🚀 go-pugleaf

  ... relativity newsgroup added with followups set there ... 

  ... wholly off-topic newsgroups left in since article origin unknown.


Lara Clouse <lara71@bellsouth.net> writes:
>
>One possible reason that the Michelson-Morley experiment failed to vindicate
>the aether hypothesis could have been because of false auxiliary hypotheses
>rather than the fact that the aether hypothesis is false.  

 None have been found, which is not surprising since the theory they 
 were testing was fairly well developed at the time. 

>Consider this
>example taken from Carl Hempel's book "Philosophy of Natural Science"
>
>Ignaz Semmelweis was a physician in the second half of the 19th century
>working at a Viennese hospital.  He was trying to figure out why there were
>more deaths from childbed fever in one maternity ward ...  <...snip...>

 Wholly irrelevant to this question.

>All scientific hypotheses contain auxiliary hypotheses.  

 Of coure.  The entirety is called a theory. 

>Just what these are in the Michelson-Morley experiment, I do not know.  

 So your point is?

>In fact, if my recollection serves me well, the Michelson-Morely
>experiment, while it failed to empirically vindicate the aether hypothesis,
>did not completely dismiss it either.  

 It clearly and unambiguously showed that the theory they were testing 
 was incorrect.  The upper limit of their experimental uncertainties 
 left any possible signal a factor of 8 to 10 below the prediction. 
 Note that I take your use of the definite article in "the aether 
 hypothesis" literally, as a reference to the one they were testing. 

 I would add that they and others continued to refine this experiment, 
 and that many other experiments test SR and GR have been done.  The 
 most easily realized one today is to use a GPS device.

>It wasn't until Einstein performed
>some experiment with light that we finally overthrew the aether hypothesis.

 Now I know you must be trolling.  Einstein never did an experiment 
 on this subject, although he did patent a refrigerator.  I would 
 expect most people to know this, even if they know zip about SR. 

>Furthermore, scientists should be careful about avoiding hypotheses that
>seem to be untestable now.  

 Theorists are.  Experimentalists sometimes point and laugh to 
 encourage them to work on that testability part. 

>Furthermore, some proponents of superstring theory are
>claiming that the theory is not testable and that it doesn't need to be
>testable!  

 That may be because they are only doing mathematics.  But I am reading 
 this in a physics newsgroup and have set followups accordingly.

 However, I would encourage you to name names.  ;-)  Adjust followups 
 to sci.physics.particle in that case. 

-- 
 James A. Carr   <jac@scri.fsu.edu>     | Commercial e-mail is _NOT_ 
    http://www.scri.fsu.edu/~jac/       | desired to this or any address 
 Supercomputer Computations Res. Inst.  | that resolves to my account 
 Florida State, Tallahassee FL 32306    | for any reason at any time.