Could it be the explanation for the shifting in frequency of the Vikings probes and other probes detected?

Aldrin:

On point 3 there is one observation (or lack thereof) that makes this also a problem.

I do agree that a local chunk of aether, following the earth in its orbit (like our atmosphere) would satisfy the M-M experiment, it would also cause an abberation in the path of starlight.

This abberation is caused as the light shifts from the non-moving aether to the co-moving aether.

This abberation has never been observed (though some minor abberation caused and predicted by the index of refraction of air has been).

Point 3 imply than all the ether contained in the Solar system is orbiting the Sun so probably reaching the heliopause.It is strange than the shifting in frequency of the Vikings probe signal as changed near or past the heliopause.
I think your demonstration only prove than there is no local chunk of aether, following the earth in its orbit (like our atmosphere)not than there is or not the presence of an aether.
In other words, the test results cannot prove or disprove the existence of an ether... only whether or not the Earth is moving relative to such an ether.
But the shifting in frequency of the signal coming from the Viking probes is a good test and to this day is still mysterious about the cause....hmm!

I think you're refering to the Pioneer craft right? And that odd extra redshifting in light:

1) has been noticed for quite some time, before the craft got to the heliopause.

2) A change in light speed does not change the energy (i.e. redshift it), nor does a change in direction (which is what a transition from moving to "non" moving aether would do).

But do we really know the exact distance to the heliopause?What is the limit of the Sun`s attraction?
But apparently the signal is blue shifted see Jerry Jensen explanation.
Are you defining a non moving ether as an ether not orbiting the Sun ie outside the gravity field of the Sun?

There is plenty of evidence of an “ether”, a “light propagating medium” in space.

First, there is the evidence of the light from the revolving binaries. Since the “fast” light from the binary that is approaching us never overtakes and passes “slow” light emitted earlier by a receding binary, that indicates that that the speed of the light from both binaries is regulated to the same speed in deep space.

Second, since light reaches us from superluminal galaxies, this indicates that the photons emitted by superluminal galaxies speed up as they move closer and closer to the earth.

Third, light slows down in a gravity field and speeds up in a weak one; light slows down in glass, water, etc, but speeds up again when it leaves that dense medium. This indicates that light is not a “projectile” like machine gun bullets.

Fourth, a reasonably steady speed of light at the surface of the earth indicates that the “medium” tends to be concentrated around astronomical bodies and moves through space with the bodies, near the surfaces of the bodies

First, to address aldrin:

The heliopause is not where the sun loses the battle of gravitational tugs of war. It is where the solar wind is no longer able to beat back the interstellar medium.

I stand corrected. While the signal is still redshifted, it is less redshifted than predicted (thus the light is bluer than predicted). Actually I made a slip, I pointed that out elsewhere already.

By non-moving I meant co-moving, it moves with the sun, for whatever reasons the aether crowd wants to whip up.

1) Okay, I can agree with that, but that doesn't require an Aether, only that light, in a vacuum, travels at C, regardless of the velocity of the emitters or obsevers. You know, SR and GR say that.

2) Supraluminal galaxies eh? Where do you see that? Ohhh...you probably are refering to the redshift (z) >1 galaxies eh? Well, don't forget that after a certain speed a relativistic equation is used to calculate the redshifts. So after about z = .5 you don't use the typical delta W/ W (where W is wavelength).

3) Right, its a wave, or behaves like one under those circumstances. No problem there. But, ah, whats that got to do with the Aether?

4) You mean an absolutely steady speed of light near the surface of the earth (and everywhere else, when on an gravitational equipotential line). And the lack of abberation basically keeps that from being the case.

The speed of light in any reference frame is the same speed of light in any other unaccelerated reference frame. The speed of light in a vacuum is a constant, and all other velocities for matter are not. The speed of light is therefore special, that's one of the reasons why the theory is called "Special Relativity."

If there was an "ether," then light observed from distant supernovae would behave differently from what is actually observed. Here's why:

A supernova event occurs as observed from earth, the light emitted from exploding stellar matter moves out in shock waves over a wide range of velocities. Some very fast, some slower. These many velocities, emitting light as they move, would produce a large range of spectral lines, seen in a Doppler shift.

If light needed an ether through which to travel to earthly instruments (from all the wide range of exploding velocities of light emitting matter,)the lightwaves would arrive at earth over a wide range of time, in fact over hundreds of years in some cases. But this doesn't happen. Red and blue shifted light arrives at the same time. (The visual images created by the light may be younger or older, but the light arrives at the same time.)

Astronomer Ned Wright offers this example:

"For the Crab supernova, with D/c = 6000 years, dv = 10,000 km/sec would give a range of arrival times of 200 years. But the Crab was only bright for 1 year. For very distant supernovae with D/c = 5 billion years,
modern observations with spectrographs show that the redshifted and blueshifted light arrives at the same time: within 10 days. This limit on the spread is 5 billion times smaller than the prediction of the "bullet" model of light." Source: http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/relatvty.htm

When the star that made the Crab Nebula blew up, the distance it takes to travel in time was 6000 light years. Material was flying away at 10,000 kilometers per second. Light from that material, moving through space and arriving on earth at various speeds would be observed over a period of 200 years if there was an ether effecting it. But the "guest star" seen by the Chinese was bright for one year.

The “bullet” or “projectile” model of light does not work and it was disproved many decades ago through analysis of light from rapidly revolving binaries. In fact, the disproof of the “projectile” model, proves the “local ether” model.

When the crab nebula blew up, all the light rays from it traveled through deep space at the same speed, being regulated in deep space by a light-speed regulating medium. So-called “fast” light never overtakes “slow” light in deep space, because the medium in deep space regulates all light that travels through it to the same speed.

It is the medium that causes emitter-related blueshifts and redshifts. In the medium, the blueshifted light wavelengths are compressed (shorter), and the redshifted light wavelengths are stretched out (longer).

You can't "desgin" the medium to have certaiin qualities you want so that it will fit observation, it just doesn't work that way. If it disagrees with experiment, it is wrong.

Chip is right. The doppler shifts are not caused by differences in speed. Although different frequencies can have different speeds when traveling through a material, the interstellar medium is so diffuse that it may as well be a vacuum. In any case the compression and spreading out of doppler shifted waves, of any kind (light, sound, slinkies) is due to relative motion of the source and receiver not, as I said above, because of differing speed of blue and red light. Any high school physics text will explain that for you.


Then I ask you to explain the photoelectric effect, explain why atoms only absorb and emit particular frequencies of light, and a host of other phenomena that can only be explained by the quanitzation of light. Sam, you need to get over this view that wave and particle are mutually exclusive terms. This is a false dilemma. In modern physics (since the 1920's anyway) all objects are considered to have particle and wave properties. The question "Is light a particle or a wave" is meaningless. The only answer is "yes" or better "both, and neither." (Gad, I love being cryptic )

As mentioned above, not even wrong.

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I can't even think of a way that the proposed Aether would selectively know which wavelengths to lengthen or shorten.

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Except that doesn't happen. If such a medium exists, it would take some time for it to act on the light. That should mean that we see a wider range of wavelengths for any given spectral line from nearer objects (like the Sun) than we do for distant objects (like, say, Andromeda). We don't.

I also agree with Captain Swoop and Normandy. It seems like this medium is extremely selective. I can't think of any good reason for it to regulate speeds. I mean, if it slows down this supposedly fast light and speeds up this supposedly slow light, how does it know the difference? Shouldn't it either cause both to speed up or both to slow down?

Time to get out Ockham's Razor here. There is no such medium.

That’s what I said: “When the crab nebula blew up, all the light rays from it traveled through deep space at the same speed, “

What Ned Wright’s comments are about is the old “projectile” theory. I said that theory is wrong and was proven wrong many decades ago.

The redshifts and blueshifts in light from emitters is caused by lengthened and compressed wavelengths in the medium. “Relative motion” does not cause the physical lengthening and compression of the waves. Motion of the emitter through the medium causes them. Motion of the observer through the medium does not cause them.


The “bullet” or “projectile” model does not refer to the particle nature of light, it refers to a mode of propagation. A bullet receives its propagating impulse only at the start of its motion, and when it slows down while traveling through a dense medium, such as water, it can not speed up again after leaving the water. But light photons can and do speed up again. This indicates propagation by means of a medium, not because of an initial impulse.

It apparently works similar to the way sound works. The medium regulates the speed. Once deposited into a medium, the light takes off, following the speed-regulation laws of the medium. If an emitter is moving through the medium, a single wave is not all emitted all at once or all at the same place or all at the same time, but over different places at slightly different times since the wave has length and duration. This causes the compression or the lengthening of the wave in the medium. Generally with sound, the “interface” between the emitter and the medium is very sharply delineated, but with light this is not quite true.

Sorry, but are you making this up as you go along?

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Let’s say that we have sound moving through a sealed railroad car that is moving rapidly away from us. We attach a sound emitter to the inside of the far end of the car, so the sound has to go completely through the air that is sealed inside the car before it leaves the rear end of the car and goes out into the open air.

Now let’s have sound moving through another sealed railroad car that is backing up and is moving rapidly toward us.

So here we have temporarily “slow” sound and temporarily “fast” sound moving toward us, while the sound waves are still moving through the air that is sealed inside the two cars.

But when the sound emerges from the rear of the two cars, its speed is no longer being regulated by the air inside the cars but by the air outside the cars. The outside air speeds up the “slow” sound waves and it slows down the “fast” sound waves, so that they all travel at the same speed through the outside air.

The waves that are coming from the car that is moving away from us have their wavelengths stretched out in the outside air, and the waves that are coming from the car that is moving toward us have their wavelengths compressed in the outside air, but all the waves travel at the same speed in the outside air.

I was thinking about this some more in the shower this morning. Say you have a probe out by Mars, beaming a signal to us. If this probe were ahead of us in its orbit, the signal would be heading "upstream", against the ether wind that inexplicably is orbiting the sun in the plane of the ecliptic. If the probe were behind us in its orbit, the signal would be heading "downstream"--with the ether wind. So, the ether wind would cause perceptible differences in travel times; we'd see wierd oscillations in computed distances as we passed the various objects. This shouldn't be hard to check for; indeed, it should be so easy to check for that the only way it would not have been noticed by now is by a massive government conspiracy.

Hey, Sam-

Any resolution on the "light pulse" clock dilemma? Can one observer see the pulse miss the clock, while the other one sees it hit?

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Nope.

Can one baseball fan see a player hit a home run, while another baseball fan walking in the same bleachers at the same time NOT see him hit a home run?

Note in the drawing that you linked me to, the laser is aimed up but the beam moves to the right. That indicates an ether wind. I’ve never seen a laser beam come out of a laser an immediately turn right. There is no strong ether wind here at the surface of the earth, so your drawing is erroneous.

Have you actually seen one of these “light pulse” clocks work? Do you have one at the place where you work? Have you played around with it?

No dice. For starters, light and sound are different types of waves. Sound is a disturbance in the medium, light is oscilating electromagnetic fields - fields which need no medium. You need to explain how the medium interacts with electromagnetic fields for this theory to be taken seriously.

Another problem is that light can act like a particle and you still need to address Eta C's objections there. How would photons be affected by these interfaces?

Lastly, the interface between an emitter and any medium light travels too has to be as clearly delineated as it would be with sound. Light is emitted by, say, the filament in a light bulb and passes through the vacuum inside the bulb, through the glass, and into the air. All of those are, on a macroscopic scale, sharply-defined. On an atomic scale, you're talking about getting waves past individual atoms, which sound waves manage to do. Admittedly, sound waves do it by causing the atoms to vibrate where light waves won't, but it's still a wave moving cleanly through an interface.

Though sometimes prone to sudden exciting runs, baseball doesn't move at the speed of light. However, basketball sometimes appears to, which accounts for the often observed phenomenon of one fan insisting that a player was fouled, while the opposing fan swears seeing the opposite.

Lol, I’ve always wondered what caused that! It never occurred to me that bad refereeing is caused by a “relativistic” effect! I thought some of the referees were either blind or cheating!

It doesn't indicate an ether, all it indicates is that there is relative motion. Isn't that what it would look like to a moving observer? How do you think it would look? The laser is at one position at time t0, the mirror has moved by the time the light pulse hits it at t1, and the detector is at another position when it receives the pulse at t2. All due to motion alone. No ether.

You won't see the laser "turn right" if you are stationary with respect to the laser. But - and you seem to agree - if the laser is moving with respect to the observer, it still has to hit the mirror.

It's just like the guy in the enclosed train (in a vacuum, if it matters to you), tossing the ball straight up. To him, it goes up and down. To the guy on the train platform, the ball follows a parabola. It's all a matter of reference frames - no ether.

So, just due to relative motion, doesn't the light have to take a longer path for one observer than the other? And for constant c, thus a longer time?

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Taibak said:
>>>>>>No dice. For starters, light and sound are different types of waves.

I know that.

>>>>>>Sound is a disturbance in the medium, light is oscillating electromagnetic fields - fields which need no medium.

I’ll go along with the Maxwell tiny little oscillating-fields theory. I don’t disagree with that. It’s just that there is a lot of observational and experimental evidence that those little oscillating fields are influenced by something in space. The original “theory” that they always move through “empty space” at “c”, and that space between the astronomical bodies is completely “empty”, and that all the stars are “fixed”, and that the universe is “fixed” and “not expanding”, just doesn’t match observation anymore.

>>>>>>>>You need to explain how the medium interacts with electromagnetic fields for this theory to be taken seriously.

If I knew, I’d put it all in a paper and submit it to a science journal, but I don’t know how it works in detail. I’m just taking basic observational and experimental evidence of the past hundred years and pointing out what the observations and experiments indicate.

>>>>>>>Another problem is that light can act like a particle and you still need to address Eta C's objections there. How would photons be affected by these interfaces?

Field waves can act like “particles”. Even sound waves can act like particles. There is a “resonation” effect, the effect caused by the “bump, bump, bump” of the field waves. A to-and-fro motion caused in the atoms, molecules, and the material light strikes by “bumps” of just the right frequencies that causes the material, the atoms, and/or the molecules to “resonate”. That’s why some “indoor” plastics deteriorate severely and quickly if you leave them outdoors where they can be hit by ultra-violet light. The frequency of the light disintegrates certain kinds of plastics and other material.

Have you ever had a plastic tooth filling? Have you ever seen the dentist use a little ultra-violet light to “cure” the epoxy? That’s a “resonation” effect. He’s not hitting the epoxy with “particles”. He’s hitting them with a certain frequency of waves that causes just the right resonation effect.

Read Tendall’s 19th Century treatise on sound and you will learn some amazing things about resonation. There are many resonation related sound effects that can be applied directly to light and other kinds of waves. Ask a radio guy why a radio antenna needs to be the same length (or a certain fraction) as the wavelength of a radio wave. That’s “resonation”, and you can do it without particles.

For example, you can glue some small magnets to a rotating disk, and have them pass near to another magnet that is glued to the center of a plate of glass or a disk of metal or wood, and you can get the glass, metal, or wood to resonate and vibrate when you rotate the disk, without the magnets ever touching one another. That is resonation by means of oscillating or changing “fields”. As a matter of fact, that’s how a basic sound speaker works, with an oscillating electro-magnetic field that drives the speaker diaphragm.

So, you don’t need light photons to be little hard round “point particles” in order to get them to act like “particles”.

>>>>>>>Lastly, the interface between an emitter and any medium light travels too has to be as clearly delineated as it would be with sound. Light is emitted by, say, the filament in a light bulb and passes through the vacuum inside the bulb, through the glass, and into the air.

No it doesn’t “have to be” clearly delineated. It can be blended or stretched over many thousands of miles or more. It doesn’t have to be a sharp delineation like in the bulb: vacuum/glass, glass/air. And sound media doesn’t have to be “clearly delineated” either. Different air pockets, wind, air gusts, aren’t clearly delineated, and in many cases they are blended. Sound can go from thick and humid air into a blend, and then into thin dry air, with no clear delineation, no dividing line.

>>>>>>>Admittedly, sound waves do it by causing the atoms to vibrate where light waves won't,

Oh, when I go out in the sunlight, the atoms of my skin vibrate like heck. What do you think microwave ovens are for? Do you think little microwave “particles” are hitting your coffee and bouncing off and that heats up your coffee? Nope. It’s resonation. The oscillating microwave fields resonate the fields in the water molecules in your coffee and in any food that contains water that you put in a microwave oven.

Not so. The “ether” concept applies to the guy on the train too.

If he tosses a ball up on an open flat car, the ball will not go straight up and straight down. It will fall to his side, toward the rear of the train. If you pour a cup of coffee inside a sealed car, you can pour it straight down over the cup, but if you do it on an open flat car, the coffee will miss the cup and hit the table behind the cup, toward the rear of the train.

What’s the difference? “Ether”, i.e. moving fields as compared to non-moving fields; fields stationary with the ground as compared to fields stationary with the train.

If you move the laser on a flat car fast enough, let’s say at a couple of thousand miles an hour, the beam will miss a small mirror that is directly above the laser and that is moving with the laser. That is because you are moving the laser through the propagating medium here at the earth. On the other hand, if you put the laser on the ground and put the mirror directly above the laser, the beam will hit the mirror, even though the laser (and the whole earth) is moving through space at tremendous speeds relative to other galaxies. So what’s the difference? The earth carries its own local “medium” with it as it travels through space. This was revealed by the Michelson-Morley experiment. But if you move a laser rapidly at the surface of the earth, you are moving it through the earth’s medium, so the light will miss the mirror.

No, and there is no "constant c". Read Einstein's 1911 paper. Read Shapiro's reports.

umm... yes, a guy in a train who throws a ball straight up in the air will find that the ball will fall straight down. it will not move towards the back of the train. it is an inertial refrence frame (assuming the train is travelling with the same velocity the entire time the ball is in the air) thus it will act as though in any intertial refrence frame. if i take a ball in my room and throw it up straight into the air, it will come back down to my hand. same would happen on the train if i did the same thing.
as for your other example of the pouring of the cup... you want to know why the tea would miss the cup in your second example? it's called wind. if you're going by on a train with no protection from the wind, of course the tea will be pushed by the wind so it will miss the cup. have you ever held a hose on a windy day? it has nothing to do with ether. unless you propose on getting an open train car in a vacuum tunnel and then pouring tea, in which case, the tea will go right into the cup, because there is no air to push it around.

no, the light woudl hit the mirror. light travels with a constant speed in all refrence frames. so if you set off a flash of light at the origin of a refrence frame, pointed at the mirror that is above it, it will hit the mirror and bounce off. we went over this in modern physics class last semester. the direction of travel is perpendicular to the direction of the laser beam, so it will not be affected by the motion. unless you're talking about an accelerating refrence frame here, but that's another matter entirely.
i dont' know why you guys keep mentioning the michelson and morley experiment... that's the one that disproved the existence of ether unless i've forgotten that much in a semester...

Probably, as he has yet to show an understanding (even though it has been explained several times) of the difference between mechanical and EM waves.

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Not if he does it on an open flatcar while the train is moving. It's still an "inertial reference frame", isn't it?

Right. That's why Michelson-Morley were searching for an 18.6 mps "ether wind". They found none beause the local "ether" was traveling through space with the earth. That's why the light beam will miss the mirror if the laser is moving at high speed at the surface of the earth. The local "ether" is traveling with the earth, not with the laser.

I think you mean ”between longitudinal and transverse” waves.

Both kinds of waves are both “mechanical” and “electrodynamic”. One kind involves quantum mechanics (very small scale) and the other involves both quantum and maco mechanics (slightly larger scale).