🚀 go-pugleaf

Dear Pentcho Valev:

"Pentcho Valev" <pvalev@yahoo.com> wrote in message 
news:1194938024.903129.206100@k79g2000hse.googlegroups.com...
> http://ias.umn.edu/pdf/TimeandRelativity-Pooley.pdf
> p. 11: "Problem for Lorentz's theory: no sign of ether
> drift (= motion of ether with respect to earth). Many
> failed attempts to detect ether drift, one of the most
> famous ones by Americans Albert A. Michelson
> (1852-1931) and Edward W. Morley (1838-1923).
> Explanation: compensating effect: length of
> interferometer arm changes as it rotates: parallel to
> ether drift it is shorter than perpendicular to the ether
> drift.  Contraction (deformation) hypothesis: an
> object moving with a velocity v through the ether
> contracts by a factor (1-v^2 c^2)^(1/2) in the
> direction of motion."
>
> Another explanation that essentially could have
> been advanced by FitzGerald, Lorentz etc. if they
> had been less prejudiced in favour of the ether theory:
>
> http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00001743/02/Norton.pdf
> John Norton: "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......
>THE MICHELSON-MORLEY EXPERIMENT IS FULLY
> COMPATIBLE WITH AN EMISSION THEORY OF
> LIGHT THAT CONTRADICTS THE LIGHT POSTULATE."

You forgot:
- the aether was dragged by the Earth, and so consequently the 
motion of light was conformed to the motion of the Earth.

> Which explanation would have been more correct?

None of the above.  Since it is only a challenge to Maxwell's 
equations.  As you know the "light postulate" was redundant to 
"the laws of physics"... inclusive of Maxwell.

By the way, if no experiment can differentiate between 
"perspective" and "aether", then the question itself is a 
nonsequitur.

The emission / ballistic theories get into trouble when (for 
example) starlight is used in MMX, or when the Moon is used for a 
shutter for high-z objects.

David A. Smith