Doesn't light's constant speed dictate an 'ether'?

[billy_boy_999]

Your posts were answers to other questions, such as: Have we proven that c is constant? Have we proven there is no ether? When somebody asks one of those questions, your posts will be relevant. In this thread, they weren't

forgive me, but i think those questions were obviously implied...the more thoroughly we can explore the subject the better, right? jdavel, your suggestion that these things are irrelevant (and your posts delineating the boundaries of relevancy) i find pedantic...are you suggesting that the author of the question was ONLY interested in a short, discrete, yes or no answer to this very conjectural question?

for the record i will ask, posthumously: Have we proven that c is constant? Have we proven there is no ether? and, does anyone have anything relevant to say about ether theory? (again, i thought these were implied, not just in the original question but in the follow-ups)

as far as speculations on 'ether' being limited to the theory development forum - i think nereid is wise to let them stay where they are...are SR + GR antithetic to speculation on their own theoretical limitations?

 

[jdavel]

billy boy 999 asked: "are you suggesting that the author of the question was ONLY interested in a short, discrete, yes or no answer to this very conjectural question?"

Of course not. And you didn't get one. You asked about the implications of a well established and well accepted theory of physics. You got an explanation, of the physics behind the answer to your question from someone who understands the theory. And you got an answer, which was no. This is how well established theories in physics work. You don't have to debate their implications forever.

No offense, but the rest of your post: "sound waves wouldn't exist without the 'ether' of air and so you can say that the air is the only thing that slows down sound waves...what slows down light waves? or is it something in the energy of radiation itself? even so, it is slowed, it must be slowed, or a fast body would give off fast light..." shows pretty clearly that you know very little about physics. Your interest in mulling over the validity of a theory that's been accepted by the vast majority of physicists for nearly a hundred is typical of people who think this theory is interesting but don't really understand it. And niether you nor anyone else is going to learn the theory from posts like yogi's. He may understand the theory, but his objective is not to explain it, but to raise doubts about it.

There is a place on this board for raising and discussing doubts about and alternatives to well established theories. It's the Theory Development sub forum.

There should also be a place for people who want to understand relativity, and have it explained to them by people who already do and who are interested in explaining it. And those threads shouldn't be hijacked by posters whose agendas are not to explain but simply to raise doubts.

This thread has become ridiculous, and it should be closed. At any rate I have said all I intended to on it.

 

[chroot]

jdavel,

I'll report the post, and let the appropriate mentors deal with it, if they choose to.

- Warren

 

[yogi]

Billy Boy -Questions about SR sometimes provoke sensitivities - anyway - your question about the proving the constancy of light velocity is likewise the subject of much debate - originally thought to be necessary to explain the MMx experiment (which was an over and back set up) that failed to detect the Earth's motion relative to a putative ether. This was an interference experiment - recently on these boards the question was raised as to whether interference techniques really detect motion when both transmitter and receiver are comoving in the same frame (theoretically, there can be no Doppler shift and consequently no detectable fringe shift). So that observation raises serious questions about the fundamental bases upon which Einstein asserted that light velocity would be measured as constant. Then there is the question of, even if the over and back velocity is constant as per MMx - is the one-way velocity constant? - this involves sync problems with more than one clock -and there is debate about whether the one way velocity of light can be effectively measured. Finally, since GPS systems appear to work using the one way velocity of em waves - it is argued that this proves the validity of Einsteins postulate - but that also has a snag in view of the Local Ether Theory - which proposes that the G field of the Earth conditions local space making light locally isotropic.

All these different theories are being brandied about on the net. You can have a truly delightful time thrashing though all that is published - keeping in mind how lucky we are to have these fascinating unsolved mysteries to ponder - how boring the world would be if everything had already been solved.

 

[brookstimtimtim]

Aether or no aether. If string theory proves true then the strings could be considered aether. If you look at quantum mechanics then with quantum particles everywhere you could consider them aether too, So the only thing that has changed is the name. I personally think that the fact "c" is constant for all observers supports this. Why do you ask, because if atomic motion slows down (time slows) as you reach "c" then there must be something there to cause that. If you abandon aether then you are saying like no other wave known on Earth light can travel through nothing because it's magic. So my question is why are you so quick to say light is magic, then saying "something is there we just don't know what it is or how it works"? If you do not agree then you tell me why light is constant for all observers, I don't want a stupid math problem that says ,it just is, I want to know what causes time to slow down, and if you don't know, then why are you so quick to say there is no aether? Nasa only recently found that dark matter may be true. So just because they have not found it yet, doesn't mean that they will never find it. If you want all this put in a simpler way, What is stopping light from traveling any faster than it does and what slows time if space is truly nothing? If space is nothing, than the answer is nothing. It makes you say "hummmmmm". This is why so many people with common sense is looking for aether, it is aether or magic.

 

[Janus]

For now, I'm going to lock this thread. pending further review.

As is stated in the sticky at the top of the this forum, this is not the place to debate the validity of Relativity, and this thread is walking that line too finely.

I realize that to some of you this policy seems harsh, but allowing such debates generally leads down a slippery slope. They are seen as an open invite for anyone with a gripe against Relativity to put their two cents in. Since many of these gripes are based on misinformation, we are forced to rebut the same arguments over and over again. Either that, or the mentors have to go through the thread and prune it. In which case, some people will feel that they have been unfairly targeted for pruning.

I personally don't have enough time to baby sit that closely.