Quote:
The experimental care taken in this experiment is impressive, but futile, if intended to detect the influence of the ether on c. Lessons learned long before have been forgotten. The experimenter’s text below indicates the missteps taken: solid silica and sapphire crystal; and vacuum-sealed, instead of a gaseous medium.
At the core of the experimental setup is an optical cavity fabricated from fused silica (L = 3 cm, 20 kHz line width) which is continuously rotated on a precision air bearing turntable. Its frequency is compared to that of a stationary cavity oriented north-south (L = 10 cm, 10 kHz line width). Each cavity is mounted inside a thermally shielded vacuum chamber.
The apparatus diagram, although only a schematic, indicates the clutter of support and ancillary structures used in a vain attempt at accuracy. It is also a safe assumption the experiment was performed in a laboratory, buried in the bowels of a building. Can sunlight be detected in a windowless cellar? What value would be placed on a null result of < 10-15 for sunlight detection, if the cellar shielded the detector from the sun? Would we say there is no sunlight, because the experiment was done in darkness? ...
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Well, might I suggest you send that "assessment" on to the physicists in question. I'm sure it will be well received (not. more likely ignored as it should be). First off, this was not an attempt to detect the influence of any "ether" on the speed of light. That concept went out the window after the first MM experiment. There is no reference to any "ether" as none is required. I challenge you to look through their papers and find one reference to the word "ether" used in a non-historical way. What the are doing is probing the limits of SR and Lorentz invariance to see where they break down and finding to a high degree of accuracy that the predictions of the theory match the experimental results. Here's a question. How does your book predict the results would differ if the experiment were done in a "gaseous medium?" How would they differ if done in orbit around the Earth?
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"I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind." - William Thompson, 1st Baron Lord Kelvin
"If it was so, it might be, and if it were so, it would be, but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic!" - Tweedledee
This isn't right. This isn't even wrong. - Wolfgang Pauli
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