Ether & the Hafele-Keating Experiment

David

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In the Lorentz theory thought experiments, he used two relatively moving inertial systems, however, one was stationary in the “ether”, while the other was moving through it. The one that moved through it experienced a slow-down in the internal harmonic oscillation rates of its atoms, and Lorentz concluded that this represented a slow-down in the “time” rate or the clock “tick” rate of the moving atoms, with the assumption that the atoms themselves represented fundamental “atomic clocks”. He got the “atomic clock” idea from something Maxwell had written in the 1870s. So it was Lorentz, not Einstein, who invented the concept of “time dilation”. <hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

Lorentz's ideas are brilliant, and he should have been credited with developing the time dilation concept.
I share a similar view that time runs at the same speed as the inner workings of atoms. But I believe that force propagates at the speed of light and so has a reduced affect on atoms as they move faster through the ether. At the speed of light its affect within atoms is zero, and so time freezes or stops.

Again your findings show flaws in the way Einstein developed his special relativity theory, which have now been proven false.

I don't know if anyone has done a Michelson-Morley type experiment in space, but I expect the result will be positive. The experiment should not be conducted inside a spacecraft.

wisp

- particles of nothingness

wisp,

Regarding your comment about the MM experiment in space, I agree. In fact MM agreed. In their original 1887 paper they said that the reason they got a “null” result might have been because their apparatus was too close to the earth’s surface, and if the Stokes hypothesis was correct, that a local ether is stationary at the earth’s surface and is carried through space with the earth, then the MM experiment would naturally turn up a null result if conducted at the earth’s surface. So, MM said that they would like to conduct their experiment on some high mountain top, hoping to get far enough away from the earth’s surface to produce a non-null result. However, a mountain is (I think) not actually high enough or far enough away from the earth’s surface to detect a non-null result. In fact, it is still at the earth’s surface. So, their experiment needs to be conducted in deep space, well away from the earth and the sun, but a few million miles might be far enough away to produce a non-null result. However, I don’t think any spacecraft can travel fast enough to equal the 18.6 mps earth speed.

David

Re your remark that a space ship may not be able to reach a speed of 18 miles per second, keep in mind that the space ship (SS) is travling at this speed even before it lifts off, therefor its speed (relative to the distant stars) is no problem.

The speed of the Earth, relative to the Sun, is approximately zero and would be exactly zero if the Earth's orbit were perfectly circular. (i.e.; the distance from Earth to the Sun is not changing over time). Earth does have a component of motion as right angles to the Sun's direction, which we call its orbital speed, but this speed is relative to the "distant stars", not to the Sun, and is a vector quatity, not a scaler.

With respect to conducting a MM type of experment, I can visualize a number of possible expermental set-ups:

1) Park the SS in one of Earth's Legrange points, leading or tailing the Earth by 60 degrees. This puts the test aparatus having a zero speed relative to the Earth, zero relative to the Sun, with both the SS and Earth having the same speed relative to the stars.

2) Park the SS in a different circular orbit than the Earths. This gives a non-zero speed between the Earth and the SS; the Earth and the SS both have the same speed relative to the Sun (zero); and the SS and the Earth have different speeds relative to the stars.

3) Place the SS in an eliptical orbit around the Sun, which causes a different and varying speed of the SS relative to everything.

We might also attempt to measure the one-way speed of light between the SS and the Earth using synchronized clocks. I'll pass on trying to describe how the clocks are to be synchronized. Perhaps we could use the pulses from a distant pulsar as the clock.

johnduff,

Hmm, I’m not sure I would want to park the SS at a Lagrange point because I want to see if the MM experiment would turn up any result when the SS is moved through the sun’s field lines that show up as circles in the second drawing at this link:

www.physics.montana.edu/faculty/cornish/lagrange.html

Also here:

map.gsfc.nasa.gov/m_ig/990529/990529b.jpg

David

I agree the Lagrange point location would not be satisfactory. That should merely duplicate the results we observe on Earth.

A highly eliptical orbit would make for a valid test, and it needn't be in Solar orbit. An eliptical orbit around Earth would do nicely and we wouldn't even have to attain escape velocity to do it.

john duff

Hi, John,

I’ve read some papers that say tests have already been performed that claim to have detected an “ether drift” caused by the rotation of the earth. This is a fairly slow speed, but sensitive interferometers can apparently detect it. The hypotheses I’ve read suggest that the “ether” at the earth is the earth’s gravity field and that this field does not rotate with the earth. The writers say that it apparently stationary relative to the sun (i.e. it “points” always at the sun) as the earth rotates within it, similar to the way the earth’s magnetosphere does not rotate with the earth. I have several other types of papers that suggest the “local ether” is the local gravity field. In these theories the ether is not required for light to propagate, but it acts as a light-speed regulating device, which would regulate the local speed of light to about “c” at and near the surfaces of astronomical bodies.