TVSF - The Very Special Forum!

Druegan wrote:

And it can also be shown that Relativity breaks down on a macro-scale when one applies certain extreme levels of energetics to an environment.

Bullshit! Experimentalists have been trying to overturn Einstein for a long time, and the predictions of GR have always been within the limits of measurement error on medium and large scales. But I haven't kept current on this. Got data?

I read about an experiment of lightspeed in vacuum, it IS relative even there, if we count the observer. I read that somewhere.

If i find that link i will post a reference.

In the meantime, read this...........


The given facts in this analysis are:

* The light from Jupiter takes 1003 seconds to cross from the near point of Earth's orbit to the far point at the speed of 300,000 km/sec, (c) in relation to Jupiter.

* It is known that Earth takes about 200 days to make this same trip. The average retreating speed in relation to Jupiter is 17.361 km/sec.

* When two things race between two points at the same time at differing speeds,... they have a relative speed that is equal to the difference between the highest and lowest speed. Therefore the average relative speed is approximately 300,000 minus 17.361 km/sec.

Conclusion:...This relative velocity between the retreating Earth and the Jupiter / Io light train is not constant at 300,000 km/sec, and therefore,...light does not maintain a constant speed (c), relative to all observers,... as postulated by Special Relativity.

Lots to read here.........

http://home.netcom.com/~sbyers11/litespd_vs_sr.htm

Druegan wrote:

On the math bits.. I can't really wrap my head around the utility of the notion of i, Larry.. I was unable to in highschool algebra, and I still can't.. lol Can you perhaps explain to me how entertaining the notion that "an imaginary number whose square is -1" might prove useful in a practical sense?

Complex numbers--including the pure imaginary numbers--are useful in quantum chemistry calculations. After you do the number crunching, the imaginary terms always cancel out, leaving you with a number that makes sense in the real world. Yes, you could do quantum chemistry calculations using only real numbers, but that would be more roundabout and a little slower.

The upshot: We don't have to worry about the 'essence' of an imaginary number; it's simply a formalism that makes life a little simpler for those who use quantum chemistry calculations in order to predict properties of various substances. Sometimes there are crude rules of thumb, but the quantum approach has the potential to be more accurate. And it's more sporting!

The given facts in this analysis are:

* The light from Jupiter takes 1003 seconds to cross from the near point of Earth's orbit to the far point at the speed of 300,000 km/sec, (c) in relation to Jupiter.

* It is known that Earth takes about 200 days to make this same trip. The average retreating speed in relation to Jupiter is 17.361 km/sec.

* When two things race between two points at the same time at differing speeds,... they have a relative speed that is equal to the difference between the highest and lowest speed. Therefore the average relative speed is approximately 300,000 minus 17.361 km/sec.

Conclusion:...This relative velocity between the retreating Earth and the Jupiter / Io light train is not constant at 300,000 km/sec, and therefore,...light does not maintain a constant speed (c), relative to all observers,... as postulated by Special Relativity.

Have you heard the old joke about the Polish Mafia? They make you an offer that you can't understand! I have a prejudice that I need to be upfront about. I'm inclined to believe that bad writing reflects bad thinking. And the article has the same flavor as an offer from the Polish Mafia!

The article is so poorly written that I can't follow the logic--if any--even though I understand the vocabulary used by the author. However the author appears to misrepresenting Special Relativity, and then attacking his caricature. It appears to be a classic Straw Man Argument. I think that you've been had.

Christer, if you can rewrite the entire article IN YOUR OWN WORDS, in a way that makes sense to you, you'll undoubtedly do a better job than the author, even though English is your second language. Show me the rewrite, and I'll be more inclined to take the article seriously. Until then, I'm relegating the article to the category of: I read somewhere that black was white!

Larry wrote:Druegan wrote:

And it can also be shown that Relativity breaks down on a macro-scale when one applies certain extreme levels of energetics to an environment.

Bullshit! Experimentalists have been trying to overturn Einstein for a long time, and the predictions of GR have always been within the limits of measurement error on medium and large scales. But I haven't kept current on this. Got data?

Geh, I'll look for it again, but no guarantees.. From what I remember, the observation was made either at CERN or Brookhaven with the attempts to create a Quark-Gluon plasma... Essentially the nuts and bolts of it were that at extremely high energy densities, matter breaks down into its constituent quarks and leptons, which behave in a fashion much more determinable by quantum mechanics rather than GR prior to the re-forming into QG plasma, which then behaved relativistically...

I'll concede I may just have misread something in there, or misinterpreted it. It may simply be a case that at these extreme levels of energetics, space-time itself deteriorates briefly into a macro-scale quantum environment... in which case you get virtual particles popping in and out of existence and mucking things up.. *shrugs*

It's my personal belief that Einstein is *mostly* right... but that there's a few glitches in his theories. Perhaps the LHC will shed some more light on the subject.

Larry wrote:

The given facts in this analysis are:

* The light from Jupiter takes 1003 seconds to cross from the near point of Earth's orbit to the far point at the speed of 300,000 km/sec, (c) in relation to Jupiter.

* It is known that Earth takes about 200 days to make this same trip. The average retreating speed in relation to Jupiter is 17.361 km/sec.

* When two things race between two points at the same time at differing speeds,... they have a relative speed that is equal to the difference between the highest and lowest speed. Therefore the average relative speed is approximately 300,000 minus 17.361 km/sec.

Conclusion:...This relative velocity between the retreating Earth and the Jupiter / Io light train is not constant at 300,000 km/sec, and therefore,...light does not maintain a constant speed (c), relative to all observers,... as postulated by Special Relativity.

Have you heard the old joke about the Polish Mafia? They make you an offer that you can't understand! I have a prejudice that I need to be upfront about. I'm inclined to believe that bad writing reflects bad thinking. And the article has the same flavor as an offer from the Polish Mafia!

The article is so poorly written that I can't follow the logic--if any--even though I understand the vocabulary used by the author. However the author appears to misrepresenting Special Relativity, and then attacking his caricature. It appears to be a classic Straw Man Argument. I think that you've been had.

Christer, if you can rewrite the entire article IN YOUR OWN WORDS, in a way that makes sense to you, you'll undoubtedly do a better job than the author, even though English is your second language. Show me the rewrite, and I'll be more inclined to take the article seriously. Until then, I'm relegating the article to the category of: I read somewhere that black was white!

I agree, this article was kind of hard to read. Well, facts remain, the speed of light is relative, even i vacuum.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_light

And why not? Everything else is relative.

And...we can look at it like this.

Speed of light (in vacuum) can be put in relation to all other speeds, therefore, it's relative. (even to itself).

Christer wrote:

I agree, this article was kind of hard to read. Well, facts remain, the speed of light is relative, even i vacuum.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_light

That's NOT what the Wikipedia article said. The overwhelming majority of physicists regard the speed of light in a vacuum as a fundamental constant of the universe. However even an overwhelming majority can be mistaken sometimes.

As is the case with other generally-accepted constants, there are a few physicists who ask the question: Is this really and truly constant. And then they explore the consequences. I've met an astrophysicist who's done that with the gravitational constant. His result: No black holes!

The fact that mathematical models based upon 'heretical' assumptions about putative constants can be internally consistent doesn't count as evidence for pseudo-constants. You've got to get your hands dirty, and do the actual measurements.

Yes, if you measure the speed of light in a vacuum 10 times, you'll come up with 10 different answers, given a sufficiently high readout resolution. That's obvious. But the 10 different values are always within the estimated measurement uncertainty of the generally accepted value for c. I'm not a specialist in this area, but I don't know of any hard data that supports the idea of a variable c.

If it makes you comfortable to say that everything is relative, that's fine. But scientists prefer to base their tentative conclusions on data, rather than slogans.

Everything can be set in relation to everything else, even to itself. Speed of light can be set in relation to every other speed, even to everything else, nothing ever is static, not as long there is an observer. So, everything is relative, to all other things, and to itself.

Besides that, it's from our own point of view, we have nothing else to compare with, and that means that we have no reference frames, other then those that we came up with ourselves.

There isn't such thing as an "absolute", "unique", "constant" or "independent" object. That's why the universe lives.


I thought this reading was quite interesting about special relativity.


This theory is called the special relativity theory because it refers to a special kind of motion. This is uniform motion in a straight line, that is, with constant velocity.

The theory of relativity is based on the famous eqation e=mc². E = Energy M = Mass and C = celaritas which is a latin word for quickness. Einstein used the "c" because latin at that time was still the main language of science. This means: Energy = Mass times the veloCity of light squered. Scientists, at first, didn't believe in his eqation. But when, many years later, they studied nuclier energy problem, they found out that Einstein's eqation was indeed right. With one gram of mass you could supply a big family with power for 100.000 years.

Suppose we are on a smoothly running railroad train which is moving at a constant velocity. In this train you may drop a book, play catch, or allow a pendulum to swing freely. The book will appear to fall straight down when it is dropped; the ball will travel directly from the thrower to the catcher. All these activities can be carried on in much the same way and with the same results on the ground outside the train. So long as the train runs smoothly, with constant velocity, none of our mechanical activities will be affected by its motion.

On the other hand, if the train stops or speeds up abruptly, our activities may be changed. A book may be jarred from a seat and fall without being dropped. A ball will travel differently.

One way of stating the principle of this theory is to say that the laws of mechanics are the same for an observer in a smoothly moving train as for the observer on the ground. Physicists would say: If two systems move uniformly relative to each other, then all the laws of mechanics are the same in both systems. This principle may be called the classical relativity principle. This principle is as old as the ideas of mechanics and physics.

Suppose we have a long train much like the train in the previous example. But instead of rolling along at a normal speed, it will be moving uniformly at a speed of, let us say, 20,000 miles (32,000 kilometers) a second. Instead of having two persons playing catch on the train, we will have a radio antenna on the train sending out radio waves, or a flashlight sending out light signals. Observers on the train will measure the velocity of the radio waves and light signals. On the ground we will also have an antenna or flashlight, and observers measuring the velocity of the signals. Is the velocity of the radio or light waves the same for those on the ground as it is for those on the train? Physicists in the late 1800's would have answered, "No." They would have said the classical relativity principle holds true for mechanical activities, but not for those of electromagnetic waves--that is, not for radio or light waves.

A physicist would have said that radio and light waves travel through ether at a velocity of 186,282 miles (299,792 kilometers) per second. Ether was a substance that scientists imagined to fill all space, to account for the transmission of light in outer space. The physicist would have said that the stars, sun, planets, and our imaginary moving train move through the ether sea at different speeds. Thus, the velocity of light will be different for an observer on the sun, on the earth, and on the train. Just as the earth changes velocity during the year in which it completes its journey around the sun, the speed of light for the observer should change too.

Scientists believed that the ether through which all objects of the universe were believed to move provided a nonmoving frame of reference. All other motions could be judged from this frame of reference. Ether was looked upon as a fluid or elastic solid. It was believed to occupy the spaces between the atoms that made up matter. It offered no resistance to the earth's movement.

Among the many experiments which helped destroy the ether theory, the most famous is that of Michelson and Morley in 1887. Their measurements of the speed of light showed that the motion of the earth as it moved around the sun had no influence upon the velocity of light. Therefore, light has a uniform velocity, regardless of the frame of reference. This experimental result seemed strange, since normally we expect the speed of an object to depend on how fast the observer is moving.

Einstein asserted that the relativity principle was true for all phenomena, mechanical or electromagnetic. In other words, there was no special, or nonmoving, frame of reference for electromagnetic phenomena.

The basic ideas of the special relativity theory are found in a mathematical formulation of two postulates. The first is that the relativity principle is valid for all phenomena. The second postulate is that the velocity of electromagnetic waves, or light, in empty space is constant, and furthermore is independent of the velocity of its source or observer.

The following deductions have been made from these postulates by mathematical means.

According to the special relativity theory, a material body can only move with a velocity lower than that of light.

If a conductor on a fast-moving train compared his clock with the many clocks in the stations he passed, he would find that the rhythm of his clock is faster than the rhythm of the clocks on the ground. On the other hand, it will appear to the stationmasters that the rhythms of their clocks are faster than the rhythm of the conductor's clock on the train passing the station. This effect is small, and could be detected only if the velocity of the one clock that passes many others were not very small compared with the speed of light.

Two events judged as taking place at the same time by the observer in the train may not be simultaneous for the observer on the ground.

The length of every object resting in the train appears to the observer outside to be shortened in the direction in which the train is moving.

Perhaps the most important of these deductions is the fact that mass is not unchangeable. The mass of an object increases with its velocity. Theoretically, the mass of an object would become infinite if its velocity became the velocity of light. This mass increase has been observed with experiments. A small particle of matter accelerated to 86 per cent of the speed of light has twice as much mass as it does when it is at rest.

The theory also shows a relation between a body's mass and its energy (E equals m times c-squared). This relation has great practical importance in the liberation of the energy in the nucleus of an atom. When energy is liberated from the nucleus of the uranium atom and atoms of other elements are formed, the total mass of these atoms is less than the total mass of the uranium atom. This means that some of the mass of the nucleus of the uranium atom has been transformed into energy. The E equals m times c-squared law shows that the energy in a single uranium nucleus is 220,000,000,000 electronvolts, providing that all its mass could be converted to energy. However, splitting the uranium nucleus, a process known as fission, releases only 0.1 per cent of the total energy content. This amount is still about a million times greater than the energy released in the burning of chemical fuels.

Various experiments have proved the truth of many of these conclusions about relativity. In 1938, H. E. Ives used a hydrogen atom as a moving clock. He found that a fast-moving hydrogen atom does slow down in its rhythm, just as Einstein predicted the moving clock would do. This slowing down could be shown by a change in the frequency of the line given off in its spectrum. The changes of mass as predicted by the special theory of relativity are observed in machines that are used to accelerate electrons and nuclear particles to the high speeds necessary to study nuclear properties.

The mathematician H. Minkowski gave a mathematical form to the special relativity theory in 1907. A line involves only one dimension. We can locate any point on a sheet of paper by measuring from that point to any two sides of the paper that are perpendicular to each other. Therefore, we can say that any point on a sheet of paper involves two dimensions. All points in space involve three dimensions: height, length, and breadth. But there is one other important fact involved. In physics as well as history we must deal with events. When and where did the French Revolution start, for example? When and where does the earth have the smallest velocity in its movement about the sun? Events must be characterized by four numbers, bringing in the idea of a fourth dimension. Three of these numbers answer the question where; one must answer the question when. Answering the question when involves the idea of time. Then we consider things in terms of four dimensions.

This question of answering when and where an event took place becomes more complicated, according to the theory of special relativity, because rods can change their lengths, and clocks change their rhythms, depending on the speed at which they operate when they are in motion. Therefore, we must answer the questions when and where an event took place in terms of a definitely moving system, or in terms of the relationships between two moving systems. For example, if we know when and where an event took place for an observer on our swiftly moving train, and if we know the velocity of the train, we can find out when and where the same event took place for an observer on the ground. The mathematical formulation of the theory of special relativity tells us how to find these four numbers, characterizing an event in one system from an event in another. It tells us that the question when has no absolute meaning, that the answer to the question depends on the system we choose.

You can actually skip the need for an observer, because everything is going to be relative to everything else anyway, with or without the observer.

When we find an object that CAN'T be set in relation to anything else, then we have find the first object that isn't relative.

I just had kind of a messed up thought...and I have *no* clue whatsoever if it is correct or not.. but I figured I'd share it with you just because it seems to fit..

From the point of view of myself, namely that of a metaphysician/magickal sort of person, Everything is at some fundamental level made up of energy in one form or another.. and I've read rather a lot of bits from the physics community that tends to bear this general idea out. When one distills matter down to its smallest bits, ie, the quantum particles, these particles have a tendency to virtualize and de-virtualize in accordance with the observations of quantum mechanics. When you get down to the bottom of Quantum Mechanics, essentially you're talking about particles, under certain explicit energy conditions, popping into, and then back out of reality (ie, this instance in space-time) from a source potential within the active vacuum itself.

This whole bit starts running around the search for the Higgs Boson and some other exotics, and according to some electrodynamic theory, is the fundamental mechanism behind the notion of "zero point" energy.. but that's a bit aside from this notion of mine..

It can be, and has been, argued that the idea of a "neutral vacuum" only rightly exists as a theoretical construct. On an energetic level, even "empty" space still contains a "sea" of energy at the quantum level from which these particles emerge and dissipate (devirtualize and revirtualize).. referred to as the "Dirac Sea", after the scientist who theorized it.. Anyway.. my point.. Photons are, last I read, still kind of twedgy things to define.. they're "particles", sort of, but also exhibit "wave" characteristics.. At any rate, we refer to "Light" as a form of energy, not a form of matter..

So my idea is that perhaps Einstein is correct in that the photon has a constant velocity in a theoretical vacuum... but that, however, within the constraints of our curved space-time, the energy of light is acted upon in some fashion by the energy potential of the Dirac Sea within "realistic" vacuum, and that curvatures within space-time can, and do, cause general distortions in the "potential field density" in the energetics of space-time itself..

This would, at the very least, *potentially* explain some of the observations that light "speeds up" in certain regions of space, and "slows down" in others. It would also be suggestive of an underlying link between GR and Quantum Mechanics.

Just a notion, however.

Virtual particles can also be a result from high energy movement between two different dimensions. I read a very interesting test about that.

Their experiments produced exactly the same results as that we call quantum fluctuation, so perhaps virtual particles isn't that random that we think.

I will post the test later today (when i find the link)

I found it.

http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/9803315

The full test as a PDF document.

http://arxiv.org/pdf/hep-ph/9803315v1

For the case of $n=2$ new dimensions, planned sub-millimeter measurements of gravity may observe the transition from $1/r^2 \to 1/r^4$ Newtonian gravitation. For any number of new dimensions, the LHC and NLC could observe strong quantum gravitational interactions. Furthermore, SM particles can be kicked off our 4 dimensional manifold into the new dimensions, carrying away energy, and leading to an abrupt decrease in events with high transverse momentum $p_T \gsim$ TeV. For certain compact manifolds, such particles will keep circling in the extra dimensions, periodically returning, colliding with and depositing energy to our four dimensional vacuum with frequencies of $ \sim 10^{12}$ Hz or larger. As a concrete illustration, we construct a model with SM fields localised on the 4-dimensional throat of a vortex in 6 dimensions, with a Pati-Salam gauge symmetry $SU(4) \times SU(2) \times SU(2)$ in the bulk.

Larry wrote:

Here's a tidbit from Scientific Literacy 101: If your scientific instrument has sufficient readout resolution (not the same thing as accuracy), and you make the same measurement 10 times, you'll always get 10 different answers! Why? Because ALL measurements--as opposed to counting--have uncertainties.

Your claim about the variability of measurements of C is vacuously true. A better question about C would be: Can the INEVITABLE discrepancies between the C-measurements made in Eastern Bonya and those made in Lower Slobovia be reasonably explained in terms of estimated measurement uncertainty? Using appropriate statistical techniques, if you can reject that hypothesis with 95% certainty, then you're probably on to something. Otherwise you're just reading tea leaves.

And yes, the speed of light does vary, depending on the medium that it's travelling through. But C is the speed of light in a vacuum, not in air.

I'm quite aware that C is the speed of light in a vacuum. And I'm quite aware of the inherent imprecision, and thus variability, of measurement.

The difficulty I have with the assumption of C as a true constant, as opposed to something which is "functionally close to constant", lies in a few odds and ends.. First, the astronomical measurements I referenced earlier. The articles I read stated that astronomers had noted that in certain areas of ostensibly "empty space" the light utilized in their measurements appeared to speed up in certain regions and slow down in others, by comparison with known distances calculated via other measures. Now, there is certainly a hole in this potential notion.. namely that, although they had attempted to compensate for the notion that perhaps their "empty space" was not truly empty, perhaps they failed to sufficiently do so. That, at least, makes sense to me. But that raises indeed a question of the issue of "theoretical vacuum" vs "actual conditions", namely that space, as the primary environment of relevance to the concept of "a vacuum", is never, truly, actually, empty, what would be the point of declaring the speed of light to be a constant in an environment that does not, practically exist.

I'll admit that's a bit more of a philosophic argument than a scientific one, but there are also a few others... The second is the assumption of a massless photon which enables the SI standardization to make C a constant by mere definition. While certainly the photon appears, by the best measure we have, to be *nearly* massless, this does indeed boil down to that essential assumption of measurable imprecision that you brought up.. In this particular sense, since the international scientific community uses this notion as an entire basis of a complete sphere of science, any degree of "well maybe", ideologically, puts the entire thing into the category of sheer guesswork.

Indeed, a fundamental quandry is raised by the entire proposition of a "Black Hole" itself... If a photon is massless, then how can the gravity, a force which acts upon *mass*, past the event horizon of a "black hole", act upon a photon to prevent it from exiting said hole, upon which it's quality of "blackness" depends?

Lastly.. and call me decidedly out of touch and old fashioned if you will because of this, but frankly, the concept of "aether" has also never been experimentally *disproved*. It has certainly been discredited and dismissed from consideration, but not disproved. Well, I'm rather fond of this notion.. perhaps not specifically as classically defined, but in such fashion as it tends to fill nicely into various aspects of quantum mechanics and electrodynamic theory that I find to be quite compelling.

Druegan wrote:

Lastly.. and call me decidedly out of touch and old fashioned if you will because of this, but frankly, the concept of "aether" has also never been experimentally *disproved*. It has certainly been discredited and dismissed from consideration, but not disproved. Well, I'm rather fond of this notion.. perhaps not specifically as classically defined, but in such fashion as it tends to fill nicely into various aspects of quantum mechanics and electrodynamic theory that I find to be quite compelling.

This reminds me of a famous Mark Twain quote:

"Rumors of my death are greatly exaggerated."

The 'murder weapon' in the apparent demise of the aether 'theory' is Occam's Razor. At the moment, no scientist in his right mind would claim to have DISproven the aether 'theory'. Problem is: It generates precious few testable hypotheses. If you can come up with one, and actually carry out the experiment in your garage, and do a good job of writing up and publishing the results in a reputable scientific journal, I'll be impressed.

At the moment, the aether 'theory' is a poor metaphor, at best. If the aether is analogous to other wave propagation media, like air for sound waves, then we'd expect Earth-based speed of light measurements to give MEANINGFUL differences, that vary with the season, since the Earth's velocity through the aether should vary appreciably from one season to the next. However the measured values of c are always consistent with each other, within the limits of experimental error.

Since there's no law against ignorant people making bogus scientific claims on the Web--as long as no money changes hands--it's not surprising to see some baseless assertions about the putative variability of c. I put these claims in the same category as Elvis sightings.

The upshot: At the moment, the aether 'theory' is excess baggage that has nothing to do with real science. Most physicists regard the aether 'theory' as so bad that it's not even wrong!

Larry wrote:The 'murder weapon' in the apparent demise of the aether 'theory' is Occam's Razor. At the moment, no scientist in his right mind would claim to have DISproven the aether 'theory'. Problem is: It generates precious few testable hypotheses. If you can come up with one, and actually carry out the experiment in your garage, and do a good job of writing up and publishing the results in a reputable scientific journal, I'll be impressed.

Lol... frankly, Larry, if I could pull that off, I'd be darned impressed too! I'd imagine that such a feat could net a fellow the Nobel prize, were it done properly. If it *is* ever functionally proven, it'll most likely take a far greater mind than mine to do so, and a few billion more dollars worth of equipment than I could hope to lay hands on at present. *chuckles*

Larry wrote:At the moment, the aether 'theory' is a poor metaphor, at best. If the aether is analogous to other wave propagation media, like air for sound waves, then we'd expect Earth-based speed of light measurements to give MEANINGFUL differences, that vary with the season, since the Earth's velocity through the aether should vary appreciably from one season to the next. However the measured values of c are always consistent with each other, within the limits of experimental error.

Since there's no law against ignorant people making bogus scientific claims on the Web--as long as no money changes hands--it's not surprising to see some baseless assertions about the putative variability of c. I put these claims in the same category as Elvis sightings.

The upshot: At the moment, the aether 'theory' is excess baggage that has nothing to do with real science. Most physicists regard the aether 'theory' as so bad that it's not even wrong!

Told ye I expected to be considered as decidedly old fashioned/out of touch for it.. hehehe.. And yeah, I certainly know that the theory is completely rejected by most physicists as being irrelevant and improbable... and that scientists really *hate* theories that are untestable, as, being outside their purview under current methods, they are pretty much in the same category as notions of the "supernatural"..

But that being said.. I'm not a "scientists" per se.. and certainly not a physicist. Like I said in one of my earlier bits... I'm an unemployed "wizard", and, as such, I really *do* see bits through somewhat of a different lens, as it were. Sure, I dabble in odd experimentation, and I tinker with weird gizmos and electrical bits, trying to build things that convention says wont work.. But here's my rationale..

When Einstein came along with his theories of Relativity, it took him rather a lot of effort and public "proving" for his ideas to gain acceptance. Prior to this proof/acceptance by the scientific community, what he was suggesting was "outside the boundaries of convention". The stuff I'm dabbling with isn't just "leaps in the dark" either.. it's alternate conceptions of how things work that have been around, and largely ignored, for around 100 years. Not ignored because it was fundamentally disproven, but ignored because it was obscure, politically unpalatable, or because it unpleasantly complicated things. These, I feel, are bloody poor reasons for theories to be ignored.

So I play with em.. and maybe one day I'll make something work, and perhaps something useful will come of it. If it does, it might encourage a revisiting of some of these "rejected theories" by a scientific community that sometimes gets a little too sure of itself and its "conventions."

Yesterday I ran across this article on Yahoo News.. Intel shows how to send power wirelessly. And my first thought was "Big deal, Tesla did this 80 years ago with much greater efficiency." But because Tesla's work was "politically unpopular" thanks to Edison/Westinghouse, and because the man was a bit of a freak, we're just *now* getting around to this sort of thing in the mainstream? (with no mention of Tesla, of course..)

So sure.. Aether theory is considered useless with relation to todays approaches to things.. And maybe it really *is* useless for what we're trying to do.. But maybe also the future will bring about something that it's *not* useless for. Einstein considered the possibility of Aether as a sort of "needless complication" for his theories, and thus it was declared irrelevant.. but the results predicted Aether Theory are almost identical to those predicted by Relativity Theory... just the mathematics involved are a lot messier. Thus, in the "functionality test", at present, Relativity wins.

I just *like* Aether theory.. lol. Maybe that makes me a bit of a freak, but there's a certain elegance to it that strikes me... a certain symmetry with other interesting theories of quantum mechanics and electrodynamics that suggest that there may be more to it than is currently explorable. Time will potentially tell. But certainly, Aether Theory and GR seem to both be dealing with the exact same set of relationships in the natural world.. just different ways of looking at the same problem, so it doesn't so much matter yet.. If at one level of observational detail, two theories produce equally decent data, by all means use the simpler of the two to get the job done. Just keep the other one on the shelf in case we arrive at a level of observational detail where the simpler doesn't quite cut the mustard anymore. Maybe the other *is* ultimately wrong.. but it'll at least give one something to try when the favored doesn't cut the mustard. Science is always reinventing itself, after all.