- #61
Icarus
- 33
- 0
At the risk of injecting yet another towering out-of-control ego into a debate already over-run with them, I would like to directly address the concerns energia originally raised, while trying to avoid making unwarranted assumptions about why he raised them:
Quite frankly, energia, I am rather confused by your interpretation of what went on with MM. You complain that it was based on one idea without regard to others? Do you not understand the scientific process? Let's review it:
1) Make a bunch of observations.
2) Try to find a pattern in the observations. Call your pattern a "hypothesis".
3) Use your hypothesis to guess the outcome of future observations.
4) Perform the observations and compare the results with the guesses.
5) If the guesses were correct, go back to step 3.
6) If the guesses were slightly wrong, modify your hypothesis to correct them, then go back to step 3.
7) If your guesses were very wrong, reject your hypothesis & go back to steps 1 and 2.
7/1) This is exactly what happened with the MM experiment: According to Maxwell's (experimentally confirmed) equations, light is predicted to have a certain speed - without any mention of the speed of the observer. This is made the fact that Maxwell's equations do not conform to Galilean Relativity abundantly clear.
2) The hypothesis was made that some odd substance, called aether, was acting as a carrier for electromagnetism, just as water acts as a carrier of water waves, and that Maxwell's Equations are exactly true only within in reference frames at rest with respect to this aether. Since the planets did not seem to be losing any appreciable amount of energy while traveling, it was also hypothesized that ordinary matter does not interact appreciably with this aether, and as such, the Earth should be traveling with respect to it.
3) If you were to compare the speed of light in various directions, by these hypotheses, you would expect different values. By enough measurements you could eventually determine the velocity of that point on Earth through the aether.
4) M & M designed an apparatus to compare the speed of light in perpendicular directions. (I will not discuss the ability of this apparatus to do this - I am not sufficiently aware of its design and limitations to do so. I will say though that I am sure that the Physics community at the time was quite well aware of those limitations and were satisfied that the results were reasonably accurate.) Because the orbital speed of the Earth around the Sun, and the spinning of the Earth, it was predicted that the speed of the Earth through the aether would be well within the apparatus' ability to measure. The experiment was performed, and no speed anywhere near that predicted was discovered.
** This represents the end of the MM experiment, so any flaw in it was already there - what follows is interpretation, and even if flawed, is NOT a flaw in the MM experiment. But I also argue that the interpretation was not flawed:
7) Because the result was greatly different from what was expected, both hypotheses, that Maxwell's equations are only true with respect to aether, and that the Earth travels through the aether, could not together be true.
Following MM, many different hypotheses were put forward, including the idea that the Earth dragged the local aether along with it as it traveled its orbit (MM was performed at different times to ensure the result was not just a fluke of chance - the experiment being performed just when the Earth was matching the aether movement in its orbit). Lorentz's transformation was another attempted modification of the hypothesis. None of them were particularly satisfactory to the community at the time. Not until that crazy German suggested that the speed of light actually was constant with respect to observer did a suggestion come forward that appeared to adequately explain all the observations at the time.
MM was not flawed. It did exactly what it was supposed to do: Test a theory to see if it was true. The theory it tested was not the whole idea of aether, but rather that the Earth was moving through it. It tested that theory, and gave evidence against it. The idea of aether in its entirety slowly passed out of popular opinion not because of MM, but because it was found to be unnecessary to explain observations. This does not say it is false - science fundamentally cannot ever prove anything to be true, and it can only prove things false if they directly contradict observation (so only specific predictions can be disproved). Since aether is a theory and can be adjusted, it will never directly contradict observation, and cannot be disproved. What it does say is that so far, aether has shown itself to be useless.
Quite frankly, energia, I am rather confused by your interpretation of what went on with MM. You complain that it was based on one idea without regard to others? Do you not understand the scientific process? Let's review it:
1) Make a bunch of observations.
2) Try to find a pattern in the observations. Call your pattern a "hypothesis".
3) Use your hypothesis to guess the outcome of future observations.
4) Perform the observations and compare the results with the guesses.
5) If the guesses were correct, go back to step 3.
6) If the guesses were slightly wrong, modify your hypothesis to correct them, then go back to step 3.
7) If your guesses were very wrong, reject your hypothesis & go back to steps 1 and 2.
7/1) This is exactly what happened with the MM experiment: According to Maxwell's (experimentally confirmed) equations, light is predicted to have a certain speed - without any mention of the speed of the observer. This is made the fact that Maxwell's equations do not conform to Galilean Relativity abundantly clear.
2) The hypothesis was made that some odd substance, called aether, was acting as a carrier for electromagnetism, just as water acts as a carrier of water waves, and that Maxwell's Equations are exactly true only within in reference frames at rest with respect to this aether. Since the planets did not seem to be losing any appreciable amount of energy while traveling, it was also hypothesized that ordinary matter does not interact appreciably with this aether, and as such, the Earth should be traveling with respect to it.
3) If you were to compare the speed of light in various directions, by these hypotheses, you would expect different values. By enough measurements you could eventually determine the velocity of that point on Earth through the aether.
4) M & M designed an apparatus to compare the speed of light in perpendicular directions. (I will not discuss the ability of this apparatus to do this - I am not sufficiently aware of its design and limitations to do so. I will say though that I am sure that the Physics community at the time was quite well aware of those limitations and were satisfied that the results were reasonably accurate.) Because the orbital speed of the Earth around the Sun, and the spinning of the Earth, it was predicted that the speed of the Earth through the aether would be well within the apparatus' ability to measure. The experiment was performed, and no speed anywhere near that predicted was discovered.
** This represents the end of the MM experiment, so any flaw in it was already there - what follows is interpretation, and even if flawed, is NOT a flaw in the MM experiment. But I also argue that the interpretation was not flawed:
7) Because the result was greatly different from what was expected, both hypotheses, that Maxwell's equations are only true with respect to aether, and that the Earth travels through the aether, could not together be true.
Following MM, many different hypotheses were put forward, including the idea that the Earth dragged the local aether along with it as it traveled its orbit (MM was performed at different times to ensure the result was not just a fluke of chance - the experiment being performed just when the Earth was matching the aether movement in its orbit). Lorentz's transformation was another attempted modification of the hypothesis. None of them were particularly satisfactory to the community at the time. Not until that crazy German suggested that the speed of light actually was constant with respect to observer did a suggestion come forward that appeared to adequately explain all the observations at the time.
MM was not flawed. It did exactly what it was supposed to do: Test a theory to see if it was true. The theory it tested was not the whole idea of aether, but rather that the Earth was moving through it. It tested that theory, and gave evidence against it. The idea of aether in its entirety slowly passed out of popular opinion not because of MM, but because it was found to be unnecessary to explain observations. This does not say it is false - science fundamentally cannot ever prove anything to be true, and it can only prove things false if they directly contradict observation (so only specific predictions can be disproved). Since aether is a theory and can be adjusted, it will never directly contradict observation, and cannot be disproved. What it does say is that so far, aether has shown itself to be useless.