🚀 go-pugleaf

nessunoic@hotmail.com wrote:
> I took a look at http://www.levynewphysics.com/3-someimportantquestions1.htm

Its opening paragraph is downright wrong, in that it claims the 
transforms of Lorentz's theory do not form a group of transforms. They 
do. It is even called the Lorentz group (!). Lorentz himself never 
displayed the general transform between arbitrary frames, but today the 
structure and details of the Lorentz group are well known.


> from what i see the LET (Lorentz ether theory) is incompatible with
> relativity principle as it is in einstein SR:
> "all processes are described identically in different inertial frames
> of reference"

Well, that is a rather loose paraphrase of Einstein's PoR. Yes, LET is 
incompatile with the PoR, and does not possess what we now call "Lorentz 
symmetry". Given the way these names have evolved, that is rather ironic.

Note, however, that LET predicts that MEASUREMENTS performed with REAL 
clocks and rulers will obey Einstein's PoR and be related by Lorentz 
transforms, so LET is experimentally indistinguishable from SR.


> in LET case it seems the relativity principle would be formulated:
> "all processes are described identically in different inertial frames
> of reference if their coordinate systems are skewed by gamma factor
> which is calculated relative to ether"

That's no relativity principle, it is some sort of "absolutivity principle".


Even though LET is experimentally indistinguishable from SR, the 
historical development of these two theories has been VERY different 
precisely because SR is based on symmetries and LET is not. To date, the 
Lorentz symmetry of SR has proven to be essential in all of modern 
theoretical physics. Note, however, there are tantalizing indications 
that this may not be so in the search for quantum gravity (I am 
particularly intrigued by "doubly special relativity")....


Tom Roberts