Search for ether resumes in Sicily
6 Apr 2005 10:58:59 UTC
Topic 188886
(moderation:
Hot on the tracks of the recent apparent heresy in Nature, (see this thread) we have more of the same in the New Scientist.
It is a re-working of the Michelson-Morley experiment, based on the idea that in a medium (as opposed to a vacuum) there might be a detectable effect from the ether. If so then the whole of special and general relativity would be flawed. Recent, highly accurate, repeats of the M-M experiemtn have all been done in vacuo. This may turn out to have been a mistake.
Pre-relativity, you'd expect to see the effects of a 30km/sec movement due to the Earth going round the sun, easily within the ability of the M-M experiment to detect. They did not see this, which led eventually to Einstein's idea that the ether was intinsically non-detectable.
However, in 1902 William Hicks produced a dissenting analysis of the original data that claimed it showed an effective speed of ether wind of 8km/sec. Unfortunately that did not fit either the pre-Einstein theories nor special relativity.
According to the new heresy the effect is due to the mesurement being done in a medium, ordinary air. Maurizo Consoli of the Italian National Institute of Nuclear Physics predicts a figure of 8km/sec when in a medium with the refractive index of air, in line with Hicks's recalculation of the original results.
My own guess is that this is a red herring, but Consoli is also wise to check this out: the odds againts him overturning SR must be huge, but the dramatic effects if he does turn out to be right are equally huge. And the future of science depends on the heretics to keep progress going in the right direction.
Article pp 30-34, New Scientist dated 2nd April 2005.
~~gravywavy
Search for ether resumes in Sicily
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If true then I must change everything I said about 'dark energy being consumed' to ether. But it still makes perfect sense to me. Matter at its lowest form consumes the 'ether' of space creating a downword pressure which is gravity. ;-) IMHO
So the search for an 'ether'
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So the search for an 'ether' has resumed. A thought struck me about light propogation in a medium. As I undrstand it (I may be wrong... I'm not a physicist !) as light passes through a mediun like air for example, the photons are repeatedly absorbed and e re-emitted by particles of the meduim, resulting in a lower 'lightspeed' within that medium. In a vacuum there appears to be no medium, but on a quantum level, there is the vacuum energy. We are told thatthe vacuum energy creates a seething mass of virtual particle pairs which briefly pop into existance before recombining. Could it not be these virtual particles which act as the 'ether', with light propagating through these in the same way as through any other medium.
So that would mean, all
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So that would mean, all interferometers should give different readings depending on how they are "adjusted to the ether", or, more trivially, "set on the table" ? ;-)
Well, thousands of scientist must have overlooked this so far, many of those for sure not working in vacuum and with sensitve enough interferometers (say, Mach-Zehnder, for example)... hard to believe though.
So the search for an 'ether'
)
So the search for an 'ether' has resumed. A thought struck me about light propogation in a medium. As I undrstand it (I may be wrong... I'm not a physicist !) as light passes through a mediun like air for example, the photons are repeatedly absorbed and e re-emitted by particles of the meduim, resulting in a lower 'lightspeed' within that medium.
Yes, I am a physicist and that description is as close as you can get qithout using maths: I'd say you understand the point
In a vacuum there appears to be no medium, but on a quantum level, there is the vacuum energy. We are told thatthe vacuum energy creates a seething mass of virtual particle pairs which briefly pop into existance before recombining.
Yes, still with you so far
Could it not be these virtual particles which act as the 'ether', with light propagating through these in the same way as through any other medium.
In theory yes there might be some truth in what you suggest:
the problem is that there is over 100years of experimental evidence showing that no such interaction is detectable. Therefore if it happens it must all cancel out at least to the accuracy of the best of the many experiments.
In contrast, the most recent experiment made in a material medium was done in air, and was around 80 years ago. People stopped doing the experiments in air when they figured out how to do them in a vacuum.
Just as it all cancels out for the vacuum point interaction most physicists guess that it probably does for real medium interaction as well. By saying that, the majority of physicists are running your logic backwards from the experimental evidence we already have to the anticipated result of the Sicilian experiment.
~~gravywavy