Quote:
Originally Posted by Tensor
I hope Nereid doesn't mind me jumping in here, but a test for Lorentz invariance, here on Earth, would detect a violation. Since, in your model, the Earth is not stationary WRT the aether. A test taken over several months, as the Earth moved through it's orbit, with the apparatus having a fixed orientation to Earth, would detect a difference in the measurement of the SOL, as the apparatus changes it's orientation WRT space. If you correct this by saying that the aether moves along with the Earth, then you run into the problems of aether drag, such as stellar aberation, violations of Snell's law and the fact that there would be different amounts of aether drag for different frequencies of light.
And, just for your reference, this test happens to fit the bill. Notice that one arm of the test was fixed east-west and the other arm was perpendicular, straight up. With contraints on a violation at 10 -13 for velocity independent terms and 10 -9 for velocity dependent terms. |
Interesting comments,
Tensor, and no, I don't mind.
As I understand it, Lorentz invariance constrains many classes of models and theories, not just (a)ether ones. It (Lorentz invariance) "is a cornerstone of relativity (and thus of all of modern physics)", to quote
Sean Carroll, so forrest is quite right in saying that if his proposed experiment gave a non-null result, it would be pretty revolutionary.
Given its importance, in relativity, no one should be surprised to learn that a great many tests have been done, over many decades, looking for Lorentz violations; it should also not be surprising to learn - given how dramatic it would be if a positive result had been found - that no experiments have reported finding any clear Lorentz violation.
What is rather surprising is forrest's answer to your post, and
to my earlier one. In less than 10 minutes I turned up several websites, and dozens and dozens of references to papers published in relevant, peer-reviewed journals, many of which seem - at first glance - to be quite pertinent to forrest's proposed experiment.