire period; then uses this sync to compare with pulses currently being received and displays any differences measured. (between the current and earliest)

The board is then slowly rotated so that they each sync to their earliest time. After a rotation, they should start displaying what differences they are seeing (if one-way speeds do differ).

If current physics are correct, then they should always read zero. If one-way light has any differences in speeds, values greater than zero would appear.

 

[Ibix]

Doesn't work. If you have an anisotropic speed of light then your clocks drift when you move them - time dilation (or the roughly analogous concept, anyway) is no longer isotropic nor necessarily negligible at low speed. If you don't correct your clocks for this drift then you are assuming light speed isotropy; if you do correct them then you are assuming whatever anisotropy you choose to correct for. Either way, you will detect what you assumed.

Isotropy of lightspeed or otherwise is just a choice of coordinate system. There are no detectable physical consequences.

 

[berkeman]

And with the good reply by @Ibix this thread is closed. @seb7 -- we do not allow discussion of personal theories here. You've been with the PF long enough to know that.