FAQ: Experimental Basis of Special Relativity

[jtbell]

The section of the Usenet Physics FAQ titled "Experimental Basis of Special Relativity" has been cited here many times. I've just discovered that Tom Roberts has recently revised it. It now has information on experiments performed since the last edition seven years ago, and a larger section on "Experiments Which Apparently are not Consistent with SR/GR," with more analysis indicating why these experiments are generally not considered to be significant.

Here's the home of the current version:

http://www.edu-observatory.org/physics-faq/Relativity/SR/experiments.html

Apparently the other commonly-referenced mirror sites have not all been updated yet.

 

[exmarine]

Is there a compilation for the experimental basis for GENERAL relativity anywhere? MTW has a nice chapter. Is there anything more recent?
Thanks.

 

[PeterDonis]

Is there a compilation for the experimental basis for GENERAL relativity anywhere?

This 2014 paper by Clifford Will gives a good compilation as of that date:

https://arxiv.org/abs/1403.7377

Unfortunately it does not include the latest LIGO results, since those all came after 2014. However, Will apparently updates this compilation every few years, so hopefully there will be a new one fairly soon.

 

[pervect]

Possibly relevant are the remarks about optical extinction in the "experimental tests of relativity" FAQ stickied in PF, namely http://www.edu-observatory.org/physics-faq/Relativity/SR/experiments.html#Optical_Extinction

Optical Extinction

Many measurements of the speed of light involve the passage of the light through some material medium. This can invalidate some conclusions of the measurement due to the extinction theorem of Ewald and Oseen. This theorem states that the speed of light will approach the speed c/n relative to the medium (n is its index of refraction), and it also determines how long a path length is required for that approach. The distance required depends strongly on the index of refraction of the medium and the wavelength: for visible light and optical glass it is less than a micron, for air it is about a millimetre, and for the intergalactic medium it is several light years. So even astronomical observations over vast distances in the "vacuum" of outer space are not immune from the effects of this theorem. Note this theorem is based purely on classical electrodynamics, and for gamma rays detected as individual particles it does not apply; it is also not clear how it would apply to theories other than SR and classical electrodynamics. See for instance: J.G. Fox, Am. J. Phys. 30, pg 297 (1962), JOSA 57, pg 967 (1967), and AJP 33, pg 1 (1964). An elementary discussion is given in Ballenegger and Weber, AJP 67, pg 599 (1999). The standard reference for this is Born and Wolf, Principles of Optics, and the original paper is Oseen, Ann. der Physik 48, pg 1, 1915.

So what is of interest here is how we measure "the speed of light through a medium" , and issues related to the descriptions of the process in the time and frequency domains. I feel like the results in these papers are probably interesting and relevant, but not having read them myself I can really only bring them up as being of potential interest.