Hans de Vries said:
Well, looking at this paper,
Reginald T. Cahill claims that the MM experiment can be used after all
to measure the absolute motion through the aether, it however should
be done in a medium with a refractive index higher than 1.00 (vacuum)
He then claims that he can read the absolute speed through the aether
from MM's 1887 (120 year old) experiment because it was done in air
with a refractive index of 1.00029.
According to Cahill, the effect becomes more visible with \sqrt{n-1}
Why doesn't he just put the simplest MM setup in water which makes
it more than 30 times more sensitive as in air. Even the simplest
table-top experiment would reveal the absolute speed with better
than 1% accuracy.
Running LIGO without a vacuum would measure the absolute speed
with what? one-in-a-million? one-in-a-billion?
http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/docs/G/G040436-00/G040436-00.ppt
Aether, please don't let me waste my time with reading this stuff.Regards, Hans
Hans and ZapperZ
The "paper" cited by "Aether" would be a perfect example of physics fraud.
It is a beatiful case to set in front of the graduate students and let them have at it.
It should be a new thread, since it was thrown in by "Aether" as a diversion from the OWLS discussion.
Here are a few points to start the new thread (ZapperZ , can you move this in a new thread?)
1. As both of you have asked: how come that no one has tried a MMX experiment in a medium with refrigency higher than 1? Well, there have been at least TWO such experiments, by reputed scientists with...NULL results:
[1]Shamir and Fox, N. Cim. 62B no. 2 (1969), p258.
A repetition of the MMX with the optical paths
in perspex (n = 1.49), and a laser-based optics sensitive to ~0.00003 fringe. They report a
null result with an upper limit on V_aether of 6.64 km/s.
[2]Trimmer et al., Phys. Rev. D8, p3321 (1973); Phys. Rev. D9 p2489 (1974).
A triangle interferometer
with one leg in glass.
They set an upper limit on the anisotropy of 0.025 m/s. This is about one-millionth of the Earth's orbital velocity and about 1/10,000 of its rotational velocity.
So, "Aether" may be working on yet another such experiment. The result (if the experiment is not going to be forged) should be null, contradicting Cahill. Kind of strange that Cahill wrote his paper in 2002 but did not do any experiment. He seemed content to fake the explanation of the MM and Miller experiments.
2. What is the deal with the Reg Cahill paper?
Aside from being a well known kook, his paper is dead wrong. Can you spot the error? Hint: the light speed in the moving refringent medium is not c/n when calculated wrt to the CMBR frame. Cahill does not understand the elementary speed composition! He doesn't even understand the old Fizeau law for speed of light in moving bodies (which agrees with the relativistic explanation!)
3. How about "Aether's" recent follow-up on the Cahill paper? (see post 61). I think I found it here:
http://arxiv.org/ftp/physics/papers/0603/0603267.pdf
It is nothing less than an attempt to resurect the long dead "Lorentz-FitzGerald contraction", the long dead 1904 Lorentz theory.
We should really separate this from the current thread. On the other hand, should we even discuss kooky theories?
I'm just saying, we advertise a turnaround time of 30 days for action to be taken on IR threads. I didn't want you to think that we would automatically make your paper public after that time. We'll hold it as long as you want.
