The Preferred System of Reference Reloaded by Israel Omar Perez

Dear Israel,

Einstein's brilliance is the greater because of his intellectual honesty. He was always thinking back about the implications of his theories and if need be revise them. I think his attitude to the ether was ambivalent as you point out, but he needed it for GR in order for his grid of clocks and measuring rods to work (I am paraphrasing his words).

I agree with you about Decartes and highlighted his ideas about ether (together with his amazing illustration of the ether vortices) in Section 2.3 of my Beautiful Universe paper. Maxwell's gear-like mechanism to model electromagnetism in vacuum suffered the same neglect that befell Decartes' idea. My Beautiful Universe lattice of nodes with angular momentum in units of (h) are my way of recasting these ideas into modern physics.

Your sentence "if relativity is not accepted as a physical reality but only as a geometrical model, then one can argue that the marriage with QM is an illusion" is too general to understand in the context of what I said. Are you objecting to what I said about the need to reexamine some of Einstein's other ideas as you have done for AS? I am not saying relativity or QM do not work, but that they works despite their being so abstracted from the simple physical way I think Nature works at the tiniest level, a level that assumes the absolute space idea that you have so ably defended.

Best wishes

Vladimir

Israel,

Thank you for the reply and advice. Given the enormity of the situation, I have to stick with making predictions of what will be discovered, rather than experiment. Some of the recent observations of distant galaxies and galaxy clusters ,which push the boundaries of current theory: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

As for the idea of cosmic rays condensing into interstellar gases, resulting in a gravitational contraction, while they haven't been able to find dark matter, there is an excess of cosmic rays on the perimeter of this galaxy.

"motion is a fundamental quantity, above space and time. Motion makes us believe that things occupy a place. The problem is that no one understands motion or change. This is one of the most difficult things in physics."

Actually I think I offer a clue to this in my essay. By deconstructing our misperception of time, I place motion within the equilibrium of space, with time as emergent effect.

Sorry for all the links, but they are generally interesting, if you haven't already seen them.

Thanks for those. I've already read 19 (once). Any other references on this topic would be very welcome. Thanks again.

Hi Isreal,

I haven't read your essay yet, but I am responding to the comment you made above. This is the the comment you made that I have issues with; "With respect to the one-way measurement of the speed of neutrinos or light, I have reservations. My investigations have shown that no experiment can measure one-way speeds of any physical entity unless you have an adequate clock synchronization (which implies the knowledge of the one-way speed of some physical entity, and thus this is a dead end)."

One of the first indications that the velocity of light was finite was observations of the moons of Jupiter. It can be determined relativily precisely when the moons of Jupiter will eclipse each other, or pass in front of Jupiter, or behind it. In the 19th century they were using this fact to determine a universal time relative to London, or Paris, or what have you. The issue that arose that called this into question was that when the earth was on the oposite side of the Sun from Jupiter, the eclipses of the moons of Jupiter arrived 16 minutes later then when the earth was closest to Jupiter. That is a one way measure of the velocity of light without "adequate clock synchronization". I'm sure there are others.

Jim Akerlund

Israel, if in a gravitational field the speed of light varies in accordance with Einstein's 1911 equation c'=c(1+gh/c^2), which is in fact a prediction of Newton's emission theory of light, then in gravitation-free space the speed of light varies with v, the speed of the observer relative to the light source, in accordance with the equation c'=c+v. See this:

http://galileo.phys.virginia.edu/classes/252/general_relativity.html

Michael Fowler, University of Virginia: "What happens if we shine the pulse of light vertically down inside a freely falling elevator, from a laser in the center of the ceiling to a point in the center of the floor? Let us suppose the flash of light leaves the ceiling at the instant the elevator is released into free fall. If the elevator has height h, it takes time h/c to reach the floor. This means the floor is moving downwards at speed gh/c when the light hits. Question: Will an observer on the floor of the elevator see the light as Doppler shifted? The answer has to be no, because inside the elevator, by the Equivalence Principle, conditions are identical to those in an inertial frame with no fields present. There is nothing to change the frequency of the light. This implies, however, that to an outside observer, stationary in the earth's gravitational field, the frequency of the light will change. This is because he will agree with the elevator observer on what was the initial frequency f of the light as it left the laser in the ceiling (the elevator was at rest relative to the earth at that moment) so if the elevator operator maintains the light had the same frequency f as it hit the elevator floor, which is moving at gh/c relative to the earth at that instant, the earth observer will say the light has frequency f(1 + v/c) = f(1+gh/c^2), using the Doppler formula for very low speeds."

That is, the earth observer will measure the speed of light to be c'=f'(lambda)=cf'/f=c(1+gh/c^2), as predicted by Newton's emission theory of light. Equivalently, an observer in gravitation-free space accelerating against the flash of light with acceleration g will measure the speed of light to be c'=f'(lambda)=cf'/f=c+v. Needless to say, this is again a prediction of Newton's emission theory of light.

Pentcho Valev pvalev@yahoo.com

Hi Israel,

I agree without reservation with Popper's view of science. It's a mathematician's view, after all -- that some premises are better suited to some problems than others. That a mathematical model is independent of physics, and only realized as useful to physics in the correspondence of the mathematics to the results of a physical experiment (Popper adapted this position from Tarski's correspondence theory of truth).

Your well argued hypothesis of a one-way measurement has the earmarks of a seminal idea. A few months ago when the faster-than-light neutrino controversy was in full swing, I argued that unless a two-way measurement could confirm that putative result, we could never be sure of its physical reality. That is impossible in principle, however. So I get your point that such an hypothesis might be deemed superfluous without actually being superfluous. I.e., it would meet Popper's criteria of metaphysical realism.

That's why I think that topology is the most useful mathematical framework to address foundational questions. We need the property of orientability to deal with one-way phenomena. I hope you get a chance to visit my essay site ("The perfect first question") to see why.

Best wishes in the competition.

Tom

Hi James

Thanks for your comment. In my investigations, I have considered most experimental techniques. Roemer approach is well known to me. And it is very controversial due to the fact that people assumed a system of reference at rest with respect to the sun, but time measurements are realized on Earth. So they are presupposing a clock synchronization a la Newton. The same time on Earth and the same on the sun, Jupiter, etc. Most authors who claim that this is a one-way method do not show convincing arguments against this and no detailed calculations. The Roemer approach is ambivalent. You can judge it from different perspectives. You can see Io moon as a mirror reflecting the sun light. In this sense it is clear that light goes towards the moon and then backwards to the earth (this resembles Fizea-Focault approach). The other way of seeing this experiment is based only on the variations of delay times in the moon positions (determined by the orbital period) and the difference of the distance between the Earht and Jupiter at different positions of the Earth's orbit. But like I said they assumed the Sun as the reference frame and not ther Earth. If you have any references where the calculations are explicitcly shown please send them to me, I will be glad if you can convince me that Roemer approach is a one-way measurement.

Best Regards

Israel

Hi Israel,

You seem to have missed my point. The light of the moons of Jupiter eclipsing each other was expected to arrive at a certain time on the Earth and it didn't. You could make this very same setup on a table top, where the (one way) light is expected to arrive at certain times due to the very geometry and math of your setup. No need to deal with whether we are using the Sun as a reference frame, or Earth, or Centari Proxima. My point was that the example I cited did not use clock synchronization. And I now add that this can be scaled down to table top.

Jim Akerlund

Israel,

You're welcome. Good luck in the contest.

Hi Israel,

Don't you declare Einstein a moron if you object to his Leyden lecture as if he simply overlooked what you now found out? I didn't find any hint to an insight or even an experimental result that was not yet known to him.

What about Akerlund's Roemer argument, I recall that it was treated in detail by Gift.

Good luck

Eckard

Israel, the site you referred me to is fatal for relativity:

http://www.speed-light.info/speed_of_light_variable.htm

I have quoted this site countless times in my discussions but it always acts like the face of Medusa the Gorgon: on seeing it, clever Einsteinians get petrified and never reply.

Pentcho Valev pvalev@yahoo.com

Dear Israel

I completely agree with you that there is no need to unify Relativity and QM as they are now...the title of my fqxi essay implies that: "Fix Physics!- Reverse Engineer Relativity, Quantum Mechanics and the Standard Model, Get Rid of Outdated Assumptions, Consolidate, and Reconstruct on New First Principles". I think if this program is ever accomplished successfully both Relativity and QM will look unrecognizable!

I would be thankful if you provide reference to the alternative relativity theories you mentioned to.

Vladimir