🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <3E370A03.9080205@attbi.com>, bobkolker@attbi.com wrote:

> Mitchell Jones wrote:
> > ***{No, Bob. An aether is the *alternative* to "magic stuff." You can, for
> > example, say that light bends when passing the sun because space is
> > curved, or you can say that it bends because there is a pool of
> > gravitationally entrained aether surrounding the sun
> 
> You could say that but we know entrained aether contradicts stellar 
> aberration.

***{That is true only if all of the aether is hypothesized to be rigidly
attached to the Sun, with no part of it being carried along by other
celestial bodies such as the Earth. In that case it is obvious that light
waves arriving at the Earth would be moving directly away from the true
position of the Sun, and would show no aberration. 

Gravitationally entrained aether, however, does *not* contradict stellar
aberration, because each celestial body entrains a pool of aether within
the region in which its gravitational field is dominant. That means the
Sun entrains a vast pool of aether which moves with it, but *only* out to
the point where the gravitational field of the Earth becomes stronger.
Result: light moves straight out from the true position of the Sun *until*
it encounters the pool of aether entrained by and moving with the Earth.
At that point, it is aberrated due to the relative motion of the Earth's
aether relative to that of the Sun. Crossing the boundary from the Sun's
pool of aether into the pool of aether moving with the Earth has the
effect of giving the incoming photons a velocity component of 18 miles/sec
opposite to the direction of Earth's motion in its orbit, and produces the
aberration that is, in fact, observed. This occurs for the same reason
that the path a bullet cuts into a block of wood will be perpendicular to
the surface of the block if the block is not moving, and will deviate from
the perpendicular by greater and greater amounts if tests are done in
which the block is made to move faster and faster at the time of impact. 

Bottom line: it is only if the aether near the Earth were to move with the
Sun rather than with the Earth that your conclusion would be correct. 

--Mitchell Jones}***

 So you would be wrong. Aether is an unnecessry hypothesis. 
> Physics has done without it for over 100 years.

***{Physics cannot do without the aether, because real physics is a
science, not a realm of magic. Those who claim that *space* is curved
rather than that the light is deflected by entities within the region
through which it is passing are not physicists: they are the high priests
of a new religion that subsists on government funding, in violation of the
principle of separation of church and state. --MJ}***

> Bob Kolker

===============================================
Killfile inmates: Charles Cagle, Stephen Speicher, Mati Meron, Franz
Heymann, Mike Varney, Dirk Van de moortel, Bob Zombiewoof.