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Originally Posted by MacM
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Originally Posted by Nereid
1) There is an absolute frame?
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I certainly would not say I can prove it but I do think it is indicated in some way by current data. |
In another thread you posted a link to a paper in Apeiron, concerning interpretations of atmospheric muon decays.
Anything else?
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2) No tests have been done concerning the existance of such a frame?
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Here is where the "You cannot prove a negative" comes in. What possibly could be posted which proves no test had ever been done. I feel therefore it becomes incumbant on those that disagree to post proof of such a test to falsify my claim.
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It's easy enough to turn into a series of positives. For example, what constraints do each of the >~100 experiments and sets of observations referenced
here and >~200
here* put on the existence of such an absolute frame?
For example
- the Eöt-Wash and LURE tests of the Weak Equivalence Principle
- the NIST, U. Washington, and Harvard tests of Local Lorentz Invariance
- the "null" redshift test of local position invariance
- Hipparcos tests of the deflection of light; Voyager, Cassini, etc tests of the Shapiro time delay
- the many tests done with the Hulse-Taylor pulsar, and now the double pulsar
- Gravity ProbeB
It may be that you need to specify, at least at OOM level, what absolute frame you expect to find, before you can assess the extent to which any of these >~300 experiments constrains your idea.
Do you now have enough in the way of positives to work on (so that you can answer my question)?
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3) The existance of such a frame is testable?
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I think it might well be possible to find tests that have been done and analyize the data to see if the motion to the CMB is reflected in it (if the tests are sufficiently documented to be able to verify test cnditions and timing (orientation to the motion to the CMB.
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But doesn't this assume that the absolute frame is at rest wrt the CMB? Why,
a priori, should you assume that?
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If not then I believe a linear accelerator could indeed be scheduled to look specifically for such correlation.
BTW: The maximum deviation in data for such an affect would be 1/2,000,000 (5E-7).
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Why?
What was the sensitivity of the muon result in Apeiron?
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4) There is an alternative to SR, consistent with the relevant experimental and observational results?
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I believe so but it requires indepth consideration to see if it violates any observation or emperical findings.
If you accept that the trip time of the moving observer is fully accounted for by the dilated tick rate of his clock then it becomes apparent that no length contraction has occured.
What is being done is to take the view of the observer and his proper time as being equivelent t' = t such that mathematically you now have TWO choices.
1 - Conventional SR where spatial distance contracts. But that generates some rather uncomfortable if not impossible physical realities.
2 - The alternative is that the common sense idea that relative velocity means +v and -v are equal is in error. Here you have two factors.
a - In a universal sense +v = -v. Where "v" as a numerical value is not considered but only the universal distance covered in a universal elapsed period.
b - v is frame dependant as a mathematical conclusion of the ratios of the physical realities in that frame.
In the rest frame that is v = d / t
In the moving frame it is v' = d / t'
This does generate higher velocity calculations in the moving frame but that makes sense keeping in mind that the clock being used to time the trip is ticking more slowly.
The fact that it results in superluminal velocites has no actual impact on its validity in that SR causes superluminal velocites as well by contraction of many light years of space in relatively short time periods of time as one approaches v = c.
In the case of SR these superluminal velocites are shielded from observation by the creation of event horizons to the moving observer. That might also apply to the alternative view but the realitiy of that I think must wait for actual experiment to determine.
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And what experiments could one perform - in principle - that would determine this?
I see that
clj4 beat me to it wrt "rather uncomfortable if not impossible physical realities"; surely what matters isn't how uncomfortable or impossible a theory seems to us, wrt any 'physical reality'? Isn't is principally a question of how well predictions from the theory match the good experimental and observational results?
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I note that one of the muon experiments referenced in this paper reports (my bold): "The sidereal variation of this transition frequency is then tracked yielding a limit on bJ of |bJ|<5x10-22mmu". This may have nothing whatsoever to do with absolute frames, or it may also be strongly inconsistent with the Earth moving through one.