SR and one-way speed of light tests

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The discussion centers on a proposed one-way speed of light test aimed at challenging Einstein's Special Relativity (SR) by measuring light's speed in the presence of an "ether wind." The test involves two clocks placed 10 km apart on Earth's surface, firing a laser in both directions to compare time differences, which proponents believe could reveal variations in light speed due to Earth's motion through the ether. Critics argue that existing two-way tests, like the Michelson-Morley experiment, have already shown no detectable ether effect, and they question the validity and necessity of the proposed one-way test. They also point out that GPS technology, which relies on the constancy of light speed, effectively demonstrates SR's principles, despite claims that it cannot serve as a one-way test. Ultimately, the conversation highlights a divide between those advocating for new experiments to test light speed and those who believe current evidence sufficiently supports SR.
  • #61
Originally posted by wisp
I found some data on optical tracking of low orbiting satellites. See http://www.celestrak.com/columns/v03n02/
The optical tracking of GPS, if done, cannot be better than +/- 0.05 degrees accuracy. This equates to satellites being +/- 23km out of position without being optically detected. I doubt that GPS satellites are even checked to this resolution.
The other errors in your post are repeats of past errors and we've already addressed them. This error is new. If it wasn't possible to precisely locate a GPS satellite to within 1m, then it wouldn't be possible for the satellites to precisely locate objects on the ground to within 1m.

Also, check your math: low Earth orbit is about 250 km. .05 degrees at that distance is about 230 m, not 23 km.
 
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  • #62
Speed of light was, is, and there will be a constant, because it is the unique speed existing in a reality. The space is an illusion created by light and light the generator of this illusion. The absoluteness is irrespective. Also it is not achievable.
 
  • #63
wisp: to my knowledge no such one-way speed of light test has been done!
This may not be exactly the one-way test you want, but it's an interesting test of GR*, and the data may also be re-analysed to test your idea (and much else besides).
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/gr-qc/pdf/0308/0308010.pdf

BTW, note the tracking accuracy, +/- 7 m.

*no deviation from GR, to ~5 x 10-5
 
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  • #64
Nereid

I've spent a lot of time and money developing wisp theory, which suggests SR will fail this simple test.
I posted ideas about a one-way test on several forums including the superstringtheory forum. I got a little bit of feedback from that forum - they gave me a link to the work of Roland De Witte, who did do a one-way electrical experiment and got a positive result. I expect any amateur working on similar one-way light experiments will get dismissed by mainstream science, as Roland's work was.
Universities have been teaching Einstein's theories for nearly one hundred years and there is a very real possibility that those theories are wrong. So they have a duty to do one-way tests to back their claims and prove to all that what they teach is correct.
A professional body carrying out this experiment will be taken seriously, amateurs doing this work will not.
I also posted ideas on wisp big bang on superstringtheory forum to get some feedback. But I'm not a cosmologist and I posted ideas just to see what happened.
 
  • #65
Cassini results a one-way test?

What I hadn't appreciated, until I read the paper, was that the Cassini experiment (and the Mars/Viking one much earlier) is two back-to-back one-way tests! Because the return signal is not a reflection, but a retransmission using a transponder, it overcomes your objections to the MM experiment, as far as I can see.

Further, the positional accuracy of Cassini (and maybe Mars/Viking) far exceeds the GPS values (per your earlier post), so the objection you had to using GPS data is overcome.

There may be other problems with Cassini, as a test of wisp, but I do think it would be a good idea for you to take a hard look at the results.
 
  • #66
Nereid

Quote: Cassini results a one-way test /Unquote

Dayton Miller’s experiment reveals that the ether flow past the Earth is perpendicular to the ecliptic plane at 208km/s, and so signals sent along the plane to satellites do not travel with or against the ether flow. The speed of light will be c-72 m/s in both directions. But as the Earth moves through the ether time dilation affects it, and measurements of light speed on its surface are (c-72+72 = c).

The +/- 0.05 degree optical tracking error for low orbit satellites would extrapolate to +/- 23km for GPS satellites.

GR is a complicated subject and it is better at predicting gravitational effects than Newton’s simple law of gravitation. Wisp gravitation is a combination of both Newton’s and Einstein’s ideas. There is curvature in space, but it is due to variation in ether density (as described by Newton), and it causes light to bend near massive bodies (as predicted by Einstein). I notice that the report you reference refers to a discrepancy in the pioneers’ orbits; this is explained by wisp’s gravitation theory.
 
  • #67
There has been the slight shift pointing, if memory serves me, towards SOL which has resulted in a slowdown of about 8 meters all in all over the distance thus travled. However, at the present time there have been many theories proposed to explain this and I do believe that NASA still suspects this is due to mechanical/thermo issues.
 
  • #68
GRACE - if it works properly wisp is dead?

Data from the GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) - a pair of satellites in polar Earth orbit - may be adequate to overcome all the wisp objections to current data from GPS. In fact, it may be that the experiment would fail, in respect of its stated goals, if the wisp idea were correct.

Salient aspects:
- two identical satellites ~200 km apart in polar orbit
- distance between them determined to an accuracy of ~1 micron
- up to 200 GPS occultation measurements per day (these are one-way observations)
- laser satellite altimetry.

GRACE's first gravity model was issued earlier this year.

The GRACE homepage:
http://www.csr.utexas.edu/grace/
 
  • #69


Originally posted by Nereid
GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment)
Very cool, I hadn't heard of that one before.
 
  • #70
I'm still looking for evidence that proves special relativity is false, and have found two more sources that make good reading.

1. The Sagnac Effect
An article that explains this clearly, but from relativity's viewpoint is given at http://www.mathpages.com/rr/s2-07/2-07.htm
The first few paragraphs explain the Sagnac effect (you can ignore the section showing loop and area calculations). The argument in support of relativity's explanation is summed up on the basis that the device centres around one particular system of inertial coordinates (centre of circle), and all other inertial coordinate systems are related to it by Lorentz transformations.

But the flaw in this argument is simply this: What happens to the measuring clock when the radius of the circle becomes very large and the clock's velocity small (limit process)?
The Sagnac effect still applies and the clock's motion becomes more linear. In this limit process it is not unreasonable to treat the moving clock as an inertial reference frame in its own right (the Sagnac effect has been tested to great accuracy and so it perfectly reasonable to use a limit process to make the moving clock's frame inertial). Now according to relativity, since this is an inertial frame, light must travel at speed c in both directions. But the Sagnac effect requires that the speed of light must be c+v and c-v respectively, and not c! This limit process shows that relativity contradicts itself, as the real measurements are made in the moving clock frame and not at the centre of the circle. An argument that focuses on one inertial frame that is the centre of the circle is the only way relativity can explain this effect, and so the case for relativity is very weak.



2. GPS experiments that show the speed of light is not constant

A paper written by Ruyong Wang clearly shows that by using GPS you can prove that the velocity of a receiver relative to the Earth Centred Inertial (ECI) frame affects the speed of light, and so special relativity is false.
Go to link http://www.aliceinphysics.com/introduce/ion.pdf
Wisp theory proposes that the speed of light is constant only with respect to absolute wisp space and not to an ECI frame. It's only the way GPS satellite clocks synchronize that appears to make the Earth a special reference frame, either way, the results predicted will show special relativity to be false.

The evidence against relativity is overwhelming and clearly the speed of light varies depending on the motion of the receiver. The only question that needs resolving is: Is the speed of light fixed relative to the ECI frame, or an absolute ether frame.
Wisp theory supports an absolute frame, but I know a majority favour the ECI frame.
 
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  • #71
Originally posted by wisp
The evidence against relativity is overwhelming and clearly the speed of light varies depending on the motion of the receiver.
Nope.
I'm still looking for evidence that proves special relativity is false...
Life would be a lot easier for you if instead you learned how the universe actually works.
 
  • #72
wisp wrote: I'm still looking for evidence that proves special relativity is false, and have found two more sources that make good reading.
For the interested reader, this site has an extensive compilation of experimental validation of SR (and a few experiments which produced contrary results):
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/SR/experiments.html#7. Other experiments

The Sagnac effect seems simple, but (IMHO) is very easily misunderstood. A couple of references for the interested reader:
http://www.mathpages.com/rr/s2-07/2-07.htm
http://relativity.livingreviews.org/Articles/lrr-2003-1/node2.html
 
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  • #73
Originally posted by wisp
I'm still looking for evidence that proves special relativity is false...
I let this go before, but this is a great big red flag, wisp. It implies that you are ONLY looking for evidence that disproves relativity, ie. you are not interested in looking at anything that doesn't support your opinion. That is directly contrary to the way science works. If you are really interested in "doing" science, you'll look at both.

Nereid, interesting looking link. I'll have to read it when I get a chance (just skimmed it).
 
  • #74
Originally posted by wisp
Nereid

I've spent a lot of time and money developing wisp theory, which suggests SR will fail this simple test.
I posted ideas about a one-way test on several forums including the superstringtheory forum. I got a little bit of feedback from that forum - they gave me a link to the work of Roland De Witte, who did do a one-way electrical experiment and got a positive result. I expect any amateur working on similar one-way light experiments will get dismissed by mainstream science, as Roland's work was.
Universities have been teaching Einstein's theories for nearly one hundred years and there is a very real possibility that those theories are wrong. So they have a duty to do one-way tests to back their claims and prove to all that what they teach is correct.
A professional body carrying out this experiment will be taken seriously, amateurs doing this work will not.
I also posted ideas on wisp big bang on superstringtheory forum to get some feedback. But I'm not a cosmologist and I posted ideas just to see what happened.
Hi wisp,

I came across the following paragraph which seems to directly address your concern that no one-way tests of SR have been performed:

"Recent advances in atomic spectroscopy and atomic timekeeping have made it possible to test LLI by checking the isotropy of the speed of light using one-way propagation (as opposed to round-trip propagation, as in the Michelson-Morley experiment). In one experiment, for example, the relative phases of two hydrogen maser clocks at two stations of NASA's Deep Space Tracking Network were compared over five rotations of the Earth by propagating a light signal one-way along an ultrastable fiberoptic link connecting them (see Sec. 2.2.3). Although the bounds from these experiments are not as tight as those from mass-anisotropy experiments, they probe directly the fundamental postulates of special relativity, and thereby of LLI [local Lorentz invariance]"[/color]

This is taken from "The Confrontation between General Relativity and Experiment", section 2.1, at:
http://relativity.livingreviews.org/Articles/lrr-2001-4/

References to the all experiments are given in the article.

Unless I'm mistaken, these experiments are considerably more precise than the Roland de Witte work you cite, and address a similar (the same?) question.

I'm sure you've reviewed these experiments; why did you find them to be insufficient to disprove wisp?
 
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  • #75
I think, that it is impossible to conceive and execute one-way experiment removing all questions concerning a light until we’ll not know precisely that there is “light”.
 
  • #76
Originally posted by Michael F. Dmitriyev
I think, that it is impossible to conceive and execute one-way experiment removing all questions concerning a light until we’ll not know precisely that there is “light”.
Would you mind elaborating?
 
  • #77
Originally posted by Nereid
Would you mind elaborating?
Are you sure what know all about light?
 
  • #78
Only fools and horses ...

Originally posted by Michael F. Dmitriyev
Are you sure what know all about light?
I'm sure we - you, me, Tom, Ambitwistor, ... - do NOT know *all* about light! And never will. :smile:

What, in particular, concerns you about the one-way tests? [?]
 
  • #79


Originally posted by Nereid
I'm sure we - you, me, Tom, Ambitwistor, ... - do NOT know *all* about light! And never will. :smile:

What, in particular, concerns you about the one-way tests? [?]
May be, I know about this subject a little bit more, than someone in your list (excluding horses). Anyway, I have made such attempt. Look at mine topic, please.
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=7611
 
  • #80


Originally posted by Michael F. Dmitriyev
May be, I know about this subject a little bit more, than someone in your list (excluding horses). Anyway, I have made such attempt. Look at mine topic, please.
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=7611
In that thread you displayed that you misunderstand the fundamentals of what IS known about light. No, we do not know everything - but there is a lot that we do know. You'd do well to learn the things that we do know before trying to forulate your own theory or attack existing one.
 
  • #81
Nereid

Regarding Clifford Will's "Theory and experiment in gravitational physics" 1981 (2nd edition 1993)- The centrifuge, two-photon absorption (TPA) and JPL experiments test the isotropy of light speed using one-way propagation.

What I can say is that wisp theory fully supports Local Lorentz invariance (LLI)(see ch8). Without buying his book I cannot comment about the reasons why his work would suggest that the DeWitte results are false.
Do you know how long the fibre optic cable was?
What were the results and tolerances?

I believe wisp theory will challenge his work and show DeWitte's experiment to be true.
 
  • #82


Originally posted by russ_watters
In that thread you displayed that you misunderstand the fundamentals of what IS known about light. No, we do not know everything - but there is a lot that we do know. You'd do well to learn the things that we do know before trying to forulate your own theory or attack existing one.
I have learned it many years ago. Similar you, I have had feeling the puppy’s delight before all existing theories and a famous names. With the years it has passed. I can assure that it wait you in future too ( I suspect you are near 18 only).
 
  • #83
Regardless of what age he has, if he knows the mathematics and the physics behind it, he can deduce the basic theories do work and draw valid conclusions from them. russ is indeed able to perform such feats. You on the other hand have done nothing but exhibit the classic symptoms of a crackpot Posting intractable ideas all over the place with no mathematics or even wrong mathematics to try and support your ideas. It is very clear you have almost zero grasp of what is real physics and yet you attempt to continually demolish it. If and only if you present a real valid argument formulated in real physics will people begin to take any objections you have as valid. But so far, nobody can even guess where to begin to show how wrong your claims have been

As for wisp 'theory' it just isn't supported by an real, reproducible results. Nereid produced a perfect example of wisp falling flat down. In addition, if special relativity were wrong, then general relativity would also be incorrect at some basic level. Yet, it has also been proven to be a very extremely accurate tool for predicting observations to an astonishing degree.
 
  • #84
Originally posted by Brad_Ad23
...if he knows the mathematics and the physics behind it, he can deduce the basic theories do work and draw valid conclusions from them. russ is indeed able to perform such feats.
Heck, no need to go even that far (I appreciate it though). I will freely admit to having only a conceptual (ie, not mathematical) understanding of high end concpets in physics such as the nature of light. But that is all that is required to see that some of his statements are directly contradictory to what is actually observed. Heck, the title of his other thread is itself an easy example.
 
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  • #85
Hard copy only? Physical Review D

Originally posted by wisp
Nereid

Regarding Clifford Will's "Theory and experiment in gravitational physics" 1981 (2nd edition 1993)- The centrifuge, two-photon absorption (TPA) and JPL experiments test the isotropy of light speed using one-way propagation.

What I can say is that wisp theory fully supports Local Lorentz invariance (LLI)(see ch8). Without buying his book I cannot comment about the reasons why his work would suggest that the DeWitte results are false.
Do you know how long the fibre optic cable was?
What were the results and tolerances?

I believe wisp theory will challenge his work and show DeWitte's experiment to be true.
The two key papers are:

Will, C. M., "Clock synchronization and isotropy of the one-way speed of light'', Phys. Rev. D, 45, 403-411, (1992)

Timothy P. Krisher, Lute Maleki, George F. Lutes, Lori E. Primas, Ronald T. Logan, John D. Anderson, and Clifford M. Will, "Test of the Isotropy of the One-Way Speed of Light using Hydrogen Maser Frequency Standards", THE PHYSICAL REVIEW D (RAPID COMMUNICATIONS) 42, 731 (1990)

Unfortunately, these may not be available on the web. Do you have access to a university library? You may also find the Will book in such a library. Alternatively, many city libraries in the UK (AFAIK) can obtain a copy of a book such as Will's through inter-library loan; perhaps you could enquire?
 
  • #86
Originally posted by russ_watters
Heck, no need to go even that far (I appreciate it though). I will freely admit to having only a conceptual (ie, not mathematical) understanding of high end concpets in physics such as the nature of light. But that is all that is required to see that some of his statements are directly contradictory to what is actually observed. Heck, the title of his other thread is itself an easy example.

You got me there:wink: Once you learn about curl and divergence vectors and the like and you get to Maxwell's equations, you start to see the picture even brighter
 
  • #87
Originally posted by Brad_Ad23
Once you learn about curl and divergence vectors and the like and you get to Maxwell's equations, you start to see the picture even brighter
You mean bright like the flashes of light you see at the beginning of a migrane? Yeah, been there. Its called differential equations. Thank God for computers.
 
  • #88
Reply on those equations

I second that statement.
 
  • #89
Originally posted by russ_watters
You mean bright like the flashes of light you see at the beginning of a migrane? Yeah, been there. Its called differential equations. Thank God for computers.

computers are overrated for that. Give me my own skills to solve it any ol' day. For large numbers and insanely long equations sure, computers. But nothin like actually knowing how it works
 
  • #90
Also different programs sometimes yield different outputs as reguards signs + or -, so to speak. One problem a friend of mine encountered while trying to run an output based upon an already published finding in an article.
 

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