Aether theories which are experimentally indistinguishable from SR.

[Ich]

I have one question before this thread is closed.
There could be one feature that excludes aether (or SR) experimentally. I have read a paper that claims that Thomas Precession could not be explained in aether theories. Another stated (along those lines) that an accelerated body would experience a rotation if aether theories were right.
Does anyone know more about this?

 

[Aether]

I have one question before this thread is closed.
There could be one feature that excludes aether (or SR) experimentally. I have read a paper that claims that Thomas Precession could not be explained in aether theories. Another stated (along those lines) that an accelerated body would experience a rotation if aether theories were right.
Does anyone know more about this?

In this thread we are specifically talking about "Aether theories which are experimentally indistinguishable from SR", namely GGT (aka, Lorentz ether theory, or modified Lorentz ether theory). This is the same physical theory as SR but in a different coordinate system, and therefore no experiment can ever distinguish between the two; GGT and SR stand or fall together. Of course there are other aether theories besides GGT, so you might want to check to see if the paper you read is referring to one of those.

 

[clj4]

In this thread we are specifically talking about "Aether theories which are experimentally indistinguishable from SR", namely GGT (aka, Lorentz ether theory, or modified Lorentz ether theory). This is the same physical theory as SR but in a different coordinate system, and therefore no experiment can ever distinguish between the two; GGT and SR stand or fall together. Of course there are other aether theories besides GGT, so you might want to check to see if the paper you read is referring to one of those.

How quickly you forget: the Gagnon expriment clearly shows GGT being distinguishable from SR. Remember his paper?
One more thing , there is no reference in any scientific paper to Lorentz Ether Theory (LET). LET is something that was cooked up on one of these science forums. GGT is a derivative of MS.

 

[clj4]

I have a personal theory that predicts a specific and clear violation of local Lorentz symmetry that is beyond the resolution of current technology to detect, but which should be detectable in the not too distant future given the historical trend of increasing precision of detectors. Although I continue to learn interesting details in the course of this discussion, I am personally past the point where the fundamental issue of "Aether theories which are experimentally indistinguishable from SR" is a very interesting subject because there is no question whatsoever that just such an aether theory exists (e.g., GGT and SR represent the same physical theory using different coordinate systems). clj4 is the one who resurrected this thread and keeps it going, not me.

A lot of work in this space has been done already:

http://relativity.livingreviews.org/open?pubNo=lrr-2005-5&page=articlesu9.html

Doesn't look that there is much chance in proving your aether theory.

 

[clj4]

Clj4,I complained that this killed the richness of insight that SR gives us. Aether responded in agreement that one may complain along these lines, but his point is merely that such a theory agrees with SR.

In this, he is correct. The modern stance on this is: Aether theories can be indistinguishable from SR. But they provide no new predictive power (in actuality, they give less insight) and are therefore not of theoretical interest.

The bolded statement is not only patently wrong but it also perpetrates a myth. The correct and complete statement is

Aether theories can be made indistinguishable from SR by introducing additional , ad-hoc assumptions

This has always been the "Achile's heel" of all the aether theories. It is not only that they "provide less predictive power" (to quote your true statement) but that a new ad-hoc assumption needs to be cooked up for each of them.

There are a lot of other misconceptions, twisting of my words in your post but I will not bother with them, I wanted to concentrate on essence. Once we agree on the correct description of aether theories , we can proceed to secondary stuff, I will have a few very interesting questions for you.

 

[Hurkyl]

The bolded statement is not only patently wrong but it also perpetrates a myth. The correct and complete statement is

Aether theories can be made indistinguishable from SR by introducing additional , ad-hoc assumptions

And the resulting theory is then an aether theory that is indistinguishable from SR.

 

[clj4]

And the resulting theory is then an aether theory that is indistinguishable from SR.

Yes, indeed , this has been the case from the early days of SR vs. the aether theories, the resultant has been a patched up/propped up theory, with a low to zero credibility. On the other hand, SR doesn't need any such ad-hoc propping.
Not much has changed since the days of Lorentz...CM Will produced a very nice synopsis of the perpetration of this myth in physics. He made it even more interesting by pointing out a few such ad-hoc "additions". His paper is a very good way of debunking this myth, perhaps it should be introduced in the graduate classes.

 

[Aether]

How quickly you forget: the Gagnon expriment clearly shows GGT being distinguishable from SR. Remember his paper?

Recanted by the authors, thoroughly refuted in this forum and thread locked, you declared by unanimous consent as the only "against the mainstream" party to the conversation, and still you cling to this fantasy paper (which doesn't even exist) that you refer to as "refurbished Gagnon" wherein the phase differential of two waveguides isn't the difference in the two phases of the waveguides (a DC signal) but rather it is half the sum of the two phases (an ~40GHz AC signal), right?

One more thing , there is no reference in any scientific paper to Lorentz Ether Theory (LET). LET is something that was cooked up on one of these science forums. GGT is a derivative of MS.

Physical Review Letters is a scientific journal. Here's an abstract of one of their papers:

http://link.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v55/p143]Effects[/PLAIN] that could distinguish the Lorentz ether theory from Einstein’s special relativity, and their measurability, are analyzed.

 

[Aether]

I have a personal theory that predicts a specific and clear violation of local Lorentz symmetry that is beyond the resolution of current technology to detect, but which should be detectable in the not too distant future given the historical trend of increasing precision of detectors. Although I continue to learn interesting details in the course of this discussion, I am personally past the point where the fundamental issue of "Aether theories which are experimentally indistinguishable from SR" is a very interesting subject because there is no question whatsoever that just such an aether theory exists (e.g., GGT and SR represent the same physical theory using different coordinate systems). clj4 is the one who resurrected this thread and keeps it going, not me.

A lot of work in this space has been done already:

http://relativity.livingreviews.org/open?pubNo=lrr-2005-5&page=articlesu9.html

Doesn't look that there is much chance in proving your aether theory.

You could very well be right about that. Nevertheless, this is my prime motivation for studying space-time theories and experiments.

 

[clj4]

Recanted by the authors, thoroughly refuted in this forum and thread locked, you declared by unanimous consent as the only "against the mainstream" party to the conversation, and still you cling to this fantasy paper (which doesn't even exist) that you refer to as "refurbished Gagnon" wherein the phase differential of two waveguides isn't the difference in the two phases of the waveguides (a DC signal) but rather it is half the sum of the two phases (an ~40GHz AC signal), right?

Why do you keep lying so much? Do you think lying would make things true?

1. Not recanted-you keep repeating your own phantasy.

2. Thread locked because of your "helpers", the two sock puppets that were doing your "calculations" were exposed. You abdicated all your calculations to him (the sock puppet), remember?

3. The issue of the phase is the most embarassing for your inability to think out of the box and to calculate on your own (i.e. without the assistance of the sock puppets), this is why you never answered to this posting from a LIVE thread:

https://www.physicsforums.com/showpost.php?p=965955&postcount=41

Physical Review Letters is a scientific journal. Here's an abstract of one of their papers:

OK, this looks interesting. Can you source the paper in order for us to see how it might support your point? From the look of it, it seems just another run of the mill paper on Lorentz violations.

 

[clj4]

You could very well be right about that. Nevertheless, this is my prime motivation for studying space-time theories and experiments.

This is fine, you can study this all you want, just don't try to propagate lies as scientific truth.
No one argues agains your having a dream to prove Einstein and SR wrong, what I am arguing against is your attempt of proving an aether theory right BEFORE you did any conclusive experiment.

 

[Aether]

OK, this looks interesting. Can you source the paper in order for us to see how it might support your point? From the look of it, it seems just another run of the mill paper on Lorentz violations.

I'm thousands of miles away from home at the moment, and can't get to any papers. Heres the link: http://link.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v55/p143

 

[clj4]

I'm thousands of miles away from home at the moment, and can't get to any papers. Heres the link: http://link.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v55/p143

1985? With an erratum from 1986? With no followup?? I wouldn't spend any time or money tracking down this one. I'll wait until you source it.

Well, I found a scan here:

http://ccdb4fs.kek.jp/cgi-bin/img/allpdf?198506368

Pretty embarassing, one of those : "we didn't run any experiment but here are the mistakes made by the ones that ran these experiments that prove SR right". Duh.

 

[Aether]

1985? With an erratum from 1986? I wouldn't spend any time or money tracking down this one. I'll wait until you source it.

My only point in quoting this paper was to refute your claim that "there is no reference in any scientific paper to Lorentz Ether Theory (LET)." This paper does so within its abstract. I'll retrieve the full paper later, but I don't plan on bringing it up again here unless you are actually interested in the subject matter of the paper itself.

 

[clj4]

My only point in quoting this paper was to refute your claim that "there is no reference in any scientific paper to Lorentz Ether Theory (LET)." This paper does so within its abstract. I'll retrieve the full paper later, but I don't plan on bringing it up again here unless you are actually interested in the subject matter of the paper itself.

No, after seeing it I don't care for bringing it up again, it is an embarassment.
Sometimes garbage does get published.

 

[Aether]

No one argues agains your having a dream to prove Einstein and SR wrong...

I don't have any dream to prove Einstein and SR wrong. I wasn't even thinking of Einstein and SR until I realized that my theory implies a locally preferred frame.

...what I am arguing against is your attempt of proving an aether theory right BEFORE you did any conclusive experiment.

I haven't attempted that; at least not intentionally. You're argument is with Mansouri-Sexl, Zhang, and most everyone else; not just me.

 

[clj4]

I don't have any dream to prove Einstein and SR wrong. I wasn't even thinking of Einstein and SR until I realized that my theory implies a locally preferred frame.I haven't attempted that; at least not intentionally. You're argument is with Mansouri-Sexl, Zhang, and most everyone else; not just me.

You need to read Mansouri-Sexl again. More importantly, you need to read the 11 papers on OWLS and CM Will's criticism.

 

[Ich]

In this thread we are specifically talking about "Aether theories which are experimentally indistinguishable from SR", namely GGT (aka, Lorentz ether theory, or modified Lorentz ether theory). This is the same physical theory as SR but in a different coordinate system, and therefore no experiment can ever distinguish between the two; GGT and SR stand or fall together. Of course there are other aether theories besides GGT, so you might want to check to see if the paper you read is referring to one of those.

Those papers are about LET. They claim that both theories do not predict the same when it comes to Wigner rotations. Example: When you transform from your frame to the ether rest frame and then to a frame moving with v relative to your frame (which is what you do in LET), the result is different from a direct transformation (which you can do only in SR). That´s what one of those papers says. I don´t know enough about it to judge it. That´s why I ask.

 

[clj4]

Those papers are about LET. They claim that both theories do not predict the same when it comes to Wigner rotations. Example: When you transform from your frame to the ether rest frame and then to a frame moving with v relative to your frame (which is what you do in LET), the result is different from a direct transformation (which you can do only in SR). That´s what one of those papers says. I don´t know enough about it to judge it. That´s why I ask.

Interesting. The Thomas-Wigner precession is a very interesting effect, can you get us the titles of those papers?

 

[Hans de Vries]

Those papers are about LET. They claim that both theories do not predict the same when it comes to Wigner rotations. Example: When you transform from your frame to the ether rest frame and then to a frame moving with v relative to your frame (which is what you do in LET), the result is different from a direct transformation (which you can do only in SR). That´s what one of those papers says. I don´t know enough about it to judge it. That´s why I ask.

A good overview of the Wigner rotation/Thomas precession can be read here:
http://www.mathpages.com/rr/s2-11/2-11.htm

Since the effect can be described as the limit of a sequence of normal
transformations it should not make any difference at all if done via SR
or MS transformations.

However, the impression that the total angle of rotation as experienced
by the rotating observer is:

\frac{360^o}{\sqrt{1-v^2/c^2}}

In SR is totally different in MS. In the latter the Lorentz Contraction is
always given with respect to the preferential frame while in SR it is given
with respect to the center of rotation.

The circular orbit becomes an ellipse flattened in the direction of motion
as a result of Lorentz Contraction in SR. taking a "sharper corner" is then
interpreted as a rotation over an angle increased by a factor gamma.

It just shows that one should be careful with this kind of interpretations,
not that there is any difference as a result from the transformation method
used.Regards, Hans

 

[clj4]

A good overview of the Wigner rotation/Thomas precession can be read here:
http://www.mathpages.com/rr/s2-11/2-11.htm

Since the effect can be described as the limit of a sequence of normal
transformations it should not make any difference at all if done via SR
or MS transformations.

However, the impression that the total angle of rotation as experienced
by the rotating observer is:

\frac{360^o}{\sqrt{1-v^2/c^2}}

In SR is totally different in MS. In the latter the Lorentz Contraction is
always given with respect to the preferential frame while in SR it is given
with respect to the center of rotation.

The circular orbit becomes an ellipse flattened in the direction of motion
as a result of Lorentz Contraction in SR. taking a "sharper corner" is then
interpreted as a rotation over an angle increased by a factor gamma.

It just shows that one should be careful with this kind of interpretations,
not that there is any difference as a result from the transformation method
used.Regards, Hans

Would still be interesting to see the paper(s) Ich is talking about. Especially if they were published (not archived only)

 

[Ich]

The first is http://www.ipp.mpg.de/eng/for/projekte/pfmc/pfmc_workshop/abstracts/word_abstract.doc" .
It was published in Physica Scripta, Vol. 67, 381-387, 2003.
I googled the author and found that he also published in Apeiron; further he managed to misspell Lie and Kronecker. Not the best references.
I can´t find the second one, I just stumbled over it browsing arxiv. The author is also proposing his own theories.

 

[clj4]

The first is http://www.ipp.mpg.de/eng/for/projekte/pfmc/pfmc_workshop/abstracts/word_abstract.doc" .
It was published in Physica Scripta, Vol. 67, 381-387, 2003.
I googled the author and found that he also published in Apeiron; further he managed to misspell Lie and Kronecker. Not the best references.
I can´t find the second one, I just stumbled over it browsing arxiv. The author is also proposing his own theories.

Thank you, Ich

Look what he is saying:

"This approach identifies a class of phenomena for which SRT and covariant ether theories give unambiguously different predictions, and suggests new experiments for qualitatively new tests of SRT."
To make matters worse, the author (who also published a slightly modified paper on the same subject in Apeiron 2004) ignores the fact that there are multiple formats of expressing the Thomas precession, one of them being:

\Delta\theta=k*(v/c)^2

For v=c*10^-3 the angle \Delta\theta is of the order of 10^-6 radians, ie. 6*10^-5 degrees, a "measurable" entity 2*10^4 larger than the entity \Omega used in his paper which is of the order of 3*10^-9 rad/sec.

Also look what he's writing in Apeiron here (in the conclusion section):

http://redshift.vif.com/JournalFiles/V11NO1PDF/V11N1KHO.pdf

All the above and the fact that the author is one of the senior editors in Apeiron says it all...

 

[Ich]

Yep, clear enough.
But I did not want to propose views of crackpot authors. I just wanted to know if Sexl´s equivalence regarding kinematics leaves a back door for things like Thomas Precession. Does anybody know how to deal with it without relativity of simultaneity?

 

[clj4]

Yep, clear enough.
But I did not want to propose views of crackpot authors. I just wanted to know if Sexl´s equivalence regarding kinematics leaves a back door for things like Thomas Precession. Does anybody know how to deal with it without relativity of simultaneity?

Hi Ich

I read this paper, it seems like a very good treatment of the Thomas precession:

http://www.citebase.org/cgi-bin/fulltext?format=application/pdf&identifier=oai:arXiv.org:gr-qc/0501070

 

[Ich]

Yes, I know this paper. But I admit that I stopped reading when they started to talk about "a relativistic velocity space, which they mapped onto
a unit disk with hyperbolic geometry". I´m simply too lazy for such things.
There´s http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/math-ph/pdf/0506/0506041.pdf" that might interest you.

 

[clj4]

Yes, I know this paper. But I admit that I stopped reading when they started to talk about "a relativistic velocity space, which they mapped onto
a unit disk with hyperbolic geometry". I´m simply too lazy for such things.
There´s http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/math-ph/pdf/0506/0506041.pdf" that might interest you.

Thank you, this one is even tougher. The Europeans don't mince words when it comes to math.