🚀 go-pugleaf

On Jan 25, 12:10 pm, Pentcho Valev <pva...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> On Jan 25, 6:31 am, Tom Roberts <tjroberts...@sbcglobal.net> wrote in
> sci.physics.relativity:
>
> > On 1/24/12 1/24/12   8:01 PM, train wrote:
>
> > > [...]
>
> > The question is not whether Dingle was wrong, but rather, whether SR is valid.
> > For an incredibly wide domain we know that SR is indeed valid, because of the
> > literally hundreds of experimental tests it has passed:
>
> >  http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/SR/experiments.html
>
> > Of course knowing that SR is valid implies that Dingle was wrong.
>
> > Tom Roberts
>
> "Hundreds of experimental tests" are impossible to deal with in a
> debate, Honest Roberts. Let us concentrate on the crucial one:
>
> http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/SR/experiments.html
> Tom Honest Roberts: "The Michelson-Morley experiment (MMX) was
> intended to measure the velocity of the Earth relative to the
> “lumeniferous aether” which was at the time presumed to carry
> electromagnetic phenomena. The failure of it and the other early
> experiments to actually observe the Earth's motion through the aether
> became significant in promoting the acceptance of Einstein's theory of
> Special Relativity, as it was appreciated from early on that
> Einstein's approach (via symmetry) was more elegant and parsimonious
> of assumptions than were other approaches (e.g. those of Maxwell,
> Hertz, Stokes, Fresnel, Lorentz, Ritz, and Abraham)."
>
> Now the truth: In 1887 the Michelson-Morley experiment UNEQUIVOCALLY
> confirmed the assumption that the speed of light of light does vary
> with the speed of the light source, as predicted by Newton's emission
> theory of light, and refuted the assumption that the speed of light is
> independent of the speed of the light source, which was to become
> Einstein's second postulate (the light postulate) in 1905. Einstein's
> "elegant and parsimonious of assumptions" approach involved, as Banesh
> Hoffmann put it, "recourse to contracting lengths, local time, or
> Lorentz transformations":
>
> http://www.amazon.com/Relativity-Its-Roots-Banesh-Hoffmann/dp/0486406768
> "Relativity and Its Roots" By Banesh Hoffmann: "Moreover, if light
> consists of particles, as Einstein had suggested in his paper
> submitted just thirteen weeks before this one, the second principle
> seems absurd: A stone thrown from a speeding train can do far more
> damage than one thrown from a train at rest; the speed of the particle
> is not independent of the motion of the object emitting it. And if we
> take light to consist of particles and assume that these particles
> obey Newton's laws, they will conform to Newtonian relativity and thus
> automatically account for the null result of the Michelson-Morley
> experiment without recourse to contracting lengths, local time, or
> Lorentz transformations. Yet, as we have seen, Einstein resisted the
> temptation to account for the null result in terms of particles of
> light and simple, familiar Newtonian ideas, and introduced as his
> second postulate something that was more or less obvious when thought
> of in terms of waves in an ether."
>
> http://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/papers/companion.doc
> John Norton: "These efforts were long misled by an exaggeration of the
> importance of one experiment, the Michelson-Morley experiment, even
> though Einstein later had trouble recalling if he even knew of the
> experiment prior to his 1905 paper. This one experiment, in isolation,
> has little force. Its null result happened to be fully compatible with
> Newton's own emission theory of light. Located in the context of late
> 19th century electrodynamics when ether-based, wave theories of light
> predominated, however, it presented a serious problem that exercised
> the greatest theoretician of the day."
>
> http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/1743/2/Norton.pdf
> John Norton: "In addition to his work as editor of the Einstein papers
> in finding source material, Stachel assembled the many small clues
> that reveal Einstein's serious consideration of an emission theory of
> light; and he gave us the crucial insight that Einstein regarded the
> Michelson-Morley experiment as evidence for the principle of
> relativity, whereas later writers almost universally use it as support
> for the light postulate of special relativity. Even today, this point
> needs emphasis. The Michelson-Morley experiment is fully compatible
> with an emission theory of light that CONTRADICTS THE LIGHT
> POSTULATE."
>
> http://www.amazon.fr/James-Smith-Introduction-relativit%C3%A9-EIntrod...
> James H. Smith "Introduction à la relativité": "Si la lumière était un
> flot de particules mécaniques obéissant aux lois de la mécanique, il
> n'y aurait aucune difficulté à comprendre les résultats de
> l'expérience de Michelson-Morley.... Supposons, par exemple, qu'une
> fusée se déplace avec une vitesse (1/2)c par rapport à un observateur
> et qu'un rayon de lumière parte de son nez. Si la vitesse de la
> lumière signifiait vitesse des "particules" de la lumière par rapport
> à leur source, alors ces "particules" de lumière se déplaceraient à la
> vitesse c/2+c=(3/2)c par rapport à l'observateur. Mais ce comportement
> ne ressemble pas du tout à celui d'une onde, car les ondes se
> propagent à une certaine vitesse par rapport au milieu dans lequel
> elles se développent et non pas à une certaine vitesse par rapport à
> leur source..... Il nous faut insister sur le fait suivant: QUAND
> EINSTEIN PROPOSA QUE LA VITESSE DE LA LUMIERE SOIT INDEPENDANTE DE
> CELLE DE LA SOURCE, IL N'EN EXISTAIT AUCUNE PREUVE EXPERIMENTALE."
>
> Pentcho Valev
> pva...@yahoo.com

Well obviously the MMX was the equivalent of playing a game of
billiards and seeing if the path of the balls was affected by an ether
wind. Nothing happenned. Therefore the ballistic theory of billiard
games would hold, and ether would be disproved.

I agree that the MMX was not sufficient to prove the second postulate,
however, it did away with the ether. And AE referred to it in the 1920
book:

http://www.bartleby.com/173/16.html

"
Strictly speaking, such an æther-drift ought also to be assumed
relative to the earth, and for a long time the efforts of physicists
were devoted to attempts to detect the existence of an æther-drift at
the earth’s surface.	   6
  In one of the most notable of these attempts Michelson devised a
method which appears as though it must be decisive.
"