guss said:
The velocity of light relative to the ether is not necessarily equal to what we know as the maximum velocity of light in a vacuum, for many obvious reasons. But can't the velocity of a certain light be faster, because what if the source of the light (eg. the earth) is moving toward where the light is moving? Isn't this why the Michelson-Morley experiment failed?
But I thought the same principle cannot be applied to massive particles or objects. The velocity of, say, the ground that a train that can travel at the speed of light is traveling on must be taken into account if you wanted to find the velocity of the train. Although maybe I'm misunderstanding this.
Note that I don't want to do something exactly like the Michelson-Morley experiment but with mass, just something similar.
You have a lot of interesting comments here but I'm wondering where you got these ideas from. For example:
"The velocity of light relative to the ether is not necessarily equal to what we know as the maximum velocity of light in a vacuum, for many obvious reasons."
The velocity of light is not relative to anyone thing, like an ether, and it is an exact constant value, so I have no idea what you are trying to say here or what it is that is obvious to you. It's not obvious to me.
Another example:
"But can't the velocity of a certain light be faster, because what if the source of the light (eg. the earth) is moving toward where the light is moving?"
What do you mean by "a certain light"? It doesn't matter what the relative motion of the source of light is or "where" it is moving, anybody who measures any light will always get the same constant value.
"Isn't this why the Michelson-Morley experiment failed?"
I'm not sure what your reasoning is but MMX could not measure an ether wind for the "reason" I just stated, which is that anybody who measures any light will always get the same constant value. It was "explained" by Lorentz and others by presumming that the length of their measuring apparatus shrunk in the direction of the ether wind by just the right amount so that it took the same time for the light to make its round trip along the direction of motion as it did to make its round trip at right angles to the direction of motion.
"But I thought the same principle cannot be applied to massive particles or objects. The velocity of, say, the ground that a train that can travel at the speed of light is traveling on must be taken into account if you wanted to find the velocity of the train. Although maybe I'm misunderstanding this."
Not sure what that same principle is, but you have a lot of misunderstandings here. First, no massive object, certainly not a train, can travel at the speed of light. Second, velocities have to be measured relative to some arbitrary reference frame. You could use the ground that a train is traveling on as your reference frame to analyze what is happening with the train and with the ground OR you could use the train itself as your reference frame to analyze what is happening with the train and with the ground. This is what Special Relativity is all about.
So it is very difficult to explain why your idea won't work because it is based on so many misunderstandings. I would suggest that you go through a lot of the threads on this forum and try to increase your understanding of how nature works and how Special Relativity is used to explain and analyze how nature works and then you will see that there is no hope of coming up with an experiment that could ever identify an absolute ether rest frame.
