Path: csiph.com!eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!mx02.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Mike Fontenot Newsgroups: sci.physics.relativity Subject: Re: SR is just another name for LET Date: Tue, 08 Sep 2015 10:44:02 -0600 Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 54 Message-ID: <55EF1052.7020705@comcast.net> References: <9uOdndVwnvXNUHHInZ2dnUU7_82dnZ2d@giganews.com> <55ECD1CF.80705@comcast.net> <55EDAABE.9030101@comcast.net> <5fadnYl6Lq7KYHPInZ2dnUU7_8ydnZ2d@giganews.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Injection-Info: mx02.eternal-september.org; posting-host="df273c419cead3db2e25fd0f0165e9d0"; logging-data="24513"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX1+iHmrapV3XKB2k9TSkALyV" User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.9; rv:31.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/31.7.0 In-Reply-To: <5fadnYl6Lq7KYHPInZ2dnUU7_8ydnZ2d@giganews.com> Cancel-Lock: sha1:0C1gqqUFdJtjhkDhNihygoK5oAA= Xref: csiph.com sci.physics.relativity:363474 On 9/8/15 9:23 AM, Tom Roberts wrote: > > [...] > rotchm's comments seem to be closest to resolving the confusion I was having about Michelson-Morley. I had heard somewhere that M/M found that the earth was always at rest wrt the ether, and so that was my (erroneous) starting point, and I now think that view of what M/M showed was incorrect. I now think M/M showed that any light beam always has the same speed c when measured wrt the earth. That obviously is consistent with special relativity, but it is ALSO consistent with LET, whether the earth is moving wrt the ether or not. So the M/M results didn't actually invalidate either SR or LET, and it didn't show that the earth was always at rest wrt the ether. I've also thought more about WHY the M/M results were consistent with LET, even if the earth was moving wrt the ether, and I think I know the answer to that: when you take the observer frame in LET to be the ether frame, and when you assume that any light beam always will be measured to have the same speed c wrt the ether, and that rods in a moving frame are ACTUALLY compressed as per the length contraction result (along the direction of motion), and that clocks in the moving frame are ACTUALLY running slow as per the time dilation result, then you get the Lorentz equations, which give the moving coordinates x and t as functions of the ether coordinates X and T. In LET, the Lorentz equation derivation doesn't assume anything about what the moving frame concludes about the ether frame. But that then means that IF we can invert those two equations, and get X and T as functions of x and t, then those inverse equations will tell us what a moving (inertial) frame will conclude about the ether frame. Those original equations CAN always be inverted, and the unusual thing about the inverse equations is that they always are essentially the SAME as the original equations (usually with only the speed v changing sign). So a moving frame concludes that rods in the ether frame contract according to the length contraction result, and that clocks in the ether frame run slow according to the time dilation result. And those inverse equations also say that the speed of any light beam will always be measured to have the same value c. So M/M definitely did not say that the earth was always at rest wrt the ether. Of course, even though SR and LET both get the same results for all experiments (because they both are completely specified for all experimental purposes by the same Lorentz equations), their EXPLANATIONS are quite different: LET says that only the moving frames ACTUALLY have length contraction, and actually have time dilation, and that the ether frame is the only frame that ACTUALLY has NO length contraction, and ACTUALLY has NO time dilation ... the moving frames (because of their motion-affected rods and clocks just erroneously THINK the ether frame has those characteristics. -- https://sites.google.com/site/cadoequation/cado-reference-frame All you ever need to know about the twin "paradox".